Farm Gear Holds Unexpected Bird, Bumblebee Nests
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- Pied and grey wagtail pairs make small aerial assaults on insects while the narrator makes wheelbarrow trips to the muck heap, though their nests have not been located.
- Swallows feed on midges and flies that swarm around warm‑blooded animals on the farm, and use mud from water buckets and horse‑washing to repair their nests.
- Tash narrowly avoids pulling down a robin’s nest inside a new hay bale, and the adult robin resettles on her eggs after the near‑miss.
- Blue tits nest inside the hollow steel frame of a five‑furrow plough, dropping caterpillars from field oaks down a narrow shaft and raising a brood of chicks there.
- Tree bumblebees have built a nest inside the hollow mechanism of a retired sprayer that sits among nettles in the yard.
- Haybob 300 hosts a blue‑tit nest in a hole in its cap, and both broods of tits fledge a day before a heatwave that could have threatened the steel‑plough nests.
Why it matters: The hidden nests give local bird and bumblebee populations safe breeding sites on a working farm, while farm workers must adjust handling of hay bales, equipment, and livestock to avoid destroying them and protect the fledglings that have already left the nests in time.
