Day 1. Early Spring

Steve and Brian – or was it Brian and Steve? Acrylic on canvas by F L Campbell

Bush eggs: two. Nest box eggs: none. Feed hopper: quarter full. Weather: A slight breeze from the sea.

Hallelujah, Steve is finally with child – well, actually eleven of them to be precise. She has been trying hard enough; this is the fifth nest she has started. Oh, but this one is lovely, all tucked away in the weeds with a view of the pond and the ducks to keep her amused for the next twenty-one days. Hopefully the people won’t find it there. And my, does she look smug, like she’s the first hen to come up with the idea of hatching a brood of chicks. Ha! Youth! She really should have come to me for advice on motherhood, but no, these modern girls have to do it for themselves. Reinventing the nest, I call it.

His Royal Roosterness, Jack, hasn’t noticed her absence yet.

It’s kind of weird that Steve and her friend Brian are called Steve and Brian. Apparently The Female Person thought she’d been sold a couple of young roosters on the sly so she gave them crowing names. But they were just slow developers with particularly pronounced combs and masculine ways. I tell you, there was great rejoicing in the people house when one of them laid an egg. The Female Person did then change their names to Marge‘n’Tina (she sang this odd little song, “Don’t cry for me, Marge‘n’Tina”) but it was too late, the names Steve and Brian had stuck.