Before Hoopoe in the kitchen

It all began when my wife and I heard shuffling in the under-drawing. We thought the starlings had rediscovered a nesting location. My first move was to block their entry point with wire netting. I remembered the previous residency of breeding starlings when at one stage it seemed almost to rain lice. We were not keen on the same again.

Using a ladder I peered through the trap-door in the bathroom ceiling and there to the left, about three meters away was this hoopoe looking right at me with what seemed like no fear at all. I asked my wife to pass up my camera and was lucky enough to get a number of satisfactory shots. What amazed me was the apparent lack of fear on the hoopoe's part, not even a wing flap. I then returned outside and removed the netting.

My plan was to discourage the bird from taking up residency and building a nest with its mate, so I left the electric lamp up there, hoping it would perform the duty of a scarecrow. Needless to say the ploy did not work. I then decided to leave be and allow nature to take its course.

The following few weeks proved to be a busy time for the birds. I suspect it was the male we saw regularly swooping past the kitchen window with a worm in beak, food for the female who was incubating the clutch. The sight was a rare treat. I am sure that they shared incubation duty, although on this I could be incorrect. Soon the new chick or chicks made their presence known with insistent high pitched chirping that really made feeding time a demanding chore for the parents. The frequency of colour swooping passed the kitchen window increased with the need to keep the food chain moving, relieving the tedium of my dish washing chore as I gazed through the kitchen window.

After roughly twenty nine days the activity ceased. Another happy task completed by nature.

That was not quite the end of it though. We were to meet one of the hoopoes fairly soon, but that is another story.