Empty Nest

I posted last Monday about the blackbirds nesting just outside our kitchen. apart from the one casualty -the brood shrank from four to three chicks- the family Skanky have clearly been prospering, because this morning two of the three surviving chicks had fledged.

That left the one solitary survivor in the nest, and just before we took Alice for her daily constitutional, he too had left the nest. (You can just about make out Junior lurking in the thick cover of the honeysuckle in the lower right side of the photo)

By the time we had returned, he too had dropped to the ground.

Sadly, he’d gone next door like his two siblings, and the high walls mean that we won’t get to see them any longer. It would have been nice to have had them in our undergrowth, as had happened in prevous years, but the main thing is that they prosper. If all goes well, we may see them as they get older and learn to fly.

But I can’t help feeling a little lost, rather as any parents do when their kids (or grandkids) leave the nest.

• May 8th, 2011 • Posted in Uncategorized • Comments: 0