Squirrels, Magpies and Pigeons

It is the beginning of the second week of January. Already Christmas is a fast-receding memory, as happens if you do not celebrate it in your own home. It is almost as if it did not happen. No decorations to take down, no leftovers in the fridge, and no tree in sight.

A squirrel is on the window sill. A magpie flies in and settles on the topmost branches of the apple tree. The squirrel bangs on the window. I wave to him and cross the kitchen to fetch a biscuit and a handful of peanuts. As I reach for the key to unlock the window he cannot contain his excitement, and rushes forward to claim his breakfast. He acts like this most mornings and runs too far so that he is sitting right behind where the window will swing open. I wait, so he does too. I wave the window past him to a nearby window, but still he sits there, little paws clasping each other at chest level. I try twice more and it makes no difference. With a sigh I gently move the window a fraction. For a brief second, he turns his head towards me before scrabbling madly and falling to the grass-covered path below. I toss the biscuit down to him. How much more satisfying, I think to myself, are the mornings when I can place the biscuit into his tiny paws and watch him sit there eating, and then afterwards lick clean every part of his paws, and follow it up by washing his face. This way it is so undignified – the biscuit has fallen on a paving stone and shattered into a dozen pieces. I throw another one, taking care this time to drop it on to the grass. He has not noticed because he is still running around cleaning up all the pieces of the first biscuit. Picking up a piece, he is off and running across the lawn, round the old apple tree.

The magpie is watching. He has not moved from his perch yet, only turned his head to follow the squirrel’s progress. As the squirrel reaches the bottom lawn, the magpie flies down and starts hopping after him keeping his distance. The squirrel is now under the magnolia. He has cleared the leaf litter to expose a patch of bare earth. He puts the biscuit piece down and carefully covers it with the leaf litter, putting it in place with his paws, adjusts it again and pats it, then with a satisfied bound has turned and is running back. He picks up another piece and runs to the middle of the lawn, where he holds the biscuit in his mouth while he digs a hole. As he buries it, I glance across at the magpie who is busy recovering the first hidden piece of biscuit from under the magnolia. This will continue until the squirrel has hidden all the pieces and the magpie has retrieved and devoured each one.

Another squirrel comes and picks up the whole biscuit and takes it back to the lawn where he starts feasting. Unfortunately for him, the first squirrel has seen and a merry chase follows.

The four pigeons have come for breakfast. I never wanted pigeons – only the small garden birds, but four years ago, I found one with a broken wing hiding in the bushes and fed him. He was unable to fly again for many months, then he learned to climb bushes and glide down from them, and after a while short hops and small flights, and now, even though his wings sticks out at right angles to his body and brushes the ground, he can fly as well as any other pigeon. During the months when he was grounded I was so worried the fox would get him that I put out double and triple portions of food so that the fox would not go hungry and look for more. To my joy the broken wing pigeon survived.

About a year after Broken Wing, another pigeon joined us. I was not pleased about this, but he looked in such a bad way – he had lost all his tail and such trouble walking – that I felt moved to allow him to stay. So these two enjoyed a free banquet every morning. In time it became clear that Broken Wing and No Tail did not like each other, although usually tolerant, sometimes one would chase the other away. Anyway, now Broken Wing is stronger and No Tail has started growing a tuft where her tail should be, they have both found mates, and the four of them feed happily together each morning, and spend many hours either in the magnolia or the birch tree. So I feel beholden to the first two pigeons, and accept their mates gracefully. After all, are not pigeons the gentle giants of the bird world?

Feeding the Birds on a Freezing Morning

It is a cold day today. The temperature not much above freezing, with ice patches on the lawn and hesitant snowflakes swept down on the chill wind.

I saw blue tits and great tits waiting when I came into the kitchen. I quickly opened the window and tossed out some peanuts and mixed seeds. I soaked two slices of bread in lukewarm water and breaking it into pieces, sent that out as well. Taking a handful of peanuts I ranged them along the outside window sill, where before I had even finished a cheeky blue tit had already taken one. Blackbirds and robins were alternately feeding and squabbling over the food, not with each, but with other birds of their own kind.

I was pleased to see a thrush snatching and gobbling food on the outskirts. Blackbirds really enjoy the fruit peelings put out each day, and I sometimes wonder if I boiled up the root vegetable peelings to soften them, whether the blackbirds would enjoy those too. Of course, suet is another welcome food, unfortunately I have run out of it.

