Young Thrush

The thrush fledgeling is sweet. It is quiet and doesn’t wreck anything. It finds food in the dry grass of the lawns, and drinks at the hedgehog’s water bowl. The five blackbird fledglings, on the other hand, are loud, destructive bullies that rip the fruit from my trees before it is ripe enough to eat, and scratch up my plants and dormant bulbs. They menace the young thrush, which calmly moves away.

The other fledgeling family in my garden is the house sparrows. They had four little ones, which could be seen all together for the first couple of weeks. Now I usually see only one at a time. They are small and pale in colour. They keep out of the way of the blackbirds, but hang around the thrush, watching what it does and then copying it. If the thrush drinks there will be a young sparrow watching on. A soon as the thrush moves away the sparrow nips in for a drink. I could watch them for hours.