...singing sweet songs, and gathering beakfuls of mud. The House Martins are at it again, and scooping mud and fallen cob from the derelict barns, softened by regular applications by the humans with water from the watering can. They swoop, they scoop, they build. There are about a dozen House Martin clay nests clinging to the wall below the roofline of the house. If you are into design, you can arrange the colours of the nests by changing the type of mud clumps you put out for them, so you get striated nests in variable muddy colours. Haven't yet gone the whole hog and added cochineal or woad, but am tempted. The only thing that holds me back is that when it rains I am likely to find blue and red streaks running down the whitewash and the conservation officer might not approve of that kind of makeover.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Three little birds, pitch by my doorstep...
...singing sweet songs, and gathering beakfuls of mud. The House Martins are at it again, and scooping mud and fallen cob from the derelict barns, softened by regular applications by the humans with water from the watering can. They swoop, they scoop, they build. There are about a dozen House Martin clay nests clinging to the wall below the roofline of the house. If you are into design, you can arrange the colours of the nests by changing the type of mud clumps you put out for them, so you get striated nests in variable muddy colours. Haven't yet gone the whole hog and added cochineal or woad, but am tempted. The only thing that holds me back is that when it rains I am likely to find blue and red streaks running down the whitewash and the conservation officer might not approve of that kind of makeover.
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5 comments:
l do like the idea of the coloured mud, l just might give it a go.
Fab!
I love it when they're teaching the babies to fly - we have swallows nesting very year in the stables and they line their family up along the rafters. Great to watch.
Ah country living!
Mopsa, I have watched the martins making their nests. How many trips must it take them? M&M, probably the best place I have ever watched swallows is up your way, a certain ruined castle near where the kippers come from where they nest in the nooks and crannies and swoop across the grass at knee height.
We feel rather priviledged to have so many birds nesting in/on/around the barn - wonderful to watch their comings and goings. We're only slightly miffed when it means work gets held up on whatever project's underway because a nest has been built.
This year - again - Redstarts have built in the wall of our summerhouse-to-be. They're so lovely I think we'll forgive them.
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