Come into my garden - Mabel & Earl update

Do you remember me telling you about Mabel & Earl who have been our resident pigeon pair over the last year?

Well something rather exciting happened. Can you see that little beady eye watching you?

This is Mabel & Earl's little chick.

We discovered the nest purely by chance.  

We have vine that grows along the garage wall and it can be a bit of thug and we have to trim it back every so often or it takes over.

We came across the nest one morning as we went to enter the garage to retrieve the secateurs to do this very job when suddenly there was a floury of noise and a pigeon shot out from the vine narrowly missing D's head. It gave him quite a start I can tell you.

He gently moved the vine back and discovered their little nest with two eggs inside, so my mum was right they do lay two!! Were we about to have our own pigeon pair??

I have to say they seem to build their nests in the most precarious way teetering on the spindly branches of the vine. It can be quite windy across the ridge here and we didn't think that the nest would survive.

Sadly one of the eggs did fall out of the nest onto the concrete below but looky looky one did go on to hatch and here is either Mabel or Earl junior. By this stage the chick was pretty big and took up the whole of the nest.  I'm not quite sure that you would of got two chicks in that little nest.

I am beginning to wonder if they lay two eggs in order to get and heir and spare rather than a pigeon pair.

At one stage we thought we may have to contact social services as Mabel & Earl didn't seem to be very attentive parents in fact they seemed to have abandoned the chick as we rarely saw them go anywhere near the nest.  Having now seen how big the chick had got and how big the nest was I can understand why.

And just like any honorary parents we watched the progress of the chick hoping it would get to successfully fledged.  Of course it had to choose the day I was at work but D was there to capture the moment and here our little chick taking its first steps into the big wide world. 

Its not returned to the nest since but is still around the farm house and we hear it calling to Mabel & Earl who I think, think their job is done.

This morning when I got up at stupid O'clock to go and make my Saturday morning cuppa it was sat on the front fence.  Now I think Mabel & Earl need to have a little word as to the company it is keeping 

 

as sitting on the very next post was Mr Sparrowhawk who has visited the garden before but tends to treat it a little like its local takeaway. The hedge behind is full of sparrows and normally when I come down the stairs they are all queuing to get onto the bird feeder but not this morning. You can usually hear their birdsong before you see them but this morning it was deathly quiet (no sparrows here mate).

But just as with our own children you can encourage them to make the right choices when it comes to friends and hope they stick to the good kids and not the mean kids. Hopefully this little pigeon will learn this valuable lesson.

Now at the time when I wrote about our pigeon pair it was because I had been making my Solid granny square snuggle blankets for a friend whose daughter was having twins, a boy and a girl that we were calling Janet & John.  Well I can tell you they arrived safely five weeks early but both doing very well and have now gone home with their mummy and daddy. As predicted they didn't like our choice of Janet & John for their actual names but I think they will always be known as Janet & John to me and my friend.

Have a lovely Saturday one & all

Mx