I am glad the malus tree, which had such a heavy crop in the autumn, maybe the best yet, although fed on every day, still has hundreds of crabapples left. It is such a vital supply to so many. Blackbirds love it and I am surprise not to see the thrushes in it more often. This morning we had three jays feasting there. Pigeons also spend a great deal of time enjoying its fruits as do squirrels. The most surprising visitor to the malus tree was a pair of sparrowhawks. This was witnessed by my neighbor and her friend who were delighted.

Sparrowhawks fill me with mixed emotions. I have watched them catch, pluck, and slowly kill blackbirds, collared doves, and even one after the other tiny blue tits. I have to be philosophical about these happenings though, as I have positively delighted in watching the tawny owl catch voles – and do not voles have as much right to life as blue tits? Does the sparrowhawk not need to eat as the tawny owl does?

Every creature is so hungry today and many times I have put food out for them. It is a good thing that I am prepared with plentiful stocks on hand. It causes much amusement, when each year I ask family members for bird food as my Christmas or birthday gift. I hear people whispering about me being eccentric, which I probably am, but many years ago I read our wants are endless, but our needs are few. It struck me how true this was.

Noisy Duck

The weather here has been so grey, gloomy, damp and dank lately. This morning I came through from the bedroom and was surprised to see no creatures waiting by the patio doors in the lounge, so I did my inhalers, and went through to the kitchen to nebulize antibiotics. After at least half an hour through the window I could hear a loud noise. I went to the side kitchen window and looked out – there were seven female pheasants and their male admirer. He is a splendid looking fellow, who spends most of his day puffed up and strutting around the garden to show his lady friends what an admirable looking chap he is! Usually he is waiting by the patio doors and imperiously tapping to let me know he is ready to be served breakfast, but today he was waiting with his harem outside the kitchen window, also waiting with them were the duck pair, a robin, a blackbird, a blue tit, a magpie, and three squirrels, all in the pouring rain and all waiting patiently except for the female duck who was looking very indignant and making more noise than I could have believed possible.

A Forest For The People

In the autumn I went to Hatfield Forest
I came home with these images:

Reflections on the water
Drifts of dead wood anchored on lake edges, giving the scene an otherworldly look
Amazing fungus
Beetles, some common others never seen before.
Dragonflies and insects
Trees of all sizes, shades and shapes
Clean air
Gentle cows and soft-eyed, fluffy-coated calves
Ducks and geese, swimming, flying, walking or just resting by the lakes.
Black swans with red beaks and ruffled black back
Coots and moorhens
Endless clouds of thistledown floating past loosened by flocks of goldfinches sitting atop drifts of those seedheads.
Endless variety of birdsong.
Thrushes, magpies, blackbirds, jays, robins, warblers, and chaffinches were but a few of our sightings.
Yellow meadow ants.
Pastures rich in anthills, food for green woodpeckers.
More green woodpeckers than I have ever seen before in any one area.
The combination of water, meadow and ancient forest makes this a very special place for nature.
The magical trunks of some trees, vast and ageless with gnarled and twisted limbs reaching forth.
Giant redwoods, or were they pines? – telegraph pole tall and leaning drunkenly toward each other.
In the groves, sloes, elderberries, blackberries.
Hum of insects, buzz of bees and always the song of birds.

Calm and stillness that creeps up on you, filling your soul with peace and tranquility, and giving one such a sense of well-being.

These were the memories and thoughts that followed me home and I asked myself, what will happen to this wonderful place of water, grass and trees? This remarkable medieval forest – the oldest and only one surviving in Britain, when even more planes roar overhead and pollution slowly kills the life therein – where will the people go then? I woke in the night and thought I heard the distant trees calling to me, “Save us please”.
Who will help them?
Will you?

PS… and I haven’t even mentioned the myriad wild flowers, wonderful grasses, butterflies or moths.

Pheasants in the Sun

Even pheasants scurry across the open fields with the sun on their plumage, echoing the color of the trees autumn coats.

Those trees that are not waving scary bony fingers and bare arms at me are beautiful, reds, yellows, orange and brown, with a smattering of green left on some.

We saw a flurry of scurrying pheasants hurrying across an open field of old beige cornstalks, the sun lit their plumage and reflected the rich autumn shades we could see in the nearby trees.

