Country diary: Last spring feels a long time ago in the allotment | Kate Bradbury

Hove, East Sussex: The blackbird parents have food to feed chicks, hoverflies are booming and the peacock butterflies are back. Everything may be precarious, but this is all welcomeOn the allotment I have learned what a blackbird fledgling sounds like. I knew the calls robins make to their chicks and the returning sounds from the nest, the searching "feed me!" of great tit and blue tit fledglings. But the blackbird is new to me; I'm enjoying the intimacy of now knowing, not least because the mosquito-borne Usutu virus is threatening blackbird numbers, and my days of hearing their fledglings may be short lived.Its parents have left it in the elder tree above the dipping tank, and there it fizzes melodiously, asking for food. As I fill my watering can, I catch glimpses of its fat, box-fresh body; I watch its clumsy hops, its startled ruffling of feathers. Already it shows signs of the blackbird charm: hot and bothered, put out, clucking over nothing. It's nice to see there is food for it to eat: earthworms dug up by fellow allotmenteers, along with caterpillars and other grubs. Three years ago, in the drought of 2022, there was little such food available. A blackbird followed me around my dusty plot and I dug up earthworms for him, hoping he had enough to take back to his chicks. This year, despite periods of near-drought, there has been enough rain to keep the blackbirds happy. Or so it seems today. Continue reading...