They're teasing me. The birds I've seen from the windows of the east London home that I share with my family, have been more varied and higher in number than is usual. This can mean just one thing. The Big Garden Birdwatch is imminent.
This week I've seen long-tailed tits (pictured, right), coal tits, blue tits, redwings, robins, blackbirds, ring necked parakeets, mistlethrush, crows, chaffinches and jays, with gulls zipping overhead. Come the day itself, I'm sure that there won't be a living thing in sight, bar plants, squirrels and snails.
How the usual crowds of birds gather their intelligence is beyond me. I have images of a robin perched on the bedroom window-sill, a two-way radio strapped to its wing: "Red robin one to red robin two, he's out of bed.. over." Then there's a great tit reporting on my progress from bedroom to bathroom with a collared dove waiting to pick-up the story as I lumber to the kitchen to make a wake-up coffee. At that point, every bird will vanish, chirruping delight to have foiled me once again.
You may have noticed at the beginning that I went to great lengths not to say "my" and that I awkwardly reffered to sharing the home with my family. One of my daughters had a go at me for being possessive, so I'm over-compensating. I'll have forgotten this by my next blog.
This week brought exciting news on peregrines. We've identified a couple of new pairs that have settled in London. Better still, we've been able to work with the owners of the buildings they're using to install nest trays in suitably quiet spots. Peregrines are so heavily protected by law that any disturbance of their nest is illegal. This "disturbance" could be innocently brought about by routine maintenance of air conditioning units, aerials or mobile phone masts on rooftops. Screening nests or creating more suitable alternative nests in a less busy area of the roof, all helps. But the priority is making building managers and owners aware of their legal responsibilities. We've created the London Peregrine Partnership to address this issue and to give peregrines better protection from egg collectors or those who may harm them. It sounds paranoid, but there are folk out there who persecute these birds.
Soon, we'll be handing in a petition at Westminster, calling for more enforcement of laws that protect peregrines and other threatened birds of prey. They are part of the natural inheritance passed to me by my parents' generation. It's an inheritance I fully aim to pass on to my daughters... sorry, the daughters of my partner and I.