The birds started to come back from their winter resorts a few weeks ago. Some of them have already made nests:

I think this is a chaffinch’s nest. They are the optimists among birds: they arrive very early, almost too early, and they often choose a place for their nest that isn’t perhaps the most stable in the world, but, who knows, it may well be that there’s no spring storm this year. Only there are spring storms, every year…

We have great spotted woodpeckers living in the woods that surround our house. One of them has it’s lunch table in the pylon on our back yard. It’s pecked a hole in it, and there it attaches a cone from spruce or fir and picks out the seeds.

This lunch table is only a few meters from the chaffinch’s nest. They don’t mind having a noisy restaurant around the corner 🙂

And here you have another lunch table: the black woodpecker. It’s been looking for insects in a dead tree close to our house. I love these birds, so big, so black and so dramatic with the red cap and the distinct high shrieks.

And look at this! The lovely white wagtail! It’s a dear guest, living under our roof tiles every summer. This male is still alone, but hopefully he will have wife joining him soon. He’s sitting here looking down at us, peacefully singing and talking, wagging his tail, and picking a fly once in a while.

Living so close to birds does have its sides. Once we had a young wagtail in the chimney, once in the air drain. Hubby managed to save the baby, and I got the other one back out into the open air. For an hour or so it was sitting in various places in our kitchen, until it got tired and I managed to catch it. Having a wagtail sitting on your kitchen table is a bit solemn.