The orphan duckling I wrote about the week before last is thriving, but this is a perilous time for infant bird life everywhere. The rhubarb-leaf-on-the-doorstep strategy had been working well, catching most of the droppings from the house martin nest above, but the other morning there was a hatchling lying among the poo, fluttering rudimentary wings. I picked up the weightless little bundle, stood on a chair and posted it gingerly back inside the nest. It was then I noticed that a freshly dimpled mud nest had appeared beside the original one, which was odd because martins don’t usually go for the semi-detached look.

Anyway, that afternoon, when I came in covered in green dust from strimming nettles (a new obsession), the chick was back on the rhubarb leaf, wriggling helplessly but apparently unhurt; I popped it back again, now feeling somewhat less optimistic about its chances. “Where are your useless parents?” I muttered crossly, scanning the sky. An hour later, it was down again, this time along with a dusty chunk of nest. Meanwhile, I could hear healthy infant cheeping coming from the new-build next door, and soon saw adult martins swooping in through the neat peep hole.

Curiouser and curiouser. I went upstairs and heaved out Birds Britannica, and there was the answer: “Sparrows readily evict house martins from their own nests,” I read. So, my little solo parachutist was very likely a sparrow chick (it didn’t even look like a house martin, I realised a bit late in the day) whose parents must have abandoned family duties and gone to the pub. It was clearly doomed to repeat its plunge to the rhubarb leaf until starvation or a passing cat put an end to its brief life. So yes, reader, I did the decent thing with a piece of wood – squeamishly putting the hapless chick in a Jiffy bag first so as not to witness the result.

To more cheerful matters: a week of cooking and making the farm beautiful for a joint celebration of three 21st birthdays. The cattle yards and barns were swept and decorated, the meadow mown, a yurt and a tepee erected and a generator hauled out to power the sound system. As we watered our respective gardens in the sunshine on Saturday morning, listening to the band rehearsing, Ellie and I agreed it felt rather like being at a music festival – as indeed it did in the early hours of Sunday, after much dancing and several glasses of damson gin, drifting luxuriously off to sleep with the music still pumping.

At midday, we fired up the barbecue again and fed a steady stream of campers with sausages and tea. Most people had left by late afternoon, and Ellie was dozing on the swing seat in the sun when she heard a tremendous banging and a voice shouting, “Someone get me out of here.” One of the guests had slept in the old caravan in the orchard, and there is no handle on the inside of the door.

valleygirl@thetimes.co.uk

What I Noticed This Week: a staccato hammering outside the window: not my builders, but a greater spotted woodpecker drilling into a martin’s nest. Dramas unfolding all around…

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