High-class entertainment, thrush-style

LAST week, as we daily – and sometimes hourly – watched the nest perched high on the bare branch of a beech tree opposite the kitchen window, we saw the small heads, that shot up like jack-in-the-boxes, grow more mistle thrush-like every day.

The kitchen is on the first floor: ours is an upside-down house, so, although the nest that looks like a hay-sop is 30 feet above the ground, we can get a good view. I have set up the telescope inside a French window. It is easy, when passing, to take a quick look. Almost always, one or other parent is dutifully attending to the brood. The mother has reduced her sitting hours and now helps the cock with the running buffet.

At night, she sits on the chicks, although the two of them are foraging until it is almost dark. Just as well she sits on them, because the nest is on an exposed limb on a still-leafless tree. When it rains, it would become a mini-swimming pool, the interior being made of grass cemented with mud, and impermeable.