Airborne christening party

How do birds learn to fly?

Or, more specifically, how do the aerial nest-builders manage it?

I have an image of a baby sparrow gradually emerging from a nest and learning the basics.  You know, fluffing up feathers, eyeing the world and then a few exploratory wing flaps before a short tentative hop to a lower branch.

But what happens to birds like house martins, facing everything from a dizzy 30ft under the eaves, and no perch nearby? 

We’ve been pondering this as we watched the antics of two families who have built nests high up on the walls of our house.  And, like many parents, we wondered when the young might leave home.  And, in this case, how. 

Today we learned much more about such behaviour, and it was quite a moving and uplifting experience.

At just after 8am, the air to the side of our house became peppered with house martins flying repeatedly up towards the nest.  We could also see the tiny head of the fledging poking out.  This was the day, the martins had clearly decided, that the young bird would begin to fly.    

Round and round they swooped, perhaps a couple of dozen or more of them.  They were clearly demonstrating, “This is what you do.  Come out and join us.”   They kept circling and then, so quickly that Annie actually missed it, the fledgling tumbled out of the mud nest and seemingly effortlessly (although it might not have seemed like that to the young bird) swooped over the garage and was gone. 

It was, as Annie said, an airborne christening party.

What reflexes do the birds rely on to decide that this was the day for flight?  And how do they communicate to act so collaboratively in encouraging the youngster? 

It might be corny, but we have so much to learn about, and from, the world around us.      

Cycling for health

Me, too.  I am one of what seems to be a large number of Olympic confessors who was, to say the least,  lukewarm when we won the bid, and doubted the organisers’ ability to put on a trouble-free show. 

We have all been proved gloriously wrong.  Instead I found a passion for watching sport on TV  - I can hardly believe I’ve just written those words – and my life seems just a little empty at present without the daily fix.   

In the warm after-glow,  there has been talk of the importance of competitive sport being re-introduced into primary schools.  And sports clubs are reporting a huge rise in the number of enquiries. 

It will all jog down, of course.  But I hope that what will remain, aside from the relative few who will be committed and athletic enough to seek the highest ambition, is a general change in our attitude to exercise. 

All the studies point up the importance of regular moderate exercise.  And one of the easiest way to do this is by walking and cycling.     I try to build one of these into every day of my life, and Annie and I miss it if we don’t get a daily walk in.  We start to feel refreshed almost as soon as we start our steps up the lane.  

We went to Weymouth to see the Olympic sailing on the last Saturday, and cycled in from the outskirts.  The road along the promenade, usually jammed with cars,  had been closed to all traffic apart from walkers and cyclists.  How liberating to be able to walk and cycle in the town right next to the sea, without the noise and danger from vehicles.   

I’ve got a suggestion:  why not make it permanent? 

Why not transform our road infra-structure to give priority to walkers and cyclists in our towns and cities?  Instead of spending £33bn on  a new high speed train line to Birmingham, why not invest that money on dedicated cycle paths and walkways?   

Would that not be the most egalitarian Olympic legacy?