wooden heart, originally uploaded by gobayode photography.
Yesterday one of the nearby neighbours had three large conifers chopped down. It’s JULY. That’s still in the nesting season.
Now I know for certain that Mr & Mrs Blackbird had their nest in one of these conifers. Yes, their two chicks had fledged quite some time ago, but it proves to me that other bird species would have been nesting in those trees. All afternoon I watched endless pigeons fly around wondering where their “houses” had gone. It’s so terrible to see animals in distress. This morning there was a juvenile blackbird in our garden, sitting on the lawn looking sorry for himself. What if Mr & Mrs B had bred again? There was time enough in the year for them to do that. Lots of bird species have more than one brood if there is ample time in the season to do so. It is illegal to fell trees that have active nests. You are meant to inspect before going ahead with any fells. I really get the impression this did NOT happen yesterday. I haven’t seen Mr B at all in the last 24 hours. I’m sure poor Mr & Mrs B will move on now and we’ll no longer have resident blackbirds 🙁 I want to cry! I’m not against the peoples right to fell the trees in their garden. But what I *DO* object to is them doing it at this time of year. They should have waited until September, when the nesting season was fully over with. It made me feel SO sad yesterday. I couldn’t help but feel for the birds. The misanthrope in me was at its highest yesterday.
I am right with you on this one, can you report them to the council or something? I think it’s appalling that they have done it at this time of year.
Well, as it happens, Em’s friend Stan is the local council’s tree officer. He popped in to visit us the following night and I mentioned it. He said they’ve done nothing wrong provided they’d checked the trees for active nests. I’m not convinced any real checks were made. Em worked on the council YEARS ago in the parks department and recognised the man doing the lopping as an ex-colleague on the council. He should know the law, so I’m hoping he did the appropriate checks.It all happened rather quickly though. The trees were felled in five minutes!