I know easter is around the corner, and this week the garden decided to offer up a different kind of egg! I stumbled upon it on the lawn – and for a split second, I swear it looked uncannily like a lost Cadbury’s Mini Egg. Alas, it was no mini egg, but the real deal. Hatched open too, no less! 

Good grief, I was excited. You’d think I’d found a tiny Fabergé.

I carefully brought my precious find inside and flicked through my nature journal sketchbook. Time to play detective! Using my egg reference page, comparing the shell against all the hand-painted examples. After some serious deliberation, I’m pretty sure it’s a Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) egg. This makes perfect sense, as there’s a veritable gang of them still staging daily raids on the sunflower hearts. Bold little blighters, with an appetite to match.

It left me pondering just how many nesting birds are likely around me, hidden in plain sight, like tiny, feathered secret agents on a mission. I certainly suspect there’s a House Sparrow commune in the eaves – the early morning chatter is a dead giveaway, and probably a Blackbird nest tucked away somewhere nearby, judging by the frantic worm-tug-o-war sessions I’ve witnessed. 

This whole train of thought immediately sent me scurrying to my bookshelf for ‘Nests’ by the wonderful Susan Ogilvy, a book that a very lovely friend bought me. (Good friends buy you books about bird architecture; it’s an established fact of life.)

It never ceases to amaze me, the sheer effort and ingenious engineering that goes into these tiny constructions. They’re like the Grand Designs of the avian world, sans Kevin McCloud (though the drama levels are probably comparable).

One of my absolute favourite garden birds (Don’t tell the Blackbird, he’s awfully territorial) is the Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus). And my goodness, do they take nest building to a completely different, architectural level.

These little fluffballs are the master weavers. Their nests are these incredible, flexible, dome-shaped orbs, almost like a feathered coconut, painstakingly crafted from a shopping list that makes my head spin: moss, lichen, thousands of spider webs (for elasticity, of course – talk about resourcefulness!), and then lined with an obscene number of tiny feathers – sometimes over 2,000! It’s basically a five-star, self-built, insulated nursery with all the mod cons. If you are lucky, you can sometimes spot them in thorny bushes, which is like nature’s very own, rather prickly, barbed-wire security system.

You can often tell if a Long-tailed Tit, like the one I painted earlier this year, is in the ‘before’ or ‘after’ phase of the hardcore parenting marathon. The trick is looking to see if its tail looks pristine or if it’s a bit tatty and frayed around the edges from squeezing in and out of that tiny entrance a hundred times a day. 

Finding that little hatched Goldfinch egg was a lovely reminder of the hidden industry happening all around me. Each one a promise of new life, and each nest a testament to the dedicated work of these tiny feathered architects. It makes you look at every shrub and tree with a newfound sense of construction wonder. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to replenish the sunflower hearts – these Goldfinches have a demanding schedule to maintain.