My Blackbird family came into my life in the lockdown summer of 2020. Well, I’m sure they were around long before that, but I simply didn’t notice them or need them until then. First on the scene was a feisty young female who had attitude in ‘bird world’, even trying to take on one of my slowworms. I hasten to add that she wasn’t indulged on that particular one, remember Ahimsa, non-violence in yoga! However that summer, she started trusting me enough to hop from the doorstep onto my kitchen floor to feed.
Month by month during that strange year, my Blackbird family became my family, sustaining my emotional health during that challenging time. They, my two wonderful daughters and my Mon-Fri online yoga students kept me going during lockdown for which I remain eternally grateful.
Treasuring my Blackbirds
So I observed members of my Blackbird family more closely, searched online for the correct bird food to buy, and looked forward to their daily visits to my doorstep onto the garden patio. It was heart-warming to witness the fledglings being taught by their parents how to feed. A spot of ‘tough love’ was judiciously applied when a parent bird started to ignore their offspring and focus on feeding only themselves. The time intervals between feeding their offspring becoming longer and longer until eventually s/he learnt to fend for themselves. Some years, to my great excitement, the parent birds reared three fledglings, other years just one or two. My children even joked that to get their mother’s attention, they would need to be reincarnated as Blackbirds!
In 2023 I switched to buying big bags of Black Soldier Fly larvae – yum, clear winners on the Blackbird menu! In this regard, I am particularly proud that my male Blackbird successfully reared so many of his offspring and outlived his normally life expectancy of three years by an additional two years. Sometimes on particularly warm and sunny afternoons, he would relax on my doorstep with his wings spread out. This is my last picture of him with his final offspring last summer.
June 2024 ~ a new visitor arrives!
Not surprisingly, Blackbirds need for supplementary food changes with the seasons and especially when they have young. Last June, demand went up for a last feed of the day around dusk so I was watching my back doorstep even more keenly. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted a hedgehog there, eating up what was left of the Black Soldier Fly larvae and drinking the water from the bowl I’d put out that evening for the Blackbirds.
This was the first time I’d seen a live hedgehog in my garden! I had spotted a few scuttling along pavements at night and some sadly dead on local roads.
I had waited a long time for this very special moment.
So during the first few years of living here, I set the intention of creating a garden where hedgehogs could hunt and thrive. I had waited a long time for this very special moment.
Cultivating love and compassion for all life
I must thank my Blackbird family for their support since 2020, which led to the hedgehog's appearance last year. . . and then another hedgehog appeared a month later, although they didn’t seem too friendly towards each other! So this spring, I’m busy creating little piles of chopped wood down the shady side of my garden to encourage worms, beetles etc for them to hunt for. One of my favourite yoga texts The Spirit of Yoga (De Rham & Gill, 2001) interprets the first of the universal moral principles of yoga, Ahimsa, more broadly than non-violence seeing all creation as sacred, expressed as
‘Consideration for all beings. Living in a way that causes as little harm as possible. Cultivating love and compassion for all life’ (p.6).
Since 2020 I have become more aware of our inter-connectedness with the natural world, and its role in supporting my and others’ physical and emotional health. Increasingly I see myself as the steward of the green space my garden occupies, living in harmony with local wildlife and plant species.
Through my Blackbirds lifting my spirits during lockdown and by me looking after them, I have been rewarded with the return of hedgehogs, once so abundant during my childhood, to my garden. It is a dream come true for which I thank my beautiful Blackbird family.