My Neighbours have stolen my Dunnocks. Tragedy of the Commons -Part 2.

No man is an island . . . but his garden might be. In May 2020, my garden was the epicentre of the first National Lockdown Garden Birdrace. Its weird to think four summers have passed each with its own character. Re-reading my post race summary I notice as night passed into day we had three male Blackbirds competing for best lead vocals. Their jazz on a warm afternoon is a sound of childhood, with Swifts screaming overhead.

Only four summers have passed. Not a lifetime. Not when my Grandparents were alive. Not way back when. Only four summers. In that time we now have only one Blackbird holding a territory. They raised a chick that fledged last week in a neighbour’s garden. The first time in years a first brood has fledged -thanks to cats and Magpies. Old Joe has passed and as work starts on his house I suspect it maybe the last nest from there. The second nest has just been built in our Holly hedge.

What is it about people? Moving into a new house they rip out a hedge and build a fence. They hard pave and deck the rest of their land. Creating a republic and printing a flag they maximise every cubic metre of ‘their’ space to fill it with air.

Now I am all for ‘air’, it seems to be a good thing, it breaths life into the world. It cant though, breath life into dead things.

There were other birds on my list from the Birdrace day that were special. Osprey -obviously. Coal Tits that went absent without leave but returned the next day. Dunnocks became quite a long standing joke with @Timthefruit; their love triangles and wing flicking was happening in my garden and not his.

That was then. I awoke this morning and realise I am missing their song from my breakfast soundscape. When all else failed somewhere in or around the garden they managed to hatch their eggs, as blue as any summer sky, and young would creep around all summer with their Tinkerbell sounds.

But not it seems this year. My neighbours have stolen my Dunnocks. Or more literally taken the food out of their mouths.

Tragedy of the commons -part 1.

I know it to be Monday. My neighbour with his ‘new for the season’ lawn mower is just scalping his lawn. He washes his car on Sunday, so has no time in retirement to do the lawn on the same day.

Above him, two crows head languidly towards the horizon. The sun breaks through the clouds. It has not rained in a month and lawns have barely grown the millimetres he has shaved off. The ground is exposed.

Cars buzz the street. They replace the sound of the insects now being noted for their absence -even here. His daughter, by way of conversation, is named after the first human, looking up to her namesake in a sky with diamonds. I note for effect, you can’t eat diamonds. You also can’t drink the time that has elapsed since we knew this day was coming.

Rooks fly over. They have been reduced to begging outside the supermarket with the ground so hard. Briefly a Swift, searching for the aerial plankton sifts the blue sky. Why today would I comment on such banality?

From a seedling that survived, free-range, on the patio pre-covid, came a handful of tomatoes. Saving some seed back to sow again each of the four Springs that have passed, I now see this variety as my own -it has a name. It is mine and does not belong to the big industry giant that created it; and lobbied Government to stop me selling it as mine.

The flowers began life all confident in yellow against green leaves but, have withered without puckering into a ball. A ball that should change through green to gold as the summer moves across the sky. Four summers I have protected them from the extremes of British weather. They have rewarded me with bowlfuls of fruit enough from seven plants to share. That sense of community -distilled sunshine, we all like free food. Well today I noticed that my tomatoes are not developing fruit. The flowers unpollinated wither and die.

Don’t worry, I am not going to starve. This is a vanity project, not an agricultural endeavour. I thought though, I was safe. My family were safe in the garden that is something of a Ark. A throwback. A relic. We haven’t paved over the front garden for parking. We haven’t used decking to elevate ourselves, or plastic grass to keep our feet clean. But I am no saint -I still drive; and fly; and throw things away before they are ready.

Originally, the garden came with a candyfloss cherry tree out front and an apple tree with hardly any roots out back. Both long gone. They were mine. I didn’t have to ask permission when I chopped the fuckers down. They were in the wrong place. I had no use for them. The neighbours may have noticed as they fell. They didn’t say anything, they were busy with their own projects. Complaints and accusations before the replacements had their wings clipped was the only acknowledgement of our achievements.

Waking one morning with the realisation we had grown an island, I watched frog spawn float in the pond. In a sea of consumerist fencing and patios google earth spied us to be adrift. Bees buzzed, flies flew, and other passing insects called in; Holly Blues reared a Spring brood. Our surplus went out into the world and did six-legged things. But today is different. Today it’s not the same. Yes, there are bees, perhaps even more than last year. Or maybe not, I can’t tell. I was too pre-occupied last year. Either way, they are not going near the yellow flowers, they wither and dry; barren. But that’s Ok I can buy tomatoes at the supermarket.