Mallards were plentiful. One day I came upon a mallard with nine ducklings. When she saw me, she started splashing along the edge of the pond, dragging one wing in the water as though unable to use it. While she struggled in front of me, the young ones scuttled across the pond and into the reeds on the far side. As soon as they were all safe, she rose and flew across to them, using her 'broken' wing perfectly.
The coot's nest, made of rushes and actually in fairly deep water, was easy to see but difficult to reach. To photograph it, I had to stand on very slippery mud, and with the water just half an inch from the tops of my wellington boots.
The moorhen also used the rushes, but it built on land, usually in a low bush or tree stump near the water. The mallard's was more difficult to locate, partly because it was only a hollow among the long grasses near the water, and partly because when the bird left it she pulled the grasses across it until it was completely hidden.
A chaffinch built its small, beautifully neat nest in the holly bush by the gate, a blackbird reared two broods on a ledge in the cart shed, and a thrush built on a potato riddle which was balanced across a beam.
There was a robin's nest full of young ones in a bank across the lane, and a little farther down, a yellow hammer's nest with five eggs in it. I found a number of pied wagtails' nests, and a wren's nest near the cart shed, but I never found the nest of the yellow wagtails which frequented the field beyond the orchard.
Young birds were everywhere in the early summer. I found the partly-built nest of a reed warbler, slung between four bullrush stems, and beautifully built. This pair of reed warblers, however, deserted this nest before it was finished, and built another one about twenty yards away.
The next time I saw their original nest, it had a neat domed roof with a small hole near the top, having been taken over by a pair of long-tailed tits who successfully brought off a brood of their youngsters in it.
During the summer months there was an almost endless chorus of song from willow warblers and wood warblers, skylarks above the fields, yellow hammers up the lane, wrens, blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches, linnets, greenfinches and many others, while the call of the cuckoo became almost monotonous.
In all I saw fifty four different kinds of birds actually on the farm, and a few more in the surrounding country.
I hoped that we might have kingfishers on the ponds, for there were plenty of fish, but as far as I know we only had one once, for about three days, presumably on his way to somewhere a little further south.
A greater spotted woodpecker came regularly to the sycamores near the farm and we could hear the tapping of his beak on the bark as we sat around the table in the kitchen.
Partridges abounded everywhere, but I only saw an occasional pheasant. Sometimes wild geese would fly overhead, and at times, a curlew.. Once I saw a heron fly low across the field, and I hoped he would land on the ponds, but he circled round and flew away.
We had little owls, barn owls, and one pair of long-eared owls, and of course we had kestrels and sparrow hawks,
Swallows, house martins, sand martins and swifts were all plentiful in the summer months. Swallows would gather on the wireless aerial in such numbers in early autumn that I used to wonder that the wire still held. In the winter we had a flock of redwings and fieldfares, and many of the birds, especially the robins became very tame.
One of the most exciting experiences with birds was the sudden arrival of a pair of whooper swans circling the farm and the ponds. We were standing just outside the back door, and they came so close to us, side by side and with their long necks stretched out so we could see every feather, and the bright yellow of their beaks, and could feel the wind from their powerful wing-beats. They circled the pond a couple of times, then rose higher in the sky and away.