Sparrow invasion

Those of you who have been with us since the start will doubtless recall the incident of the owl in the bathroom when a barn owl took up residence in our top floor bathroom. Well yesterday we found, and you'll have to trust me on this because we didn't think to take photos, a sparrow nest in one of our interior light fittings.

During the summer months, and the winter months too to some extent, we spend most of the daylight hours at field level using the middle and top floors for the evening hours and relaxing. In summer though, we tend to leave windows and shutters open to promote air circulation and generally freshen the place up.

This last few months have seen frantic nesting activity among our ornithological population. Nest building began as early as January and by late spring every nook and cranny was under development: every gutter; all of the space in the carage; infeasible spaces in Gill's potting shed; every tree and shrub; the house full signs should have gone up around the end of May. But they clearly didn't more and more birds poured into the area. Sparrows, wrens, chaffinches, and even Dartford warblers continued to move in until nest material could be found everywhere.

And so it appears that we left enough space that a pair of little feathered friends, forced out of the housing market, decided that the light fitting in the stairwell was both safe and accessible. How we missed it is another matter but yesterday and more in sorrow than in anger, we evicted our little squatters. From here on in we will V the shutters rather than throwing them wide.