Mrs Down's Diary

Funny that. A man who can recalibrate drills, drive complicated farm machinery, etc, does not know which button to press to get the channel he wants.

"Could you put me that DVD on about fishing?" a plaintive voice calls out just as I am settled to a read of the paper or book.

Or "Can you find me that programme on birdwatching?" Both of which tasks he is just as capable as I am of carrying out. But won't.

The system should, however, be currently foolproof. This is because for John's birthday, Jo, our daughter, bought him a birdbox with a camera inside.

By dint of a hole being drilled through the wall behind the TV and a lead going from the box to said TV, we are wired to watch the goings-on of family life, bird-style. John only has to switch on with the remote control and he has an intimate window into avian home construction.

A slight hiccup occurred when my son-in-law changed from AV to TV for a football match but we are now back on track for voyeurism on a small scale.

It has been exciting. The day after we put the box up I switched on the TV expecting to see only the bare floor of the birdbox. Nothing could have discovered it that quickly I thought. I was wrong. Within 24 hours the box was already filling with straw and feathers. Something had been very hard at work.

Then everything stopped. No action for a day. Disaster. Had our nest been abandoned? No. A sighting of a sparrow investigating the nest and bringing a beakful of straw cheered us up.

She tweaked a piece of straw here, moved another piece there, and then cleared off. Not seen again. Now however there is a cloud of feathers lining the nest and this time John thinks we have a bluetit looking around.

I had not realised that nestboxes were subject to so many viewings and numbers of potential residents. Nor that the whole business can be so stop-start.

Not all baby birds are reared in nests, however. In the yard of the big main shed, we have several pens of mallard ducklings that are being raised for releasing on to a friend's ponds.

Getting it right has been a steep learning curve. We were not prepared for the fact that a number of birds will die from starveout at three days old.

These are birds that have not learnt how to peck food and whose gut, once the nourishment from the egg sac is totally absorbed, has not matured enough for solids or water and who literally starve to death.

John was devastated when several of the little ducks just keeled over, but after those first few days we have not lost another.

They are totally absorbing to watch. Frantic in their rush from one end of the pen to the other in a hectic dash from water, to feed, to warmth under the gas lamp.

It is like watching a swirl of fish, or those dips and swoops that starlings make before coming into land. In the end we decided the only word to describe it was a vortex of ducklings. I do not know if it is accurate but it seems most appropriate.