Birdlife at Saltbox Road

Happily the robins have no such trouble. We endured a weekend of constant high pitched cheeping as these most cheeky of fledglings demanded constant attention from their parents. The pip, pip, pipping went on all day, into the night and had begun again long before I surfaced in the morning. How the parent robins have the energy to keep themselves fed and watered, never mind look after their brood, is a mystery. I keep the bird feeders topped up! I caught another film of mother robin on our wheelbarrow - see if you can spot her baby underneath…and the wood pigeons in the background?

Activity in our garden is at an all time high. We’ve had many visits from a beautiful partridge with her tiny chicks who frantically hoovered up seeds discarded from the bird table. I shared a film I managed to catch of these cuties on Instagram a while ago (@esthersmithartist). Nature filmmaker I am not, but I was delighted to capture these ground dwelling birdies as they are rightly very shy. The chicks are so defenceless, I don’t fancy their chances against the neighbourhood moggies, they’re clearly not evolved to live in a semi-suburban environment. I have seen mother partridge wondering off along the pavement without noticing that her chicks were still on the road, unable to hop up over the height of the curb! (don’t worry - I intervened) Another rescue was required when mother partridge wandered off oblivious to the fact that her chick was unable to follow her up the stone steps in our garden - managed to get a photo of the wee fella! These little gems are built for woodlands and scrub, not for the world as we have made it. It tugs at the heart strings to see them struggle.

Ornithological interests run deep in my family so this is no pandemic sideshow. I’ve had my eye on the wee birdies for a long time as did my maternal grandad. Sadly, I was a mere babe in arms when my grandad, Len Fullerton, departed this world but he was a naturalist and illustrator so left behind a huge body of wonderful work. This sketch of a blue tit feeding her babies hangs in a corner of my workshop and inspires me to keep going on those days that are tricky. I grew up surrounded by works of his, revealing a deep love for British wildlife. Framed drawings of hares, badgers and hedgehogs hung just outside my bedroom when I was growing up. No question as to where my inspiration comes from, the same themes of hares and badgers often appear in my automata - I have yet to tackle a hedgehog but… watch this space, there are elusive sightings of this most prickly of creatures on dusky evenings on Saltbox Road.