Grandma Grey rang up a few weeks ago, rather excited by some surprising developments. She lives in sheltered housing in Ealing, a fairly modern building ran by a charity. Most of the residents are reasonably able bodied but there is a part time warden and a 24 hour panic alarm system.

Anyway, she lives on the 2nd floor in a corner flat and whilst she doesn’t have a balcony as such, there is a door which can be opened onto a meshed handrail with just enough room for a window box. There are a lot of tall trees nearby and a colony of squirrels are regularly seen leaping from tree to tree. They occasionally leap onto her balcony in order to scavenge the flowers and she has a sort of scarecrow to discourage them, a plastic Snoopy the dog toy complete with Woodstock on Snoopy’s hat. (It is a discarded happy meal toy).

Back to the story, a few weeks ago two Robins started to build a nest next to the flowerbox. Then she spotted eggs in the nest and rang me up to have a look on the Interweb to find what the gestation period was. (Either 14 days or 40 days, depending where you look). Then we got the call that they had started hatching and the Robins were feeding them. It has become a fascinating side-show to rival the Telly and she spends hours just watching them. She tried to take a photo but the window is now extremely grubby and she daren’t open the door to clean it as the nest will collapse. (She would also probably get attacked, the parents get very uppity whenever she goes near the window). To celebrate the event, she has made a drawing for David which can be seen below.

Now she is waiting for the children to flee the nest so that she can clean her window again.