Wild Hares and Hummingbirds

by Stephen Moss

  In one of his early poems, John Clare wrote of seeing two swallows hawking for insects in late October, and how he wished they could stay for the whole of the winter:

  For in the unsocial weather ye would fling

  Gleanings of comfort through the winter wide

  Twittering as wont above the old fireside

  And cheat the surly winter into spring.

  Some swallows stay even later: a couple of years ago, on a wet and windy day in early December, my neighbour Mick telephoned me to report a single swallow flying around the field next to his allotment, just across the road from my home. I must admit I was sceptical, until he showed me a brief snatch of video footage he had taken of the bird. It was, indeed, a swallow; though sadly I doubt if it ever made it all the way to Africa.

  I look up, and the swallows have already gone: refuelled, restocked and refreshed. I say a silent goodbye. This may seem self-indulgent, but given that these birds are so much a part of my life, and the life of my fellow villagers, I shall miss them; until they return to visit us once again, half a year from now.

  A CHILLY DAWN; not quite the first frost, although one is forecast for tomorrow night. Now, at half past six in the morning, the skies are totally clear, the stars of the Plough and Orion’s Belt still shine directly above the village, and the eastern sky is beginning to glow a dull shade of red. A sense of anticipation is in the air, too; for we are going bird-ringing.

  Last night I spent an hour fumbling around in the darkness setting up three mist-nets, with my friend and fellow-birder Ed, a qualified bird-ringer. First brought to Britain from Japan back in the 1950s, mist-nets are a truly amazing piece of equipment. Stretched between two sturdy metal poles, they allow us to catch a bird without harming it. The unsuspecting creature simply flies into the ultra-fine net, drops down into a pouch below, and waits there calmly until the ringer extracts it; a process which Ed carries out with considerable skill and care.

  By seven o’clock dawn has broken, the stars are rapidly fading in the sky, and a wren is singing his unseasonal song in the blackthorn and cider-apple hedgerow along the western side of the garden. As well as the morning chill I feel a frisson of anticipation: will we catch any birds, or will our nets remain empty?

  But we immediately score a bullseye, in the shape of two wrens, one rather more crotchety than his companion. Ed carefully removes these ‘flying mice’, as he calls them, expertly untangling their long claws and slipping each bird head first into its own small, cotton bag. We return to the back of his car where he has set up an impromptu ringing station. Each bird is weighed and measured, revealing that one wren is slightly larger than its companion, weighing in at over a third of an ounce.

  Then, most importantly, a tiny metal ring is placed around its leg, before being squeezed gently shut with a pair of special pliers. My colleague Ruth dutifully notes down the statistics, which are sent to the British Trust for Ornithology for analysis and safe keeping. So even if the bird is never found again, the data obtained by catching it will be invaluable in extending our knowledge about our birds.

  The children have roused themselves from their beds to watch, so rapt with attention they don’t appear to be feeling the morning cold. Subsequent net rounds produce a final total of seventeen birds from ten different species, ranging in size from a young male blackbird, weighing almost 100 grams to a tiny goldcrest, which at just 5 grams is exactly half the weight of the larger of the two wrens. We also catch seven goldfinches, as well as a single chiffchaff, house sparrow, blue tit, great tit, dunnock and robin. Each of the children gets the chance to release a bird; cradling its soft body in their cupped hands, before slowly opening them and watching as it regains its freedom. It is an experience I hope they never forget.

  We speculate on how far these little birds have come. Although the majority are likely to have hatched out nearby, perhaps even in the garden itself, others could have travelled much further. Even the tiny goldcrest might have flown all the way across the North Sea. If he has, he is not the only one to have come so far. This morning, as we unfurled the nets for the first time, a high-pitched ‘seep’ from the sky above signalled the very first redwing of the autumn. It had flown here from Iceland or Scandinavia, and was passing over the parish on its way south, possibly to France. Later on, we saw the very last swallows of the year heading over the field behind Mill Batch. For the first time I can recall, I have witnessed these summer visitors leaving on the same day as the first birds of winter arrive.

  AS THE WEATHER turns colder, and the vegetation begins its long, slow retreat towards winter, so the wildlife of the parish becomes easier to see. This is partly due to necessity, as the lower temperatures and shorter days mean they must forage for food in a more concentrated timespan. The days of lazing around out of sight are over; time is now precious, and we human observers are reaping the benefit.

  So one morning I get my best-ever view of a stoat – a ruthlessly effective mammalian predator. The sighting comes as I approach at thirty miles per hour, in the comfort of my car, rather than on my usual mode of transport, the bicycle. With stoats, all I usually see is a black-tipped tail vanishing into the long grass; or, on one memorable occasion, the momentary glimpse of the whole animal, frozen in mid-air, as it dived for cover. Today, though, this animal is far more cooperative, and I am able to watch it through binoculars (and a rather grubby windscreen) for upwards of a minute, which, when you are talking about this particular creature, feels like an age.

  I take in its sheer splendour: the long and bushy tail; the chestnut-brown head, face and upperparts; small, rounded ears; and, most striking of all as it lollops along the edge of the roadside towards me, the soft, creamy-yellow underparts, extending from just beneath its chin to its belly. I hold my breath as it approaches; and then, aware that it is being watched, it returns to form and zips into the grass beneath the hedgerow, never to reappear.

  ONE COLD EVENING I don my quilted jacket, gloves and hat, and cycle over to Rick and Heather’s home in Harp Road. Both come from well-known local farming families, and both have lived in the village all their lives; Rick still farms the fields and yard next to my home, shearing his sheep or holding his cattle in the pens there.

