SPRING!

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 20º 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.