Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (34 page)

O
N
R
EMEMBRANCE
S
UNDAY
, the Union flag lies limp and stiff against the flagpole on the village church, as a high-pressure system builds across southern Britain, and the first real frosts of autumn begin to bite.

Once again the landscape is transformed. Early in the mornings, as the mist rising from the rhynes begins to clear, the frost grips the grass like a white shroud. During the hour or so after sunrise, a bird we don’t usually think of as a migrant heads purposefully across the parish skies. Large, powerful and pale against the clear blue sky in the early-morning light: flocks of wood pigeons are heading south in search of food.

While clearing out the attic in one of our outbuildings, I come across a bizarre, and at first puzzling, sight.
Hundreds
of small, feathery objects, ranging in colour from deep brown, through buff, black, yellow and faded orange, litter the wooden floorboards. After a moment’s confusion I realise they are the wings of moths, along with a few butterflies – mostly large yellow underwings and small tortoiseshells – lying restful in death.

The neat arrangement of these remnants of once-living insects suggests that they have been placed here deliberately, like some sort of votive offering. But I suspect they have simply been dropped by bats, roosting somewhere in the rafters above my head. I recall watching a bat chasing moths in the neighbouring farmyard on a warm, July night; this must be where he brought them, before dismembering and eating their tiny but nutritious bodies.

In the fields, throughout the shortening hours of daylight, scattered flocks of starlings gather to feed. Some follow herds of cattle, and as the beasts wander slowly across the muddy surface of the field, the birds nip in behind them to grab worms and insects exposed by their heavy hooves. Occasionally the starlings rise up into the air and wheel around; so that by late afternoon, as the sun begins to set, their flickering wings glow orange in the fading light.

At night, the mist returns, gentle wisps hanging above the rhynes; then, as the temperature drops, spreading out over the lanes and fields.

L
ATE
N
OVEMBER IS
a very quiet time in nature’s calendar; not just in this parish, but across much of Britain. The only sounds I hear are the occasional chattering of sparrows as I pass one of the parish farmyards, the trilling of an optimistic wren awaiting the far-off spring, and the quiet, soft piping of a bullfinch hidden deep in a willow hedge.

Fieldfare numbers are building up now, with flocks of a hundred or more perching in the tall trees and hedgerows, feeding greedily on crimson hawthorn berries. As I approach, there is a characteristic launching, with a slightly panicked flapping of wings that never look quite strong enough to lift the heavy body into the air. Then they all rise up, as a crow sounds a high-pitched cry of alarm. A small, taut shape shoots out of the hawthorn hedgerow: a male sparrowhawk, twisting and turning in pursuit of a bird not much smaller than he is; his T-shaped silhouette shooting low across the landscape as clouds of birds panic in the skies above.

A few minutes later, the sparrowhawk has moved on, and the fieldfares have settled back in the topmost twigs of the hawthorns. A constant, soft, chattering sound fills the air, as if they are discussing the event I have just witnessed. Fanciful, I know, but this murmur of sound is clearly a response to the passing of the predator.

The more time I spend in the parish, the more I become sensitive to these subtle changes in sight and sound. This is a skill all naturalists pick up over the years, but it is
heightened
on my journey through time and seasons in the same, small, enclosed place. It goes much deeper than mere knowledge; and almost feels as if I am becoming part of the landscape and its wildlife. I find it comforting to know that as I get older, and my physical horizons inevitably begin to diminish, I shall never get bored with what I see, hear and find in this country parish.

I
T’S NOT YET
December, but from time to time, in place of the usual damp, dull grey Novembers, we get an early fall of snow or, as the locals call it, ‘cold fallings’. It always comes as a surprise to some: last night one driver misjudged the corner at the end of our lane, and paid the inevitable price. His car is now lying on its side in the rhyne, awaiting rescue.

On the last Saturday of the month, the day of the church Christmas bazaar, temperatures hover around zero. The rhynes are half frozen, in that mushy state between water and ice, but still attract flocks of starlings, which gather precariously at the foot of the steep banks to take little sips of water. The high points of the Mendips and Poldens, along with Brent Knoll, are covered with a fine layer of white powder. There is just enough snow for the village children to go sledging; or there would be, if their parents didn’t have better things to do, such as the Christmas shopping.

