From Pantyresgair- The Nuthatches
From Pantyresgair ...essays from our beautiful farmhouse home in rural Carmarthenshire
The Nuthatches
Why the return of these delightful nesting birds seemed extra special to me this year...
The Nuthatches
Why the return of these delightful nesting birds seemed extra special to me this year...
The nuthatches are back… it’s always good to see, but it’s especially pleasing news for me this year.
For context… in our rather ancient and quirky, old stone walled house, there is a redundant 4 inch pipe built into the upstairs bathroom wall (at about waist height relative to the room). The inner end of it has been blocked off, but the outer end is still open, leaving a neat hole built into the wall about 12 feet up from the ground outside. Several years ago, a pair of nuthatches clearly decided that this was just as good as a hole in an old tree and built their nest in there.
We all love their presence, though in the first year it did rather spook us out to start with. Over a month or so in early spring, particularly in the mornings, there came constant repeated tapping sounds from the corner of the bathroom.
It took us some time to work out what was causing it. The nuthatches, being quite private and secretive birds, tended to stay hidden whenever I looked from outside to see if I could make out anything untoward going on, and the nest was invisible from the outside until they had largely completed it.
It did, however, become clear what was going on in the end, when I noticed one day that the open end of the pipe had been largely sealed off, leaving just a neat hole barely larger than an inch in the dead centre of it. I took up station quietly for a while where I could watch the pipe discreetly and was eventually rewarded by seeing a fairly regular coming and going of the pair into the nest.
The sight of it also rather explained the tapping, the ‘doorway’ to the pipe was built up in mud, carefully ‘tamped’ into place by the birds in a rather clever manner, presumably emitting the noises we had heard.
They’ve nested in the place for at least three years now, which was a pleasant surprise as we had no idea whether they even reused a nest site at all. They clearly do though, and they must feel it’s a pretty suitable one to keep returning to it,
So now, like so much of the wild life around here, they almost feel part of the family, or at the least perhaps ‘tenants in common’! Their right to have their home there seems as valid as if the whole arrangement had been sketched out in legal terms by our local solicitor.
So why was it especially pleasing to see their return this year? The trouble is that I’ve had to do some work around there. About a yard from the house, along the side where their nest is, there is a 4 foot retaining wall, which is topped by a 45 degree bank away from the house (the house being essentially cut into the hill). The ‘summit of this arrangement is topped by one of our barns, which is thus about 12 feet away from the house and yet 10 feet up from it. This space between the buildings is covered in rampant brambles. Every year, these do their utmost to impede access for even the most basic maintenance works to the house, such as clearing the gutters or servicing the boiler.. so problematic can these become, that one of our first jobs when we bought the place, about 8 years ago, was to cut a path through them alongside the house so that we could access the back door!
So this winter, I decided that I must try to get on top of them. I worried a little that the change might alarm our avian ‘tenants in common’, but having no means of having a constructive community consultation with them, and given the necessity of the job, I hoped that if I got it done over winter it wouldn’t disturb whatever plans they had.
Whilst doing the job, there was one part I particularly agonised over in regard of the nuthatches though… a sycamore sapling in amongst the brambles. It’s only about 10 years old and we really could do without it growing there. Left as is, it won’t be many years before it becomes a problem for either the house or the barn that it’s sandwiched between. But, being only about 8 feet from our nuthatches pipe, I knew that the little branches on it had been in use as a great alighting point for them, having frequently watched them land there, to then make the short 8 feet flight straight to their nest.
Yet, set against this, thinking of their interests, I was also concerned that its outer branches were now within a couple of feet of their nest. I worried that if they were to return again this year, such branches might be a perfect invitation for a squirrel to start investigating their nest, to which their beautifully crafted mud entrance hole would be little defence.
After agonising more than I ever have over cutting a sycamore sapling down, I decided to cut it off about 4’ from the ground (actually roughly level with the nest given the slope). This then left a stump which I hoped they could perch on, if needed, and also thus ensured that any potential squirrel access to their nest was that much harder.
I finished up the work there around the end of January, even though there was more I would have like to have done. I figured though that if the nuthatches kept finding me there, changing yet more things, that would make the whole prospect for a return to the nest look even less appealing. As if the relatively bare slope there didn’t seem bad enough for these secretive little birds…as I looked over the site, recalling how it was and thought of how it might appear to a nuthatch, I wondered whether they would feel much the same about the site of their home as I would had I suddenly found the HS2 works commencing next door…
It seems I needn’t have worried, it’s now mid April as I write this- A month ago, the tapping in the bathroom recommenced as if nothing had changed, and the bank outside has frustratingly glorious growth of spring nettles all over it.
As if to make a point too, the nuthatches have entirely scorned the ‘perch’ I left for them in the form of the cut off sycamore tree. Instead, they perform the most stunning aerobatic display every few minutes, flying off from a perch on an oak some 30’ feet away with a curving, dipping flightline straight towards the kitchen window and then breaking hard upward at the last moment to the nest.
