Today, there are no two ways round it, it was shitty. It was cold with a gusty wind and it was wet, basically it was January on the eve of April. I couldn't hack another day of mud and cold on the reserve today so I stayed in and left the outside world to those that can't sleep at night unless they've counted every bird on their patch for the umpteenth time.
I sat in the conservatory and watched a tug pulling a large barge into the Medway Estuary and a huge car boat going into Sheerness docks, I watched odd rays of sunshine briefly light up Southend seafront across the Thames estuary and it was depressing. But in amongst all that depression a bumble bee lethargically made it's way across the conservatory floor, chilled by the coldnes of the day. I don't know what the attraction for these bees is in the conservatory, perhaps its the yellow painted walls of the bungalow which it abutts, but whenever I leave the door open, in they pour. Normally I simply throw them back outside but today the weather wasn't bee friendly so I put it on the flower head of a geranium inside, where it seemed happy enough to be. At regular intervals through the day it would wake up and wander from petal to petal, finding little sustance, but it and I were happy that it was in the dry and the warm.

Everytime that a gust of wind rattled a rain shower against the conservatory windows I worried about my robin outside. The nest is in an open-fronted box on a fence and part covered by a bush, just a few yards past the end of the conservatory. The robins spent some time filling the box to well past the halfway mark with vegetation until finishing it off with the nest bowl of moss and dog hair at the top. The hen has been brooding the eggs now for about a week and over the last few days has been battered quite badly by the rain and the wind, day and night. I check on her regulary and all that is visible at the back of the box is a pair of black and beady eyes atop a fraction of orange breast. I probably worry unduly because she always seems quite resolute but I do long for her a warm and sunny day.