Pump a haven for great tits

WHEN we first bought the small cottage in the country that has now expanded to become our current house the only water supply came from one of those cast iron pumps with a little knob on the spout to hang your bucket on and a long handle that you pump up and down.

The pump was on the concrete lid of a shallow well and produced excellent water.

There was a lot of lime in it, but that meant that drinking a pint glass full was as effective as a packet of Rennies for dispelling acid indigestion.

But, though the quality of the well water was excellent, the quantity was inadequate. When such sophisticated modern gadgets as flush toilets were installed in the cottage a man with a drilling rig had to be summoned and a deep well bored. It went down 110 feet in those pre-metric days. I remember because I paid by the foot.

The water was more plentiful, but not as nice. This time, as well as the lime, it had iron and sulphur in it. Not really bad for you, but the taste and smell were a little unpleasant, and if you added it to a glass of whiskey the whiskey turned black. Also, if you left a tap on, or tried to water the vegetable garden in dry weather, the well would run dry and the electric pump that had taken over from the cast iron one would have to be re-primed.

So a couple of years ago, and with rather mixed feelings, we signed up to be connected to the mains water supply. This comes, in unlimited quantities, from Blessington Lakes in Co Wicklow via the water purification plant in Golden Falls. And it has fluoride added to it, which I strongly disapprove of, and it often smells like a public swimming pool. But it is reliable and convenient.

Meanwhile, the old cast iron pump, now covered in ivy, still stands at the far side of the yard. Sometimes I think of renovating it and having the well beneath cleaned and re-lined to use for drinking water. But it would be a big job, and there’s something else that makes me hesitate. Every year for over a decade a pair of great tits has nested in the pump, using the spout as an entrance.

Come to think of it, it can’t be the same pair of great tits. They don’t live that long. It must be generations of them. Anyway, I like them and I’m reluctant about taking their inheritance away from them.

THIS YEAR there was a bit of a disaster. In the spring I bought a greenhouse and assembled it quite close to the pump. And last week one of the great tits flew into the glass and killed itself.

Both the birds had been very active, flying up the spout every few minutes with beaks full of caterpillars for their young, and making rude noises if any person, dog or cat came too close. The transparent greenhouse was a new obstruction in their flight path, and in its hurry to get back with the food one of them must have forgotten it was there. In fact, even while I was assembling the greenhouse, a misfortunate robin had made the same mistake.

I don’t know which parent died because I don’t know how to tell the difference between a male and a female great tit. But I assumed it was the end of the story for the nest full of young birds.

But the good news is that today the surviving parent, widow or widower, is working twice as hard to feed the brood. It looks as though another generation of great tits may survive and the pump may continue to be used as a nursery.

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