Feeding the Chicks

This week, at the end of each day, we have sat down on our garden bench in the sunshine. With a glass.

To the left in our dense ivy hedge we can hear young chicks being fed. A Dunnock’s nest. The parents are really good about slipping in unnoticed. But I managed to find the nest today, with little chicks sitting in it.

Dunnocks are also known as hedge sparrows. But they are not sparrows, they are accentors. Insectivores, not seed eaters. No idea what this one is collecting in its beak, but it looks to be a good pest controller.

They are skulking, they are small, and they can look uninteresting. But on close inspection they are attractively plumaged. They have a lovely song. And they have interesting sex lives. They are polyandrous. Each female can be served by two males, a dominant and a subordinate, and very sexually active (to put it sensitively). Boring they are not.