Country diary: Last spring feels a long time ago in the allotment
On the allotment I have learned what a blackbird fledgling sounds like. I knew the calls robins make to their chicks and the returning sounds from the nest, the searching 'feed me!' of great tit and blue tit fledglings. But the blackbird is new to me; I'm enjoying the intimacy of now knowing, not least because the mosquito-borne Usutu virus is threatening blackbird numbers, and my days of hearing their fledglings may be short lived.
Its parents have left it in the elder tree above the dipping tank, and there it fizzes melodiously, asking for food. As I fill my watering can, I catch glimpses of its fat, box-fresh body; I watch its clumsy hops, its startled ruffling of feathers. Already it shows signs of the blackbird charm: hot and bothered, put out, clucking over nothing. It's nice to see there is food for it to eat: earthworms dug up by fellow allotmenteers, along with caterpillars and other grubs. Three years ago, in the drought of 2022, there was little such food available. A blackbird followed me around my dusty plot and I dug up earthworms for him, hoping he had enough to take back to his chicks. This year, despite periods of near-drought, there has been enough rain to keep the blackbirds happy. Or so it seems today.
It's not just caterpillars, earthworms and blackbirds that are having a better year. Elsewhere on the plot, aphids are booming thanks to the warm, dry weather earlier in spring, and so too are the ladybirds, hoverflies and house sparrows that eat the aphids. Bumblebees are present in reasonable numbers compared with the last couple of years, and I found my first batch of peacock butterfly caterpillars since 2023, after last year's cold, wet spring made breeding almost impossible for them.
No one year is the same as the last, and there will always be seasonal variation. But climate change is causing more extremes of wet and dry, hot and cold, which few species have evolved to cope with. For now, the blackbird above the dipping tank is singing for its supper. I wish it well: may there be more blackbirds, and more earthworms, aphids and caterpillars. May there be more life.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
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