Saturday 23 May 2009

Hard Work Raising the Kids

This afternoon I was doing some blog hopping when I became aware of a constant little visitor to my bird table - a little blue tit. Watched it picking up seed and flying off for a while and then found myself hooked. I tried to follow it's flight as I thought it might be nesting in my neighbour's garden, he has had them in a clematis at times but it seemed to be going further afield than that. Then I realised that there were two of them obviously taking turns at gathering food for their babies. One alternated between the bird table and a peanut feeder- safe because the mesh is small and they can't get a whole peanut out.
In ten minutes I counted fifteen flights.......... and this went on for the best part of two hours.
Now I always thought that raising the kids was hard work but given the size of these tiny things and the number of forays they must make in a day, I think I got off fairly lightly.
They do have one advantage though, their offspring don't hang around for years, nor do they keep coming back for Sunday lunch.

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