Four Seasons

Spring beginning, winter ending, fat buds swelling
A new cycle of growth and rebirth, new beginnings.
Springtime sunshine, porcelain pink and white blossom.
Bullfinches and chaffinches furiously feeding, pecking and picking at buds.
Primroses, snowdrops, bluebells, buttercups, dandelions, daisies
Bees pollinating, petals falling, young fruit setting,
Pears, apples and plums, a promise of things to come.
Summer brings the June drop, rain to swell,
Sunshine to sweeten the fruit on the bough.
Sweet scent of flower-filled meadows.
Golden autumn brings fruit for jams and pies,
Aunt Margaret won prizes for her apple jelly,
Delicate pink, perfumed and sweet to taste,
From crabapples collected from a Dorset common.
Victoria plums dark and swollen, pregnant with ripeness
Wasps, now, tired and irritable,
Year’s work done, ready to sting,
Half-drunk and heady with the taste and sweet smell of juiciness
Dusk brings hungry hedgehogs, fattening ready for coming lean times,
Happily hunting, munching and crunching the slugs, gorging on fallen fruit.
Late autumn brings misty, moisty mornings and dew-damp grass to tread,
Coxes orange pippens, crisp, white, sweet and refreshing,
Chestnuts in prickly cases, to score and grill,
Burnt fingers, stripping charred shell,
Hot, sweet nuts, our bellies to fill.
Then winter bringing chill winds, silver sunsets, dark days, long nights,
Huddled inside ourselves, through windows we spy a happy sight,
Visiting fieldfares and redwings feasting on unclaimed windfalls,
Where our own thrushes and blackbirds were before and will be once more.
An odd bright morning lifting hearts and sending spirits soaring,
Reminding us of what is hiding ‘round winter’s dark corners,
A welcome ray of sunshine – a glimmer of hope for the future.
Winter a time of dark, dismal days, a time of reflection,
Promises made to ourselves, to alter our ways.
Winter a time for rest and rejuvenation
Trees settle and sleep, deeply sweetly
Replenishing their energies in readiness for spring.

A Starling in a Sunbeam

There’s a blackbird feeding from the bird table. Below lie scraps carelessly scattered by the greedy starlings. Immediately, I think I would rather see a blackbird feeding there than a starling – they sing a prettier tune, then, on reflection, I think of the times I’ve seen a starling trapped in a sunbeam, a more magical sight is hard to imagine, a real moment to treasure as his drabness is magically transformed into a coat of many colours suffused with a myriad hues.

Snails

Snails
Berries
Toadstools
Smell of the woodlands
Drifts of coloured leaves

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.

Winter Floods and Signs of Spring

A damp grey day. The rain is gentling down in a fine mist with the result that from the edge of the bird table, bird bath, and each leaf and twig hangs suspended in glistening brightness a raindrop making today’s grey world shyly pretty.

Spring really does feel just around the corner; bright yellow aconites are clustered around the old upright apple tree and under other trees and bushes are snowdrops, brightly white and delicately dancing in the slightest breeze. The hellebores are also opening in so many colours and shades: one the darkest green with a maroon edge through to green with cream and white to every shade of pink imaginable. Daffodils are in bud, bluebells are pushing their rich green leaves up through the leaf-littered earth and the clematis are covered in soft fresh green shoots.

I am watching the ponds carefully now for the first sign of frogs gathering in the early evening dusk and listening for the urgent croaking of the males. Will we be especially lucky this year, I wonder, and for the first time ever have baby newts?
The blue tits and robins are already nesting, and the other birds will soon follow suit.

The fox comes nightly on his rounds and I try to leave him a special tidbit to encourage him to keep calling – perhaps an egg or a cheese sandwich or some such treat. Not just to help him on hungry nights, but because I love to watch him, if I’m lucky enough to look outside at the right time. Also foxes like to eat rats and as we live near a river he is welcome to any that may stray this way when the river floods! Although truth be told, he normally dines on our feathered friends who live on the river and lake opposite.

Our lane has been flooded for most of the last week and so as I look out of the back window I imagine we live by the sea. The fields are flooded and the wind whipping across the water causes a wave action which is very pleasing to watch. The fields at the back have always been a perfect delight, but never more so than this year – most nights the sunset over them is breathtakingly beautiful even when it is in quiet golds, silvers and turquoises. Although the fields are flooded now and attracting all manner of birds, including a flock of Canada geese and five beautiful swans, the fields were special before the flood came for another reason: the farmer put sheep there to graze every morning and I could look out on an idyllic flock of sheep. The sheep are gone now, just as well considering the flood, but they are not forgotten, and hopefully will be back again one day.

The blackbirds, and there are many of them about today, are singing a new song in the past few days. It is their springtime and the song is so joyful and happy, it makes one glad to be alive.

