New Beginnings

The first month of the year. A month of hope and new beginnings, a time to reflect, a time to watch for pretty nodding snowdrops. A cold month with biting winds and unhurried snowfalls, hitting the relatively warm earth and melting almost immediately.

Cold windless days, sun-filled, when the warmth through the window betrays the cold air that will quickly chill you, should you venture out to enjoy the sunshine.
Mornings of white frost rhyming the branches. Moorhen swimming in the pond – when it isn’t frozen – then scurrying across the lawn to take shelter under the magnolia, bright white under tails flashing as they hurry along. This year we have seven moorhens; the most we have ever had. The squirrel is a regular visitor, coming daily – they definitely do not hibernate as some people think. He is here even on very cold days, wet or dry. Sadly, we are now down to one; the other we found outside on the road, run over. I picked it up and was surprised at how heavy this tiny creature was. I could have buried it, perhaps I should have. I’m sure some people would think so. Instead I put it out for the fox, the same as we have for other road kills like rabbits or pheasants. Funny how one changes with the years. There was a time when I would have buried it to nourish the plants, but somehow, now it seems better to nourish fauna than flora.

The fox gladly seizes anything we leave on the lawn for him from cheese sandwiches and road killed animals to chicken carcasses after 3 days of boiling to make chicken soup.

One afternoon last week, Rick spotted a very small hedgehog making his way across the lawn from under a bush, we fed him snippets of cheese until his tiny tummy could take no more, and turning he made his way quickly back across the lawn and disappeared under the very same bush he had emerged from half an hour before.

Robins have been very plentiful this winter. We have had as many as eight at a time outside the kitchen window and never less than three at any time outside the living room window. Now suddenly blackbirds and thrushes are singing new songs and birds are pairing off. Where before we had seen so many in a group, now they are in pairs, always feeding together or perched near each other.

We continue to feed the foxes at night. Watching them is pure joy. This morning, however, we were in the lounge when we noticed one of them walking along the grassy border on the other side of the garden. Then he appeared from behind the greenhouse and sat at the corner of the lawn. We watched transfixed until this beautiful creature stood up and slowly made his way down to the end of the garden, retracing his steps. All day we were haunted by the fox’s unusual behavior – it was obviously aware of us watching through the window with our dogs. Why did he come?

Last night we put food out as usual, but it was still there at 5:20am untouched. At 6:30am the postman has arrived, but the fox has not. Now 7:15am: still no fox, but the first bird of the morning is here: turdus musicus, the song thrush. 7:23am now and a robin and a blackbird are eating the fox food. Even as I watch this sight I can hear the alarm calls of birds all around and these two flee. The fox is here, but he seems to have more on his mind than food. He stops briefly by the food and sniffs it, much to the noisy indignation of the dogs, who make up for their silent tolerance of last evening with insistent barking , so incensed are they by the fox’s broad daylight intrusion.

The pond is ice-covered and the bird baths solid. There are vestiges of snow still laying in places on the back lawn, and a robin pipes its cheery song to delight me. As soon as I am dressed I must fill up the bird baths with fresh water and break the ice on the pond. It is a cold grey-looking morning and the robin is the only bird to have cheerfully sung to welcome the day. A beautiful melody. A dunnock pecks at the edges of the fox food while a blackbird and a pair of robins stand sentinel. Around 7:45am the first great tit arrived, followed a couple of minutes later by the first blue tit.

I watched the blackbirds, thrushes and robins squabbling over the food and kept my eye on what appeared to be a thrush in the shrubs at the end of the garden. The light was not yet good enough to see it clearly, but I guessed it was a thrush from its size and shape. How nonplussed I was a minute later to observe white on its upper tail and lower back area as its wings parted to take flight. Perhaps if I had been using binoculars I would have been able to identify it.

Imagine my joy less than a minute later when on glancing across at the far back lawn I saw fieldfares and watched while they flew up into the malus tree, now almost bereft of fruit. Many gulls, terns and three cormorants flying over. It’s now 8:05am and a pair of magpies and a female chaffinch have joined the other birds feeding on the lawn. A pair of herons have just lazily circled over the garden, one of them noisily quarking as it landed by the river in the meadow beyond the paddock. The poor song thrush is still trying to eat, and it is little wonder they are still on the decline with sparrowhawks after them and bullying blackbirds preventing them from feeding. The magpie pair are now sat high in a tree unceasingly chattering. They are a strikingly handsome bird, but for all their size and seeming swagger, a lot of which is bravado, they are exceedingly timid of man. 8:15am and a song thrush has just “dive-bombed” the food and made off with a piece without stopping, and now is chased by a magpie. I have never before witnessed this “dive-bombing” approach to feeding by a song thrush. It is a foreign behavior to me; they usually creep up to their food, hanging about on the outer edges nervously while being harried by blackbirds, but this one was different. He must have been very hungry to adopt such unusual tactics.

It is now 8:23am and the squirrel has arrived. He checks out the fox food and moves on to hang upside down on the peanut holder in the big old apple tree, and takes his fill.