From the archives:
March 21st : Nooruz in Central Asia, the first day of Spring for us and it's nearly Easter
a good time time to resurrect this column from 2014 :
Spring!
There
are places in the world where the weather is so predictable that it
is seldom a topic for conversation. For most of us, however, the
weather is the common denominator. English is increasingly the
language of international communication but the weather is the topic
we all talk about. It affects us all but in quite different ways. For
example: those of us who are cyclists are not very fond of wind
whilst windsurfers can't get enough of it. During our holiday in
Romania, the locals were happy that it had at last started to rain,
good for the crops and the potato harvest in particular. We, on the
other hand, camping in a small tent were less enthusiastic.
Anyway,
most of us are interested in the weather and there is an awful lot of
it about. According to the news media we are always having the
coldest, hottest, wettest, windiest ,driest period since weather was
invented.
This
winter the British Isles suffered a series of storms, the
accompanying rainfall caused widespread flooding. In North America
they suffered one of their very worst winters ever. Here in The
Netherlands however, a country famous, among other things, for
skating on frozen canals we had an exceptionally mild winter. Skating
was mostly done indoors, the temperature rarely sank below zero.
January and February were wet but never really cold. In the
middle of last March a late snowfall heralded the start of a long cold, wet and miserable period that went
on until June. At the same time this year the temperature reached 20ยบ
C and since then it has been relatively warm and dry. Spring was
early. The birds who nest on our balcony arrived almost a month
earlier than usual. Their arrival, as always, was announced by a loud
hammering and a great deal of building activity inside the nesting
box. It's a very small box but it sounds like the male bird is
converting the attic, adding a second bathroom and extending the
kitchen. Most of the time the female bird is perched at the end of a
branch close to the balcony, chirping loud and clear instructions.
She doesn't like the colour of the walls in the nursery, the shower
is too high and the dishwasher has to be moved...
Living
on the top floor of a four storey apartment building we look directly
into the tree tops. There we witness at first hand and close
quarters enough romantic encounters, courtships, arguments,
couplings, births ,departures and disasters to fill several TV drama
series. Even before the leaves start appearing Wood Pigeons, Magpies,
and Turtle Doves begin flirting. This year we have some newcomers, a
pair of Crows are well on their way to finishing a nest. Once the
buds start opening the leaves develop quickly and it becomes a little
more difficult to see who is building what and where and to keep
track of all the casual visitors to our
trees. Even though they have been recently thinned and trimmed they
still attract plenty of birds of all shapes, sizes and colours.
There is always plenty of activity amongst the foliage.
Things will quieten down a little while the eggs are being hatched. Then there will be a great deal of flurrying, fluttering and flying here and there as the parents try to keep up with the ever increasing appetites of their demanding chicks. For the birds in our nesting box and in the tree there are plenty of natural and man made dangers that will have to be avoided in order to raise their fluffy babies to full flying adulthood. They will not all succeed.
We
follow developments with interest, anticipation and a certain degree
of anxiety.
I
never expected, intended or wanted to make my own nest in an
apartment block and saw it as a temporary solution.
That was nearly 30 years ago. Like everything it has its positive and
negative aspects. Living and working almost in the tree tops during
springtime, however, is an undiluted pleasure.
