Nature Notes: May 2021

The balcony has been quite busy, this last blustery month. The weather has felt most wintry and not at all how I’d expect May to be.

But the balcony has been very encouraging, and not just with the plants. Over winter we added birdfeeders, and in April a birdbath, and between the two, they’ve encouraged a couple of bird-families. We’ve had a blackbird family – Mum, Dad, and fledgling Cocoa – and a tit-family. The tits aren’t quite as frequent visitors as the blackbirds, so they haven’t received names.

We’ve also got a regular robin visitor, who tidies up the seeds the blackbirds drop (such messy eaters!), and a pair of pigeons who wander up and down the railing.

And the bees are back (or waking up). Despite the old cobwebs, I’ve seen a couple fighting over the same room in the hotel. We’ve moved the new-to-this-year hotel next to last year’s, because it didn’t seem to be getting many visitors where it was.

On the plant front, flowers are out all along the balcony, with the catnip at one end and the lavender at the other. In the middle, there’s a lot of parsley.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like there’ll be any cherries on the cherry tree this year: the frost in early April did for the blossom. To be fair, it doesn’t really bother us, given the ornamental nature of the tree, but it’s a shame for the birds. Although I do hope they stay away from the strawberry plant…