It is 5am and the veranda light is on, and I have company, a field mouse, a dunnock and a robin. It was the voice of the robin that woke me.
The news was still on from last night but I soon turned that off, made coffee and prepared myself for the morning pantomime. It’s that time of year.
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First up from stage-left the mouse shot across the decking to a fresh crop of fallen seed from the bird feeders. If she had been a hamster the whole pile would have been shoved in her cheeks, but she wasn’t hanging about and speedily picked up one seed at the time and kept going back and forth like a Duracell Bunny, other batteries are available.
As she came back from, say, the fifteenth run, the tiny mammal was stopped in her pointy tracks by the dunnock. This was his pile and he wasn’t for sharing.
There followed a short stand-off before a truce was called and the dunnock moved all of two feet to take up position beneath the feeder containing fat balls. There is not as much fall-out from this feeder, but the dunnock has mastered the art of clinging on for a quick peck of the nourishing feed, vital in the winter.
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The third feeder is stocked with suet-pellets and this seems to be the domain of the robin and I think the redbreast is a male, very bossy and likes to throw his weight around. That could be an oxymoron because he’s as light as a feather but you know what I mean.
Both the robin and the dunnock have frequent little ‘flurries’ as they take turns on the feeders, but as yet it is the robin who commands the bird table which contains scraps from the kitchen and his favourite treat, mealworms. The bird table has a lovely slate roof but is only around 12 inches square, and as much as they are tempted, the carrion crows and the wood pigeon have not yet dared to stick their heads beneath the apex.
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And talking of crows, if you recall from last week when my offerings of sausage and cold haggis saw me being presented with grasses in return. Since then I have tried to attract them closer by placing various goodies within a few inches of the double doors but at the risk of mixing my species up they are chicken, seriously scaredy cats and they will come no closer.
I had bought some black pudding which wasn’t up to standard so after breakfast I sliced it up and threw it out at various distances. Yes, I’ve got too much time on my hands, but by now I am watching the football with one eye, Australia and Tunisia as it happens, and the other eye on the crows which within a minute had gathered on a nearby roof and on the branches of a silver birch.
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The furthest pickings, at around fifteen feet away, were soon gone but once the crows weighed up some of the closer pieces, there was a kind of pas de deux going on, as they nervously looked around, the green cross code on steroids, right, left, right, left, left, right, up down, turn-around pick a bale of cotton kind of thing. Panto at its best.
Ironically when one of the crows braved it and flew off with the whole slice of pudding, he was chased by six others. While they were away a lone magpie, the villain, dropped onto the grass, my word you’ve never seen a murder of crows move so fast to spook the maggie who left empty-billed stage right. Oh yes he did.
It’s half time and the ‘roos’ are one in front, and closer to home on the veranda, the robin has just seen off another three mealworms. He’s the Dame of the panto, but hang on, there’s another robin. He’s behind you, I shouted.
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The Laughing Badger is a weekly column by Sean Wood: find more here.
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