Spring officially begins at Airdlin Croft with the arrival of the first willow warblers, which happened this year on 12th April, our earliest record. Generally speaking they turn up at the end of the third week, when the first swallow might also be seen.
Both species were preceded by a chiffchaff which showed up on 25th March and stuck around for three weeks before deciding this was not the place to raise a family. A more decisive garden warbler disappeared the day after it was heard singing from the depths of a viburnum bush.
Sedge warblers were recorded from 8th May and soon installed in the rosebay willowherb down by the old pond. It is difficult to overlook this species when in residence as the male sings at all hours of the day, sometimes making weak vertical flights, rather like a geriatric skylark. But it all went quiet after 6th June when a torrential downpour ended their breeding season. The male hasn’t been seen or heard since though a single bird, probably the female of the pair, occasionally emerges silently from the dense vegetation.
It hasn’t gone well for the swallows either. Just two pairs built nests, one in the steading where a stable door has been installed solely for their benefit. This pair fledged a single youngster, whose three siblings never made it out of the building. The adults returned to start a second brood, but vanished three days ago. A small quantity of swallow feathers just inside the door suggests a possible sparrowhawk attack. The second pair, that built a nest in the Dutch barn, has also gone, without apparent breeding success.
The most unexpected avian visitor appeared on 30th May, and provided a momentary heartbeat of twitching excitement. Seen from a distance this bird resembled a ptarmigan in winter plumage, though after a second of ornithological processing revealed itself as a lost racing pigeon, a ring on each leg and an obvious familiarity with human presence.
Ellen named this impostor Barry White, influenced somewhat by my voice having dropped a couple of octaves in response to some respiratory virus. Barry spent the day on the ridge of the house roof, occasionally dropping down to clear up spilt grain below the bird feeders, returning to the roof until some point late in the evening when he headed off for a night-time roost. This he did for seven days in a row before disappearing. Our sense of loss is slightly surprising. He is, after all, just a pigeon.
UK birdwatchers probably don’t get too excited by blackbirds either, but we have been very happy to share the garden for the last six months with a distinctive male of the species, distinguished by a white collar that makes him look like his moorland cousin, the ring ouzel. We know him as The Vicar.
And now we await The President. One expects few surprises from Agent Orange. He will be televised strutting around his trashed SSSI, loss-making golf course ten miles down the coast from here, occasionally pausing to say something stupid while his caddy surreptitiously retrieves another lost ball from the rough.
Hopefully there will be some well-organised protests calling out his complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and his dilatory response to the war in Ukraine. And then, with a bit of luck, he too will be gone – before you can say Barry White.