SparrowHawk

Sparrowhawk orange breast and full of zest
Knows what his chicks like best
Watching hungering, tireless
Plucking from the air, morsels helpless
Against mighty claws defenseless
Fluttering feathers: yellow and blue
While in a hole orphaned gapes lessen
Slowly droop, lackluster eyes close
And quietly, another motherless brood dies

Squirrel Play

Today I saw another first – so many firsts in this garden. How often have we said, “There can be no more firsts left”, and yet we were yet again proved wrong, because the behavior of a grey squirrel is different to any I have previously seen. Often we have seen squirrels running after each other, jumping , chasing, dodging, and I have wondered is this territorial, part of a mating ritual, or are they just playing? When the squirrels are young I can accept that it is learning to survive through what appears to be play, however, when a fully grown adult and very well nourished squirrel (all the squirrels here are fed on demand, and so don’t have the worry of finding food), picks up a piece of wood longer than the length of his head and body together and half as wide, and starts tossing it about, catching it, leaping on to it, rolling around with it and continues on for several minutes, only to drop it between logs in the log pile, and despite several attempts to fetch it, looking down the gap, then I have to concede that squirrels do play.

Woodpecker Digs a Hole

Today I chanced to choose an appropriate time to inhale my nebulized antibiotics. Glancing out of the kitchen window I saw a female green woodpecker in her usual place on the lawn busily working. Moss and grass tufts flew several inches in all directions as she dug, at first a fairly small hole and then deepening it. She gradually enlarged it, always from the edge she had previously dug and deepening each section as she worked before widening the hole again. She stayed for just under an hour and by this time the hole was seven inches wide, five inches long, and four inches deep. A grey squirrel happened by and then became very interested, obviously thinking the green woodpecker was after a cache of peanuts stored for a hungry day. The squirrel tried to muscle in on the act. He approached cautiously with pauses and many tail flicks and lashings. At first the green woodpecker seemed unfazed, but as the squirrel was six feet away he stood upright and threw all his feathers outward until he looked more like an owl than a woodpecker. The, by now, hesitant squirrel moved alternately closer and further away, and then with a quick move he was there beside the hole, and the puffed up woodpecker backed off, but only 8 to 12 inches and still stood upright and puffed up. He waited and watched while the squirrel checked out the hole. Finding it disappointingly empty, he ran off. Immediately, the green woodpecker returned and continued digging. She was joined briefly by a male green woodpecker, but mainly, the other interested spectators were other birds: blackbirds, robins, and house sparrows, who observed as if they were human and watching a football match, heads following every thrown tussock and blade, standing only two or three inches away from her. The robin, at one point, darted forward, picked up something and was gone. After almost an hour she moved to other sites around the lawn, where she poked her beak down and held still for a few seconds before moving to a new site.

The great tits have been excitedly in and out of, and all over, their nesting box, and the long-tailed tits have been feeding ravenously from the lawn as have the blue tits who ignore peanuts and sunflower seeds in favor of sodden bread which they carry off to the nearby bushes in lumps as large or larger than their own bodies.

We are very glad to see song thrushes in the garden. Though, each year, their numbers seem to deplete and yet we are still lucky enough to have them here. The mistle thrush pair are still here, which makes me glad. Chaffinch and greenfinch are not as plentiful as in other years, but at least some of each are still around as are the pretty red-faced goldfinches. House sparrow and starling numbers are again building, which is good, but as always blackbirds, robins and wrens are so dominant it is impossible to look outside without seeing them all.

Collared doves, pigeons, pheasants, great and little spotted woodpeckers, and moorhens are our other guests, they will all be joined by nesting mallards in the spring, and just once earlier this winter, we were delighted to watch a woodcock in the garden.

Red-legged partridges have been absent this winter, although we do still have little and tawny owls and crows. Many cormorants fly overhead and for the first time ever we have had flocks of gulls feeding here.

Preadult Mayfly

Today I saw a strange insect resting on the kitchen window. It was colored in different shades of brown. Its wings were held straight out at the back and together, and it had amazingly long front legs. There browny blotches on its wings. I looked it up and discovered it was from the family Ephemeroptera, that is, it was a mayfly. On reading further I discovered it was a male and, from its appearance, had recently emerged from a nymphal case, and had not yet reached the final stage of its metamorphosis known as the sub-imago – it is a winged preadult life stage unique to the mayfly among all insect species. It usually rests among vegetation waiting for the final moulting stage to occur revealing the fully clothed mayfly or spinner as they are also known. Sadly, their life is very short: they will mate and if female lay eggs and in a just a few hours they will probably be dead.