The Birch Tree

I awoke this morning to find there were no lawns, no paths, no dips or hollows, the food for the fox was no more than a rounded mound and Mike’s tracks from the door across to the fox’s “table” were no more. All was a wide, white expanse. Snow covered every bush and picked out each stick untidily topping the wood pile. The branches of the fir trees were heavy white masses. On the birch tree each branch was painted white and the delicate tracery of birch twigs were snow covered.

Perhaps of all the trees in the garden, I love the birch tree the best. It is beautiful in every season: in spring with tiny, fresh green shoots, in summer blowing prettily in the wind and wearing a new coat of both green leaves and dainty catkins, in autumn alive and golden and so beautiful with the sun shining on it, and a blue expanse of sky behind, or on any dark night with a bright moon lighting it, or on a freezing cold winter morning with a bright sun and hoar frost covering.

Yes, the birch tree that gives nurture to so many insects and birds and so much joy to my grandson when he climbs it. He climbs as near to the top as the fragile upper branches allow, so he can see across the fields and rivers from our village and beyond to the houses and railway tracks of the nearby town and further even to the park.

It is December now, but in February I shall stand by the birch tree with my arms encircling its trunk and my face against its roughness and I shall almost believe I can feel the sap rising, and I come away feeling refreshed and alive, calm and peaceful, growing stronger from the mighty birch’s strength.

This morning I gazed at the birch tree with its myriad small branches hanging, and the whole a delicate filigree tracing against the backdrop of the bluest sky and all the while bathed in the brightest sunshine.

Tonight is a very bright night because of the moonlight reflected by the snow. I see the birch tree again looking splendid – a filigree tracery of snow covered branches and twigs.

Overnight, the temperature is expected to drop to minus 5C and tomorrow is forecast bright and sunny. I shall endeavour to rise early enough to catch its icy beauty with my camera, and maybe I shall be lucky enough to take a picture good enough to frame, and hang on the wall. I shall take photographs all up and down the lane.

September in the Garden

Winter approaches our part of the world. The morning air is damp and chill, autumn has suddenly arrived in all her splendour. The ripening apples are reflected in the reds, yellows and oranges of their loosening leaves. The roadsides are breathtaking and eye-catching in their beauty: the bright red of berries and leaves sit side by side with all other autumn colors and every imaginable shade of green. England is truly beautiful.

This week, in the garden, I have seen the expected garden birds, but also some less frequent visitors: a flycatcher, a jay, warblers, many wrens and robins already disputing their winter territories. The most fascinating bird has been the magpie. Some time ago I watched as one fed from the bird table and when satiated continued to collect bread in huge beakfuls and hide it in the gutters of a neighbour’s outbuilding. Recently, I watched as it collected food and hid it in the cracks of paving stones and under rocks, pushing and poking each piece until it was out of sight. Another morning, I watched as it buried bread in the lawn covering it with leaves, twigs and beakfuls of grass plucked from nearby. Magpies are such resourceful birds, a magpie will quickly clear a pile of food put out for the smaller birds, by hiding it away for his own needs later.

February in the Garden

The past few weeks we have been delighted by a siskin that joins the other birds feeding here, he is such a pretty little fellow. In Victorian times, they were caged and kept as pets, thank goodness we are more enlightened about such things now.

The moorhen spends a great deal of each day here, perching on the woodpile or up in a tree or bush, swimming on the larger pond or just wandering around and about the lawns. He eats just about anything and tucks in with great relish. The other birds take no notice of him and he ignores them. The heavy snowfall of a few days ago, which so delighted us humans, and caused us to head for the nearest hill, sleds and toboggans in tow, was not such a delight for the poor birds. So our first duty was to fill all the bathing and drinking containers around the garden with fresh water, knock the lumps of ice out of them, sweep and clear the lawned areas, and then put out extra food for our feathered friends, who then duly came to feast. Redwings and fieldfares had returned to the malus tree to fill up on the many red fruits still hanging there. I was pleased to see the redwings joining the other birds on the back lawn and feed with them. The snow also brought many extra thrushes to the garden. I noticed that the sheltered spot by our front door, where the ducks used to sleep last year, had been used by a thrush eating snails. The thrush had been using an old metal boot remover as an anvil. Robins have started their nest in the bank at the back. Last night I spent ten minutes outside after dark listening to a tawny owl calling.

Honeysuckle

During early summer when the nights are still or the wind is in the right direction, our senses are assailed by the wonderful perfume from the honeysuckle that clambers over the long since dead pear tree. Today I pruned the honeysuckle back hard and with a modicum of care, because although there are very few honeysuckle blooms left, the tree is now covered by long hanging chains of passion flowers, and although they don’t have the glorious perfume of the honeysuckle they are so startling to look at and another bonus is that the bees and other insects love them.