Tag Archives: robin

Winter Safari

I love my cycle commute to school.  It provides a light workout as well as giving me time to de-tox from the rigours of taming teenagers.  And I have more time to observe the world around me.

As I cycled through Lower Hadspen last week, I saw two large birds rising from the road in front of me.  I immediately recognised one as a buzzard and was pleased to see the other was a red kite.  These angular birds of prey are still relatively new to Somerset, having spread their territory down from Wales and the Midlands. I remember the first time I saw one in the county; it was circling over a schools’ athletics meeting at Yeovil and I hoped the presence of this carrion-eating raptor did not reflect poorly on the prognosis for the exhausted teenagers competing on the track.

This kite rose with ease from what I discovered was a dead hare. I was sad to see a hare as roadkill, but I supposed its presence, albeit dead, was more evidence to show that hares seem to be on the increase in our area.  We saw hares nearer our home last summer. An adult hare deliberately ran at our labrador, before veering off to lead her away from what I assumed were her young in another part of the field.  Needless to say, Ella took the bait but returned – exhausted – soon after without any prey.

Beyond the dead hare, I cycled slowly past cider orchards, alive with hundreds of chuffling fieldfares and looping redwings and later at home, as I walked with the dogs, I listened to robins singing and blackbirds calling in the gathering gloom. We traversed fields as flocks of starlings skimmed across the treetops on their way to reedbed roosts on the Levels.

The sun was setting, its heat dissipating across the horizon in the frosty air and I caught a glimpse of something else red russet in the distance.  A large fox was trotting distractedly away from me across the field.  He looked unconcerned but stopped to look at me as I did likewise.  Lithe and healthy, he seemed to hinge at the hips as he gazed at me before moving along.  Some song lines came to mind:

“I was lookin’ back to see if you were lookin’ back at me
To see me lookin’ back at you”. 

The title – “Safe from Harm” – seemed apt as neither dog had the remotest clue of the fox nearby.  He was in no danger and the air of calm deepened still as my gaze followed him and I noticed two roe deer, also looking back at me.  They moved lightly across the field below us.  I laughed ironically and asked them if they were all paid up members of my cycling and walking safari. 

I put my two natural born killers on their leads and wandered up the lane for a cup of tea.

Rewild at Heart

Catkins

Simon Barnes was speaking on Radio 6 the other Sunday morning, promoting about his book “Rewild Yourself: 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible”. He has ideas to get everyone to be more in touch with the natural world around us.  One suggestion – to learn the songs of some common birds which – is exactly what Mrs B and I have been doing recently too.  We reckon we have learnt the great tit, song thrush, robin, blackbird and chaffinch so morning strolls are now very much a multi-sensory affair as we listen out for birdsong.

And bird song is not the only sound that attracts the attention at the moment as the countryside reverberates to the drumming of greater spotted woodpeckers on hollow branches, and the overhead thrum of closely packed wings as a flock of starlings arrives at a nearby tree.  Whenever I see starlings I recall one sixth former from a private girls school asking the question “starling….is that anything to do with that bloke in Russia?” The subsequent incredulity of staff and students said it all: thirteen years of school fees for this? Some serious rewilding needed there.

Mrs B and I were very much at one with our natural environment on the morning dog walk this week.  We listened to the song thrush which regularly sings at the top of the same tree each morning;  we watched flocking starlings and spectated as two deer fled the attentions of our hopelessly out-paced labrador.  Potentially a pet dog might have a negative impact on the local ecology, but those deer will be fitter and healthier for the hundred workout sprint they put in before the dog threw in the towel.  Ella proceeded to flush out a couple of pheasants and then a rabbit but she was no nearer catching them than she was the deer.  She might have had a chance with a grey squirrel – but she did not spot that – and fortunately failed to see the badger bumbling which was oblivious to our presence just fifteen yards away.   We put the dog on the lead:  this was one piece of wildlife she would probably do well to avoid.

Back home the (flocking) starlings were trying to get back into their nest sites under the tiles of the house.  I’ve put wire over some of the holes to stop this so now, as I sit at my desk, all I can hear is them scratching away at the bars trying to get in – like an avian Andy Dufresne in reverse.  I would not mind them being there, but we decided to evict them when they started removing loft insulation and depositing large tufts around the garden.

So no more artificial domesticity for them – I am encouraging them to do their own bit of rewilding.

Stile and oak tree

Sun rise over South Somerset

The Year’s Pivot

Someone’s been busy

New Year’s Day and all is quiet about the garden.

I saw a quote the other day via Twitter (a friend re-tweeted a quote from Nigel Slater which had been tweeted by a fan which was then also re-tweeted by Nigel Slater himself – so I suppose he approved):

“I hear people describing the days following Christmas Day as ‘flat’. I am of another mind. They are peaceful days, gentle days that are as much a part of Christmas as those leading up to Christmas Eve.”

