Swift half news - 30th May 2010

• Heading helter-skelter into June now (the year is flying by eh - 3 weeks and the nights will be drawing in again!)
• Malu has found the second blackbirds nest in the back garden (once again built in a spot where predators can take out the chicks with no effort at all - blackbirds don't half build their nests in terrible places). Over the last two days he's taken all three nestlings (by the look of them only 4 days old) and killed them all outside the back door. Again, there was nothing I could do about this. Malu 6 - 2 Yala is now the kill score.
• Eighteen of my bee holes are now occupied with egg, pollen and sealed - a resounding success this year.
• Woodpeckers drumming on large trees in and around Swift Half - very late to start displaying - I assume the male is just letting nomadic woodpeckers know that this is his territory (remember there were two males in the garden this winter, as well as a female), and that he has chicks by now, I hope, somewhere.
• No dragonflies over pond yet, but blue damselflies have joined the red damselflies in the garden now.
• Swifts still only incubating 2 (from 3) eggs...