The mornings are redolent with the sound of their rather haunting trilling song again too. I can’t help but think this might be them commenting to each other in passing about their fellow tenant’s lack of taste in garden design, each time they pass my truncated sycamore and bank of nettles. But to me, knowing they came back is one little thing that’s right in in the world each day.
For context… in our rather ancient and quirky, old stone walled house, there is a redundant 4 inch pipe built into the upstairs bathroom wall (at about waist height relative to the room). The inner end of it has been blocked off, but the outer end is still open, leaving a neat hole built into the wall about 12 feet up from the ground outside. Several years ago, a pair of nuthatches clearly decided that this was just as good as a hole in an old tree and built their nest in there.
We all love their presence, though in the first year it did rather spook us out to start with. Over a month or so in early spring, particularly in the mornings, there came constant repeated tapping sounds from the corner of the bathroom.
It took us some time to work out what was causing it. The nuthatches, being quite private and secretive birds, tended to stay hidden whenever I looked from outside to see if I could make out anything untoward going on, and the nest was invisible from the outside until they had largely completed it.
It did, however, become clear what was going on in the end, when I noticed one day that the open end of the pipe had been largely sealed off, leaving just a neat hole barely larger than an inch in the dead centre of it. I took up station quietly for a while where I could watch the pipe discreetly and was eventually rewarded by seeing a fairly regular coming and going of the pair into the nest.
The sight of it also rather explained the tapping, the ‘doorway’ to the pipe was built up in mud, carefully ‘tamped’ into place by the birds in a rather clever manner, presumably emitting the noises we had heard.
They’ve nested in the place for at least three years now, which was a pleasant surprise as we had no idea whether they even reused a nest site at all. They clearly do though, and they must feel it’s a pretty suitable one to keep returning to it,
So now, like so much of the wild life around here, they almost feel part of the family, or at the least perhaps ‘tenants in common’! Their right to have their home there seems as valid as if the whole arrangement had been sketched out in legal terms by our local solicitor.
So why was it especially pleasing to see their return this year? The trouble is that I’ve had to do some work around there. About a yard from the house, along the side where their nest is, there is a 4 foot retaining wall, which is topped by a 45 degree bank away from the house (the house being essentially cut into the hill). The ‘summit of this arrangement is topped by one of our barns, which is thus about 12 feet away from the house and yet 10 feet up from it. This space between the buildings is covered in rampant brambles. Every year, these do their utmost to impede access for even the most basic maintenance works to the house, such as clearing the gutters or servicing the boiler.. so problematic can these become, that one of our first jobs when we bought the place, about 8 years ago, was to cut a path through them alongside the house so that we could access the back door!
So this winter, I decided that I must try to get on top of them. I worried a little that the change might alarm our avian ‘tenants in common’, but having no means of having a constructive community consultation with them, and given the necessity of the job, I hoped that if I got it done over winter it wouldn’t disturb whatever plans they had.
Whilst doing the job, there was one part I particularly agonised over in regard of the nuthatches though… a sycamore sapling in amongst the brambles. It’s only about 10 years old and we really could do without it growing there. Left as is, it won’t be many years before it becomes a problem for either the house or the barn that it’s sandwiched between. But, being only about 8 feet from our nuthatches pipe, I knew that the little branches on it had been in use as a great alighting point for them, having frequently watched them land there, to then make the short 8 feet flight straight to their nest.
Yet, set against this, thinking of their interests, I was also concerned that its outer branches were now within a couple of feet of their nest. I worried that if they were to return again this year, such branches might be a perfect invitation for a squirrel to start investigating their nest, to which their beautifully crafted mud entrance hole would be little defence.
After agonising more than I ever have over cutting a sycamore sapling down, I decided to cut it off about 4’ from the ground (actually roughly level with the nest given the slope). This then left a stump which I hoped they could perch on, if needed, and also thus ensured that any potential squirrel access to their nest was that much harder.
I finished up the work there around the end of January, even though there was more I would have like to have done. I figured though that if the nuthatches kept finding me there, changing yet more things, that would make the whole prospect for a return to the nest look even less appealing. As if the relatively bare slope there didn’t seem bad enough for these secretive little birds…as I looked over the site, recalling how it was and thought of how it might appear to a nuthatch, I wondered whether they would feel much the same about the site of their home as I would had I suddenly found the HS2 works commencing next door…
It seems I needn’t have worried, it’s now mid April as I write this- A month ago, the tapping in the bathroom recommenced as if nothing had changed, and the bank outside has frustratingly glorious growth of spring nettles all over it.
As if to make a point too, the nuthatches have entirely scorned the ‘perch’ I left for them in the form of the cut off sycamore tree. Instead, they perform the most stunning aerobatic display every few minutes, flying off from a perch on an oak some 30’ feet away with a curving, dipping flightline straight towards the kitchen window and then breaking hard upward at the last moment to the nest.
The mornings are redolent with the sound of their rather haunting trilling song again too. I can’t help but think this might be them commenting to each other in passing about their fellow tenant’s lack of taste in garden design, each time they pass my truncated sycamore and bank of nettles. But to me, knowing they came back is one little thing that’s right in in the world each day.