Mrs Down's Diary

The ducks are in the big shed and the blue tit, bless him, is in the nest box. But not always. Two nights he has not been home. Where has he gone?

John and I are like parents with a teenager again who has not come in when you are expecting them to.

I understand that blue tits build several nests for their mates (or prospective mate when one chooses him) and that he takes her round them like a pushy estate agent.

The nest was originally investigated by a sparrow but he abandoned any attempt to live there when the blue tit took over.

The camera, linked to our TV, is fantastic. It is compulsive viewing, especially the nights that the blue tit slept over.

He is certainly not a peaceful sleeper. Every few minutes he has a whizz round in the nest, reorganises the feathers, pulls a bit of straw over himself, tucks his head under his wing, preens a few feathers.

The filming is not in colour but in shades of grey, black and white.

We are gripped and have already influenced a couple of our friends to get their own boxes with a camera.

Outside in the yard I am also filming the progress of the ducks. They are gradually taking over all the spare space and we have already had to move the corn dryer to provide more room to extend their pens.

This follows an entire day spent repositioning the pens to prevent a build-up of waste water on the shed floor. They do not just drink their water from the automatic drinkers, they splash around in it as well. And spread it all over the shed floor.

Now it drains away into the waste-water system that serves the foldyard for the cows.

The cows themselves are not all out in the field. Not the bulls and the heifers but the suckler cows and calves.

We waited until my sister and her husband came up for the weekend and then we had enough bodies on hand to make sure that the traffic could be stopped when we took them across the road and into their field. John directed the whole exercise with military precision.

My sister and brother-in-law positioned themselves on the road ready to stop any traffic coming through the village.

I was in the greatest situation of authority '“ to open the gate and get flattened in the rush as the cows stormed the opening.

The problem was that John told me to loosen the bolt on the gate so that it would swing open quickly.

If I messed around opening up the gate and then just brought it back slowly, there was a real possibility I could get trampled in the rush as the cows forced it open.

I had to literally lean against the gate to keep them in until John signalled he was at the back of all the calves, and then I signalled to my sister on the road, who signalled back the all-clear.

Talk about complicated.

Anyway, it worked and this year we were not left with any calves wandering around the yard wondering where on earth Mum went.

Conversely, not one of the cows who had stormed into the field started wondering where their offspring went. Irresponsible or what?

This feature first appeared in the West Sussex Gazette on June 4 2008