Heard THE most hideous noises coming from the blue tits bird box outside the hallway window this morning. We got it two years ago on an RSPB bird box bonanza day and it’s been happily settled into by a nesting pair each year. Last year we had 4 fledglings, it was just lovely to watch them as they took their first flight into the hawthorn tree outside our bedroom window and learned how to hold seeds during lessons from mum.
So, this year, much the same. The last two weeks have seen Mr & Mrs in and out non-stop with worms and grubs so I figured there was a nest full in there, ready to emerge pretty soon….
However, when I heard the noises today, real squalks and shrieks, it was clear something was happening, but I didn’t have a clue what. I was watching the box when to my horror a big sparrow squeezed out of the hole at the front of the box and flew into the tree opposite. My heart sank. Mr Moregeous insisted all was well – it was probably just having a look! Yeah right!! So out came the ladders and up I went, only to have the most hideous sight greet me. 4 dead baby chicks, piled in the bottom of the box. God, it was awful. That b*@!?d sparrow had just gone in and killed them all. A massacre at the top of my ladder, he must have sat in the same tree as Mr & Mrs BT, then just slaughtered their kids!
I rang and asked the RSPB what to do, whether to empty the box or leave it and their advice was to make sure all the birds were dead then clear and clean it. That’s when it got worse, as I moved the little bodies out, I found more underneath, huddled deep in the moss as they’d desperately tried to get away from the killer sparrow, eight in total. I’d had the Octomom of the bird world in my nesting box and now they were no more. We buried them under my orchid tree and Mr & Mrs flew back and forward into a now empty box. So sad, knowing there was no longer a nest in there. Do birds get traumatised? They’d need bird bereavement counselling after this.
What a rubbish start to the day. Dead babies, kids late for school and topped by Mr M accidentally (?) bashing me in the face with the camera and giving me a fat lip.
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