The dangers of dwelling on speeding time as seasons fly past

I am just getting used to the idea that winter has gone and now I must adjust to the fact that very soon another spring will vanish into the hazy distance as nothing more than a passing memory. Quite literally, the years are whizzing past at an alarming rate.

Recently, I came across a theory which seeks to explain why, as we grow older, time appears to speed up. For example, to a six-year-old child a year seems a very long time. It is, of course, a sixth of that child's entire life. That is quite a hefty proportion of his existence. After all, a sixth of anyone's life is rather a lot!

For a person of 60, however, a sixth of their life is ten years, an entire decade. There are times when I wonder if a year in the mind of a six-year-old seems to pass at the same pace as a decade in the life of the older generation.

Maybe it is not wise to ponder on such imponderables because the passage of time is often bewildering and extremely puzzling. Why, when we are late for something, does time pass so quickly, whereas if we are early and have to wait for someone, time passes so slowly? It is clear, therefore, that the means of making time pass quickly is to be forever late.

It was the poet Matthew Arnold who described time as a river, but rivers also flow both quickly and slowly! And some of them manage to do both at the same time. Just watch two leaves floating downstream on a calm day. One will whizz away, while the other swirls around as if waiting for someone. All very puzzling. Like time itself.

The birds in our garden continue to entertain and educate us. This time it is the turn of the house sparrows.

We have two sparrow nests, both beneath pantiles, one just above our kitchen window and the other in the garage roof. At the time of writing, each has a brood of chicks who are being fed and I like to think we are doing our bit for the house sparrow population, particularly as reports indicate their numbers are declining. Not in our garden, they're not!

The brood close to the kitchen window is beyond our vision unless we go into the garden, but we can observe the comings and goings of the parent birds as they arrive with food or leave the nest. And, of course, we can listen to their chirping, which was not too popular with recent guests whose bedroom overlooks the nest - the entire sparrow family started chirping at first light and continued throughout the day.

The garage brood, however, is more easily observed. We can see the entrance to the nest from several points inside the house, and also from various places in the garden, including the patio where we regularly sit for meals and snacks. Neither set of parents seems concerned at our presence, cheerfully feeding their families as we relax or work nearby.

A pair of binoculars is a great aid when watching the young ones being fed, but our daily observations have produced a puzzle. In the case of those in the garage roof, only the male appears to be caring for the youngsters in the nest. Over the past few days, there has been no sign of the female.

Both parents usually feed the youngsters, so this makes me wonder if mum has met with some kind of nasty accident. If she has, she can be proud of her mate, who is doing a wonderful job caring for their offspring.

On the last two occasions before writing these notes, we thought he was trying to coax his youngsters out of the nest. He would arrive with a titbit at which they would all begin to chirp and, through binoculars, we could see three yellow beaks being opened wide for the food. But he would then tease them. He would offer the titbit, but back away without releasing it as he tried to tempt the youngster to leave the security of their nest.

He has been doing this for two days now and I think he might have succeeded with two of the chicks, as there now appears to be only one remaining. I think two have flown the nest. The sparrows in the nest above the kitchen window have been doing likewise and, although the male has been doing most of the feeding, the female is always nearby.

Over tea yesterday afternoon we were surprised to see a garden full of baby sparrows or, to be precise, about five of them. They were on the lawn with an adult male and female and it was clear they were being tutored in the fine art of seeking food among the border plants. The female even tried to tempt one of them into the bird bath. It was like a child dipping his toes into the chilly sea.

House sparrows appear to be gluttons for work because they will raise three broods between March and August, each consisting of between three and five chicks. It seems we shall have sparrows living beneath our tiles for some weeks ahead, but I have no objection to their busy presence.

In addition to the sparrows, we have been entertained by other birds in the garden. A song thrush has been a regular visitor in recent days. We know he or she is around because we can hear the crash of snail shells against a convenient stone or step.

In fact, the bird arrived with a captured snail while we were having lunch in the garden. Only some ten feet away from us on the patio, it proceeded to deal with the unfortunate snail, but I was too slow to see whether the snail was devoured or taken away to feed some nestlings. I suspect there is a thrush nest nearby.

Continuing with bird stories, I came across a curious incident on this morning's daily walk. One of the features of my daily climb to the hilltop above our house is the song of skylarks. There are probably three and they serenade me as I try to spot them in the heavens, usually without success. Although their song is wonderful and loud, sometimes directly above me, they have the capability of remaining invisible. Even their song fails to pinpoint their presence with any degree of accuracy. Sometimes I think they are ventriloquists.

Today, however, I managed to see one. It was bouncing up and down as if on an elastic rope as its wonderful song filled the air with a strong sense of freedom and excitement. But there was another presence! I watched for a while and was startled to see a kestrel hovering only about a yard (a metre or so) from the skylark.

As the skylark sang its normal song, with no sign of alarm and anxiety, the kestrel hovered nearby. Why, I wondered, did the skylark not feel threatened by the kestrel or why did the kestrel decide not to make its breakfast of the skylark? Kestrels tend to make meals of small mammals, which they pick from the ground by swooping down from their hovering position, so perhaps it was not interested in the skylark?

I wondered if this one was perhaps concentrating so hard on the ground that it did not notice the skylark nearby? Or maybe there is some kind of truce between skylarks and kestrels? I am sure that if the kestrel had been a sparrowhawk, the skylark would have been nowhere to be seen!

From time to time, I am asked about the origins of curious names of villages in this region. Now, someone has asked how Pity Me acquired such a distinctive name.

Pity Me, which lies to the north of Durham, does not feature on all maps, but the only explanation for its name that I can find is that it may derive from the French, or perhaps the Norman, petit mere.

This means little lake or small lake and I believe one used to exist in this locality. If so, that is a very likely source of the name, even if it means little to anyone in these modern times.

Then there is Booze in the Yorkshire Dales and Fryup in the North York Moors.