The ornithology-voyeurism dilemma
I'm very luck where I live to be visited by house martins each year. (No not the 80s band with the teenage Fatboy-Slim on bass) They are sweet little birds that hunt flying insects. They are a bit like swifts and swallows but small and stocky, and with a very smart white body, and black wings. Imagine a cross breed of a swallow and a killer whale. They are rare, and they fly all the way from Africa each summer. Miraculously some of them build nests on my street and I can watch them hunting out of my bedroom window.
A stupid pair of these birds has started making a nest that clings to the top edge of a window on the other side of the road. It's a window that opens, so the nest will be destroyed the next time that happens. I should go and tell the householder about the nest, and they could either lock the window, or clear away the nest before the birds lay any eggs. However the house is occupied by a young woman that I rather like (who's daughter's shoe I once rescued), and I don't really want to go round there with news that rather implies that I spend a lot of my time looking at (or through) her bedroom window.
Richard "birdwatcher" B
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