NATURE Fairy trees, feathered friends and forecasts

FEEDING TIME?Garden birds like this great tit will gratefully visit feeders, now that the last of the autumn berries are disappearing and the cold is setting in. 

Fairy trees, feathered friends and forecasts


Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

Late November; the season of decay. The last leaves lose their golden hue and meld seamlessly into the forest floor as our world melts upon itself once more. Beneath the carpet that they make myriad insects and other invertebrates are hard at work, over a billion of them in every acre. They chew and they eat, assisting fungi and bacteria to break down and recycle the vegetation that the year produced.
Above all this work the trees sleep and rest and rightly so, for they have played their part to the full. Only the ivy is coming into its own. The sweet smell of its copious nectar reaches far beyond the wood to draw hoverflies and the last of the wasps to drink a little more before they die. Queen wasps will find their way into our sheds to hibernate. They need somewhere cool and dry, like the toe end of those Wellington boots cast into the corner, or the bottom of a bag of logs. Beware.
A touch of frost lit up the gorse on the fen, so that when the sun rose it turned the land wonderfully gold for moments, at the same time as lights flicked on in the houses that line the lane. Clouds converged to grey the sky and the colours disappeared as our world creaked slowly into motion. The heron flapped by on its way to fish for frogs; ducks came to dabble at the waters edge; our friends drove past with a cheery wave, with the prospect of a day’s work in mind.
I met James on the bridge as blackbirds fell from the sky in a dark shower of time-weary travellers. Some fell upon the haws, others in the field. A few came down on the road, heedless of our presence. I tried to imagine how they felt; newly arrived from their Scandinavian homeland, the natives scolding and chasing; tired wings and a welcome feast of red berries.
Our resident blackbirds are only now beginning to gather into small, loose flocks which work their way down hedgerows and through the woods in search of the billion little beasts that live there. Only when the first real frosts drive these creatures deep into the leaf litter will they turn to the fruit of the hawthorn, those deep red berries that decorate the thorn hedges and fairy trees in abundance.
James shook his head and spoke of them in sombre terms. ‘A bad winter, for a certainty. I never liked to see so many berries. The birds will need them all.’
I asked him, quite pointedly, ‘What about the blackthorn? There’s not a single sloe to be found in the country. Surely that means an early spring?’
He was not to be moved, but shook his head in silence at my ignorance. I pressed my point. ‘Even the crab apples have failed. There’s no fruit on the spindle and when we went to gather acorns we found the oaks barren.’
‘Never mind that. It’s the red berries that tell the tale. You mark my words, as bad as it was back in April, it will be worse this time.’
Time will tell. The truth of the matter is as follows: The blackthorn and many other berry-bearing shrubs were coaxed into life by the early spring sunshine, but as soon as they put out flower buds the wind came in from north and east to pinch the developing blossom off and throw it to the ground. That same wind held the hawthorn back at least two weeks, and when that finally flowered the weather was suddenly warm and dry, which allowed an abundance of fruit to set, the same fruit that now feeds the flocks of foreign thrushes.
Neither James nor his peers will be convinced, and anyway, I know that the argument is already lost. Each cold shower, every icy gust, will be met with seemingly casual but carefully weighted comments. ‘Nature has a wonderful way of providing. It’s a good job there’s plenty of food for the birds.’
And so there is, at the moment. Still, there is no harm in our adding a little to the menu. Our mixture of suet and seeds has already been welcomed by great tits and coal tits, and as the days shorten we can expect visits from a number of other interesting species. We should keep a list, but we don’t.