Fur loving flocks

Speaking of birds, I have quite a nice group of regular visitors to the bird feeders outside my windows. Great Tits, Blue Tits, Robins (the "Christopher Robin" kind), Nuthatches, Magpies, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Chaffinches, Blackbirds and and other assorted ground-dwelling Thrushes… and boy, they’re noisy. Those Tits can belt out a tune that pierces concrete. At 6:30 in the morning…

Anyway, I get a great kick out of feeding them, but the most fun was watching the birds go crazy over the wads and wads of dog hair that came out of Jake’s recent encounter with a brush. I spread a shockingly large quantity of fur (I really should brush him more often) through bushes and along the ground, knowing as I did it that unless the birds acted fast I’d soon be handling complaints from one fastidious elderly neighbour or another. The birds did not disappoint – by morning they were all out there, pulling on it and rolling in it and generally whooping it up. It’s mostly all gone now, keeping more than a few clutches of eggs soft and warm through the last cool days of spring.

Here’s some more good ideas for nesting materials, in case you don’t have a shedding dog conveniently at hand…