Amen to that. In amongst the celebrations and intermittent scurryfungeing we must not forget to take time out to reflect and appreciate the good things in our lives. The lull after Christmas gives us a moment to reflect.  And we can also cheer ourselves with the fact that we are past the shortest day of the year – the Winter solstice was on 21st December – so from now on, as Rob MacFarlane said (retweeted by our Nigel again)

“light begins its slow climb back and night yields its reach.  Midwinter, yule, the year’s pivot, Earth’s rebirth, a dawn of hope.”

And in the garden the rebirth and dawn of hope is well under way.  The Hellebores were true to their alternate moniker (Christmas Rose) flourishing outside the patio doors.  Even many of the “annuals” are looking far more hardy than I imagined, having survived from the summer and forming buds already.

And throughout the borders bulbs are spearing upwards through the cool damp soil.  The identity of many of these bulbs is a mystery to me as, like a squirrel with nuts, I haphazardly buried many of them in the autumn, fondly believing that I would remember what I put where.  Now I am engaged in a slowly evolving version of the Memory Game in which I will preogessively discover if my guesses are correct about the location of daffodils, aliums, tulips, ranunculus, muscari and whatever else I might have planted.

Perhaps my New Year’s Resolution should be to plan more carefully.

I’ll make a note.

Hellebores
Christmas Roses
Definitely spring-flowering
Hmmm – not sure
Bulbs – aliums?
Daffodils?
More dafs?
Frog – not impressed with my greenhouse maintenance
Greenhouse in need of clearance
Post-scurryfunge
What you shouting about?

Feed the Birds

Pied Wagtails in central Bath (poor pic)
Pied Wagtails in central Bath (poor pic)

Mary Poppins the musical is back doing the rounds and so I somehow got an ear worm in my head that is straight out of the show. Ear worm is an apt description as the song is “Feed the Birds”.  It was always something that the parents did and the Old Man has always been diligent in keeping the feeders full of nuts.  in recent winters the main recipients have been rats who have climbed the wisteria to hang on the wire cage and feast.  This year TOM has not been putting food out for the birds (or the rats) yet. Whether this is because the weather has been so mild our feathered friends really do not need any more sustenance I am not sure.

In years gone by we would be asked to delay pruning the Cotoneaster until the birds had been able eat all the berries, but frankly I have never seen any self-respecting fieldfares helping themselves to the red plenty.

But we have found other ways in which to provide for the wild bird population.  A year or two back the starlings would flock around the hen run and clean us out of layers pellets and corn. It cost us a bomb to keep re-filling the feeder – making for some of the more expensive free range eggs around. We now have a feeder that is not accessible to small birds so that is sorted.

Equally, I have put an end to providing fodder to the pigeons, who after I had netted the purple sprouting, turned their attention to the kale and when I covered that, they started to shred the brussels. Can’t fault them for taste, but it amuses me how easily they are put off feeding by a bit of green net.

Birds I am happy to aid in their five-a-day nutritional requirements are obviously the robins who appear as soon as I pick up a fork. Robins act like they are your chums and at Christmas they appear all sweet and festive on cards and the like. But they are fiercely territorial and pretty damned belligerent towards each other. So not all that cute.

The other piece of bird-friendly activity I finally did yesterday was to take the netting off the raspberries – thereby allowing birds to rummage in amongst the canes for any old fruit or other stuff.

And all day long I was humming along “tuppence a bag”…

The Turn of the Year

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s New Year’s Eve – a time to look forward to the clean slate of a fresh 12 months of hope, promises and ambitions.  But it is also a time to reflect and it is in that mood that I am spending this year-end.

2012 was a year in which we as a family put paid to the shadow of major illness, so far as Claire is concerned, with  her final course of chemotherapy and stem cell transplant to guard against recurrence of AITL non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  And it was not long after the completion of her treatment and while she was in recovery that I started this blog.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAI have said before that I feel closer to the memories of my mother when I am gardening and to some extent I suppose there is an element of the Keatsian search for the eternal.  I have a heightened sense of the turning of the year and of the natural world about me.  I am but a small part in the great scheme of things and it all helps to keep my sense of perspective in other aspects of life.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAKeats looked for eternity in the song of the nightingale and the repetition of the seasons.  The trees in the garden or field have a air of permanence about them, but that is coloured by the brooding menace of ash dieback on the horizon.

For Keats perhaps eternity culd be found in the bold robin getting under foot as I dig; the bright crisp morning when we get up to let the chickens out; or, more pertinently today, the drenching rain that puts paid to any serious work outside and leaves the hens lurking in the undergrowth like refugees.

The rain seems to have been falling for an eternity, though we were lucky with our Christmas break in Arran – of which more in a subsequent post, hopefully – but when the rain stops I will be out there to get stuff going.  It won’t be long before spring will be with us and I will want to be ready for it all – with good planting plans and a well prepared garden.  Even now, there are shoots coming up in the tubs by the door, and with the crap weather at least I have my seed catalogues to divert me with thoughts of the long hot summer to come, and no worries about droughts…

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA