Garden birds in July: Late broods

 

If we imagine that the breeding season is a play, then the last couple of weeks of June can represent something of an interval. But now, in July, Act Two opens and it promises many twists and turns of fate and fortune, as every play should.

 

We know some characters by now – the robins that brought up four young from a nest deep in our hedge and the blackbirds who lost their brood to an April frost.

 

We will watch and care about their story in the second half of the season, too. And we will meet new characters, including one or two of the most villainous kind.

 

 

A few of our players have left the set because, to all intents and purposes, their breeding season is over. Young carrion crows have abandoned their treetop fortress and will join a local flock of non-breeding birds.

 

These bands roam around like estate street gangs and can be just as violent and troublesome as the human kind, harassing everyone around them, including members of their own species.

 

Tawny owlets are plonked upon perches, cuddly as teddy bears, asleep by day and incessantly demanding by night. It will be months before they are fully independent and their parents can stop feeding them.

 

Young magpies have fledged from their family dome and face the world with short tails but good prospects.

 

The breeding season has also come to an end for tits. These are small birds and, as such, you would expect them to have several broods, but tits stake everything on the glut of caterpillars that comes, reliably enough, in late May and early June.

 

Because of this, they bulk-produce once a year. Having cared for as many as 10 young in the course of a few frenetic weeks, their breeding efforts are spent.

 

 

For some, the first act of the garden drama has been personally disastrous, because they failed to breed successfully or, worse still, failed to breed at all. But July could offer new opportunities – there is still time remaining. Failed pairs can try again.

 

And, for those who did not breed at all, the pause between broods almost always allows for a little reshuffling of the breeding pack. Pairs split up, through death or divorce, allowing other partnerships to form and make a late start.

 

In July there is a reprise of song among males who have new territorial details to thrash out.

 

Occasionally, the odd rogue male doesn’t bother to wait for the splitting up of a pair – he brings about the break-up himself in the most violent way possible. You might expect him to murder the rival spouse, but that’s not the case.

 

 

A few unpaired and angry males, at least among swallows and house sparrows, commit infanticide instead.

 

When both parents are away from a nest full of young, they steal in and grab the hapless occupants, dispatching them over the side of the nest one by one. The pair returns to find their breeding attempt shattered.

 

The couple inevitably breaks up and, surprisingly perhaps, the divorced female almost always seems to pair with the liquidator of her dearly departed young.

 

But these incidents are rare and, for most birds, a July breeding attempt is something of a bonus. Remember, the best of the season is now passed.

 

Even for those individuals that were successful with their first attempt, a second brood at this time of the year is usually a less fulsome affair than the previous one.

 

The nest will be less sumptuous and more quickly constructed, and the female will lay fewer eggs. Blackbirds and song thrushes reduce their output because, with the soil drying out, worms will retreat further underground and become harder to find, making it more difficult to sustain high numbers of young. There are also fewer caterpillars for robins and chaffinches.