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We are really lucky to live in a small village in Shropshire, we can sleep with the windows open and every morning at almost the same time (03.45) the first bird starts off the dawn chorus and soon after there is a beautiful sound from a multitude of early risers and as fast as they have woken us up they calm us back to sleep again.
So, we have had two months of rain in two days here, and that has had quite a dramatic effect on our bird life, firstly on Tuesday morning, I awoke out of habit to listen to the birds at 03.50 - and ........ silence! not a bird to be heard. Only the rain bucketing down, the birds were all tucked away in their nest and roost and would not be singing today. It was quite disconcerting actually, something that we take for granted in nature suddenly is not there, I would hate to think that this could in any way actually happen on a longer term - we really must appreciate our wildlife and respect thier habitats, just listening to Springwatch and some of the deteriation in bird number was quite frightening.
So, day two of the rain on Wednesday and again - silence - and again, rain all day. 48 hours of rain and some very soggy birds and they are very hungry, and the hunger is forcing them to leave the nest and fledglings or eggs which then get cold and wet, so it is a real dilemmer for the birds, but their survival instincts will prevail and this inevitably will result in fewer birds fledging, so a poor season for survival. Making the next brood even more important.
It is essential that we feed the birds at this time as they are relying on us for quick easy and nutritious food.
Day three, and the rain is easing. In fact it stopped altogether at around 10am on Thursday and I was in our garden and actually saw the birds arrive at the feeders, we do have quite a few feeders and had made sure they were all full on all four of our feeding stations. I have never seen such an influx of bird feeding. Within a few minutes, the birds were on the feeders and flying back and forth to thier nest to feed the young birds, it was also noticeable that when the rain returned a few hours later that the birds continued to feed, they were wet and cold and looking very tired but they had to keep going even though they were getting very wet.
Friday saw more patchy rain showers but getting drier and this morning on Saturday we are dry so far, the birds all out in numbers and trying to make up for lost time, we have one of the B72 extra long feeders on one of the feeding stations and this must hold 10Kg or more, but they are getting down it at a rate of knots and all of the other feeders are being filled daily.
Please do keep feeding your garden friends, not only the birds but Hedgehogs and others that are suffering from the weather.
