Tuesday's painting...

...Windy, rainy, and stormy all night. But the sky was surprisingly light. It didn't feel like night.

I have to rescue a Eucalyptus tree which broke free from its supports in the night and is danger of being snapped into 2 with this vicious wind. I could see birds (eg blackbird sized) flying to and fro in the night, which seems strange to me. The night is normally devoid of birds.

Also the two blackbirds who were nesting in my clematis, and I assumed had laid eggs, abandoned that nest, and the male and female blackbirds were tearing up the thatch from my thatched swing, and building a nest in the cherry tree in my front garden. Now, that one appears to have been abandoned.

This last week the same pair have been collecting nesting materials and building a nest at the bottom of my garden among the honeysuckle. But it was a very exposed and windy position.

This morning the same female blackbird is frantically collecting MORE nesting materials, and building yet another nest in the crab apple tree. She is ripping the thatch off my thatched swing as though there is no time to lose in this nest building process. The male blackbird in the meantime is rolling his eyes and having a good old morning bath in the disused cat tray which had collected a surfeit of water...until Mrs Blackbird dive bombs him into nest building action...

The only thing I can think of is in the original clematis where Mrs Blackbird built a nest, Jenny Wren built a nest within a metre of her in the same clematis. All seemed well for a few weeks initially. Then. Jenny Wren started making a heck of a racket each time I went in the garden. (I had to use a bird song app to identify the bird, and it said it was the alarm call of a wren) I can vouch it is deafening, because when I walk past Jenny Wren's nest on the way to my garage, my cochlear speech processor on my left ear is within two hand widths of her nest, and the noise Jenny Wren yelled into it was like my brain had blown up...

I can only assume Mrs Blackbird didn't like such horrendously noisy neighbours...and wanted to move house. I fully empathise with Mrs Blackbird...

Where is Jeremy (I cannot call him Jenny Wren) Wren in all this? I only ever see one wren at a time, and Jenny Wren seemed friendly enough earlier in the year and flew near me. But I assume she has babies now...

I'll go and check on how Mrs B is when this rainstorm abates. She is still friendly to me, comes straight up to my feet when I am in the garden, and doesn't regard me as a threat. Her feathers are all spiky with the rain. I don't know how she can fly when she is this waterlogged.

But first I need to do some more googling. It is going to cost me a fortune to replace this thatch on my swing :(

My digital painting in Procreate this morning. It was meant to be a quickie, but literally 4 hours later, and I was learning a lot of new stuff with it. Can you tell it took 4 hours? Nope, I didn't think you would!

Added a photo of Mrs B taking my thatch while blatantly staring me in the eyes...