Country life
Birds and plants
Denis Wood
Now (writing at the beginning of May) magpies are building in our Scots pines again this year. They are busy collecting wet turfy mud from the edge of the pond to make a cup inside their domed twiggy nests; this cup will be finished off with a lining of fine roots. We had them last year when it was a pretty sight to see the young family on the lawn; I am not sure that I ever saw seven together then, but I have done so in my time. If only mine this year would whisper the secret!
In his splendid book, Woodland Birds (Collins), Mr Eric Simms says that the magpie is very much a bird of ecotones living along the edges of broad-leaved woods, woodland clearings and open country. With the decline of murderous game-keepers they would probably be increasing were it not for the widespread use of poison sprays reducing the number of insect grubs which are their chief food. Here in my garden where no sprays are used I see them pecking away at the turf beneath the apple trees. Like the other crows a magpie is something of an omnivore and unfortunately does not stop short of raiding other bird's nests but, for all its wickedness, I love it dearly for its independence, its harsh 'mind your own business' chatter and its finely-drawn pitiless corvine head.
Years ago when we lived at Cookham Dean one of us found a young magpie in the lane evidently fallen from its nest, fairly well fledged and unhurt. In those more expansive days there were men about the place who could, and did, knock up a rough wooden cage in a matter of hours. My daughter, then aged about nine, called him Pretty-Winge and he remained in his cage in the garden for several weeks. We tried him with cherries, bread soaked in m ilk, caterpillars and worms, but he settled chiefly for pieces of raw meat. Then one day we let him go. He took off immediately from the floor of his cage and flew uncertainly up over the tops of the trees and. disappeared. We often thought of him and wondered how he fared.
I wrote earlier that, in my garden, in despair of ever being able to work the ground into a proper tilth, I planted a number of things in small peat pots and kept them in a cold frame to prevent them from getting sodden, These [managed to put out after about two days of comparatively dry weather when it was just possible to make little pockets for them in beds out of doors. The shallots are now going really great guns and we hope to get them up in July; only a little less enthusiastic are the onion sets but we do not expect to harvest these until August or September. But both will be overtaken in size by the Ailsa Craig onions which I raised in heat under glass in January, pricked off, and put out in April] These for long looked thin, droopy' and half-hearted, but they are now beginning to stand up like men, albeit young ones still, and by September will make very large bulbs, much bigger than those from sets. Unfortunately the broad beans and peas have not responded very well to peat pot production. They have been put out, but I don't expect the crop to be more than 60 per cent of what it would have been had it been possible to put the seeds directly into the ground in March or early April.
A few years ago a lady who had read an article of mine sent me a layered plant of what she believed to be the lilac Larnartine — which it has undoubtedly proved to be. I am very pleased to have this because it flowers earlier than other lilacs, at the end of April or very early May. One of a series developed by Emile Lemoine at Nancy in 1911, it has large panicles of single blue lilac flowers and is precious, coming as it does on the edge of summer, that time of first love and perilous promise. Lamartine has been taken into a group under the name of Syringa hyacinthiflora together with companions which have resounding names like Descartes, Necker and Villar. Another in the same group is Buffon, also from that great and glorious Lemoine stable but, later, in 1921. This 1 think is really my favourite lilac, it is also early flowering and has large clusters of very beautiful soft pink flowers which fade to shades of unbelievably beautiful hyacinthine paleness.
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