Nesting season is over, so it was time to clear out the bird boxes this morning. The largest of the lot, bolted to the side of the house, was home to a pair of blue tits, which we watched through the last few months as they ferried first nest-building material and then food in through the small hole in the front.

Now that they’ve been gone a few weeks, we opened it up and took out the enormous nest they’d built themselves, layered up with moss and feathers and hair from the horses at the bottom of the garden. And there, in the small snug hole they’d dug for their eggs, was the one that never made it; a tiny bird corpse, with a beak and little wings and ribs sticking out from its chest, curled up like it had gone to sleep and forgotten to ever wake up.

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