Nursery Time

Now is the time that young birds start to become obvious in the garden. This young Blackbird (above) has been a bit of a nuisance. Twice, when I've had the greenhouse door open it's managed to get trapped in there and had me crawling round the pots to rescue and release it.

Robins are also just out of the nest, you can see the gape on this young bird, they have large mouths, with a bright yellow gape. This apparently stimulates the adults to keeps feeding the birds. The pale feather tips and spotting on both these birds is typical of young fledglings of many species. The main threat to these young birds in gardens in cats. So please keep your cat inside in the daytime, or at least give it a large bell round its neck.

I can't let today go by without mentioning the earthquake in Kent. Strangely, I was out side and completely unaware of it. Pam was in the bath and shouted out to find out what had happened. I said that it must have been me closing the door. Later I met two friends who had also been outside and not felt it, while their better halves indoors had been quite shocked by the motion and shaking. It seems that it was about 4.3 on the Richter scale and the epicentre was about 7.5 miles off the Folkestone coast. The earthquake had no effect on international travel services with Eurotunnel, which runs cross-channel rail links to France from its terminal near Folkestone on the English coast, running normally. Mind you, I wouldn't like to be down there if it happened again! I don't think there was any damage in the village, but in Folkestone some homes suffered cracks and damaged chimneys and quite a lot of homes have had to be evacuated. One lady was hospitalised with neck injuries.