What remains of the parish birdlife is stung into urgent action, as the combination of hard weather and fewer hours of daylight means that it is much harder to find food. Jackdaws, rooks and the odd crow take to the air in loose flocks; tits and finches congregate on garden bird-feeders; and along the back lanes of the parish, a new influx of thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of winter thrushes has arrived.

Redwings and fieldfares are simply everywhere. They rise from the tops of the hedgerows, flitting along fifty or a hundred yards, before pulling their wings close to their body and plummeting back down again. These are newly arrived birds, forced south and west by the snow; an altogether more substantial replacement for the light and airy birds of spring and summer. The swallows left us barely six weeks ago, but are now living among the big game of the African savannah, with the sun warming their backs. Here, we continue to shiver in the cold.

IT IS THE
coldest, frostiest morning of this unexpected early-winter cold snap. In the weak warmth of the sun’s first rays, the world has turned not white, but shades of buff, brown and yellow. The tall stands of reeds, the hard earth in the fields, even the hedgerows – now trimmed as close as a military haircut – all bask in the glow of this early-morning light.

The birds fit this colour scheme too. Reed buntings sit on the broad, flat tops of the hedges, their plumage fluff ed up against the cold, while wrens and song thrushes flit in and out of the thick foliage beneath. How changed is the song thrush from the loud, confident songster of earlier in the year. Now he is furtive and solitary, in sharp contrast to his gregarious cousins the redwings and fieldfares.

The fields, long since cut for silage, are now a mixture of short grass and thick, loamy mud. In the bare twigs of the ash trees blue tits and great tits chatter, and the odd robin and wren call to one another. Occasionally, when the mood takes them, they utter a brief burst of song; the sweet notes piercing the winter air with the distant promise of spring. From time to time a new sound appears: a frantic, high-pitched seep-seep-seep, accompanied by a rather soft, chirping note. A dozen long-tailed tits flit along the hedgerow, separate yet together, as if connected to one another by invisible strands of elastic.

When you are close to a flock of long-tailed tits, the sense of intimacy is palpable. It’s not quite that they
don’t
notice us, more as if they don’t really care. By now the juveniles have moulted their first soft, coffee-and-cream-coloured plumage, and are indistinguishable from their parents. But they still stick together; as a friend of mine sagely noted, this is the only small bird that spends Christmas with its family.

Like most birds, the long-tailed tits don’t seem bothered by the light shower drifting down from a charcoal-grey sky – ‘leppery weather’ in the local parlance. Unless the rain gets heavier they won’t bother to seek shelter, but will keep searching for food, the soft raindrops bouncing off their delicate feathers.

Following a couple of cold spells back in the 1980s, a run of mild winters has led to a boom in numbers of this charismatic bird. The recent switch back to hard winters, with snow and below-freezing temperatures, has hit them less hard than we might have imagined; perhaps because they have learned, in the interim, to visit feeders in our gardens. Although they rarely stand up to their larger, tougher relatives, their ability to nip in and grab a few life-giving seeds has enabled them to survive even the coldest spells.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Jack Frost has returned with a vengeance, and now the scenery really has turned whiter-than-white: white trees, white hedgerows, white grass,
white
roofs and white sky. This is landscape in crystal form, only punctuated by the staccato notes of black birds as they dash across the sky or gather in the fields: chords of starlings, followed by the occasional crow, jackdaw or rook. And one brief splash of colour: a flock of goldfinches, whose crimsons and golds illuminate the landscape like a coloured frame added to an old black-and-white film.

Later, as the sun sets over Brent Knoll, a low ridge of cloud hangs over the Mendips, while a darker, more menacing wave arrives from the west. A strong, full moon begins to rise, gradually illuminating the flat, white landscape. A lone buzzard perches on top of a hawthorn hedge, surveying his misty white kingdom. Apart from a distant dog barking, and the hum of the milking parlour at Perry Farm, all is quiet; when it is as cold as this, no bird will waste energy in song. In the rhyne by the farm a lone heron stands rigid on the ice, as if fixed permanently to the spot. On catching sight of me he has just enough energy to flap those huge, rounded wings and fly away. I hope he finds some water, somewhere in this frozen land.

Soft, ghost-like, the mist surges westwards from the darkness, creating a blanket of vapour over the layer of snow beneath, like a counterpane laid carefully over a duvet. As it finally covers the land, the tops of trees and hedgerows poke out as if grasping towards the last few minutes of daylight, before they too are swathed in the mist.