What you have tamed The titmouse box has always been hanging in the maple outside the window of the sleeping room. I hung up the box that the flying hole is at the height of my nosetip! And I think this happened the first year, when the box's virgin hatch just had been hatched. One night I wake up by a noise outside the window. I heard birds shrill screaming - like their were fighting for their lives. When I looked out, I saw the catastrophe: The box had fallen down, the lid was thrown off, and the young ones lay scattered in the dewy grass, - and the screams came from their parents that were flapping helplessly around their offspring. I hurried out, hoping I should arrive before the cats and the crows, - and I actually managed to collect the babies, together with some of the nest material, put all of it back into the box - and suspended it all again. The whole situation calmed down. Sigh! I was shivering both by shame and by the cold of the night: I had to learn something thoroughly - when inviting the birds to inhabit my box. I had to make it be a safe place. Since then I have really tried to put on a solid wire to keep the box onto the stem of the tree in a way that should pay for the security of the very vulnerable family inside.
And I think a similar incident happened the same year. In the starling box the children were ready to fly off, they were jumping around inside, really kicking up a row - and they also all the time were screaming and stretching their heads out through the whole. Then I saw a crow sitting on the top lid of the box, - and the crow was alsot stretching its neck, - trying to snap a young neckstretching starling for supper. I made at once an emergency improvement of the box which is explained below:
To protect the young starlings from the crows I first put on a board (1), nailed down to the top board on the fence of the balcony. Then I put on two vertical boards (2 and 3) which I had cut in a way that they should not be an invitation for the crows to perch on. Then I cut a cube (4) to put in between the board and the lid that the lid should be pressed down to stay firmly where it ought to stay. For some reason my construction made me think of the concrete pyramide boulders the Germans placed on some of our open flat beaches which are facing the open ocean - they did that to prevent the British army to enter their tanks, - well, just in case the allied forces planned a landing raid. Could be you were reminded of the fox and the little prince talking together in "The little prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry? ' There are lots of Internet sites on this book, here is one of them: http://unr.edu/homepage/shubinsk/fox.html
25th May 2003 Text and photos: Enok Kippersund |