  We discuss the many changes since his childhood, in the decades after the Second World War. His own father, Reg, started with almost nothing – just a handful of dairy cattle he took when he left his mother and stepfather’s farm at the age of sixteen. He and Rick’s mother worked hard to build up a successful business, growing and selling anything they could, so Rick and his sisters were enlisted as extra farmhands from an early age. He recalls hoeing the hard earth to grow swedes as winter food for the cattle; and how his father used to ride home on his bike, a milk pail balanced with one arm on his head.

  In those days the majority of the farms around the village were home to a herd of dairy cattle. But the drop in the farm-gate price for milk, together with golden handshakes for getting out of milk production, eventually sounded the death knell for the local dairy industry. Today, of the fifteen or so working farms in the parish, only a handful produce milk. One of these, Perry Farm, is right behind our home; so we can still see the cows being taken to and from their pasture, every morning and evening.

  Rick has seen many changes in the wildlife of the parish. Hares were once common; while buzzards – indeed any bird of prey apart from the kestrel – were a very unusual sight up to about ten years ago. House sparrows are still here in small flocks, but in those days they thronged the field over the road in their thousands, feeding on barley and flying up into the hedgerow when anyone came within sight.

  On my ride home, I head along the back route of Northwick Road, which has been converted from a muddy drove into a tarmac lane within Rick’s and Heather’s lifetimes. Along the way I hear a curious sound, rather like a cross between a barking dog and the cry of the lapwing. It is a little owl, calling in the darkness, out of sight. I do see this elusive bird in the parish from
time to time, as it mainly hunts by day; but did not know there was a territory here until now.

  My nocturnal surprises are not quite over. As I reach the main road through the centre of the village, a movement along the pavement catches my eye. It is a badger, loping along towards me utterly unaware of my presence; until the light westerly breeze wafts my scent towards him. He immediately stops, lifts his nose, sniffs, then dives away into an adjacent garden.

  Before I left, Rick had presented me with a gift: two brace of partridge. These are the French or red-legged rather than the native English grey variety, which he shot down on the levels a day or two ago. I bring them home, tucked into my cycle pannier, before hanging them on a hook by our back door.

  This presents me with a dilemma: not a moral but a purely practical one. Although I wouldn’t choose to do it myself, I have no problem with my neighbours shooting game birds in season; provided that the birds are subsequently eaten. But as a townie by birth and upbringing, I have absolutely no clue how to pluck, draw and prepare a partridge.

  Fortunately we have established a good relationship with our local butcher’s in Wedmore; so I give Mike a quick ring. Plucking them will take too long, he tells me; but he will have them skinned and the guts removed by Tuesday if I can pop them over. Before I do, I take a closer look at the subtle shades of their plumage and admire the way that the blacks, greys and chestnuts seem to merge into one another. Their scarlet feet, with their outsized toes for running rapidly across uneven ground, hang limp and motionless beneath their lifeless bodies.

  ALONG THE SOUTHERN border of the parish, the River Brue meanders slowly but steadily westwards, passing through the hamlet of Bason Bridge, then beneath the M5 motorway. It skirts the town of Highbridge before, five miles or so from here, it finally reaches the sea. Well, not exactly the sea. The mouth of the Brue disgorges its waters into another, larger river, the Parrett, both then mingling with waters from the longest of all our rivers, the Severn, in Bridgwater Bay.

  To reach the estuary I park in Clyce Road, named after the local word for a sluice gate. I cross a footbridge over the river, then a stile, and immediately the vista opens out from suburban sprawl into an open, windswept landscape.

  It may be two hours after dawn, but a strong, full moon is still in the sky, while the autumn sun reflects a motley selection of pleasure boats in the water. As the river widens, the usual mallards and mute swans feed on the still, calm waters; while a touch of exotica is added by the presence of a little egret. No matter how often I see them, egrets always compel me to take a closer look. Wings bowed, neck hunched, legs trailing behind, this vision of pure white crosses over the river and seeks refuge in the reedbed on the far side.

  The sound of distant herring gulls lends the scene a maritime air. But this is an illusion: the waters ahead of me are more river than sea, despite their breadth. One difference is the smell: Bridgwater Bay may look and sound like the sea, but it certainly doesn’t have the tangy, salty scent of true coastline.

  Nevertheless, the meeting of these three rivers, all of which are tidal here, does create the ideal habitat for many coastal birds. In the far distance, over the shingle promontory of Steart, I can already see clouds of waders flashing pale and dark in the morning light. Small flocks of lapwings and curlews have come inland to feed on low-lying grassy fields while the tide is at its full height, covering their feeding areas for an hour or two. The curlews probe delicately into the muddy earth with that impossibly long, downcurved bill. Then, flushed by a dog-walker and his beast, they rise up into the air and wheel back towards the coast, uttering the evocative whistling call that gives them their name.

  Another high-pitched sound, and a flash of colour and movement catches my eye: that little jewel of a bird, the kingfisher. It flies up the river channel, and I wait for it to disappear as they usually do. But to my delight it turns and lands on a small mooring post by the bank, a hundred yards or so before the river’s mouth, giving me a wonderful view.

  To call a kingfisher ‘blue’ is to underrate both the colour and the bird; for it ranges through a dazzling palette of turquoise, green, electric-blue and indigo, depending on the angle at which the bird is facing, while the rusty orange underparts seem to reflect the sun itself. No doubt this bird will spend the winter here: their fishy diet makes kingfishers especially vulnerable to hard winters, but it can be sure that however harsh the weather becomes, these estuarine waters will not freeze over.

  I pass through a modern, and rather unromantic, kissing gate; and a few yards further on, after one last meander, the Brue finally reaches its destination. The path bends southwards along the eastern side of the bay, parallel to the sea wall, and I stop to take in the scene before me: the Quantock Hills to my left, and the island of Steep Holm to the right.

  Across the mouth of the River Parrett, vast flocks of waders are twisting and turning, moving like a single, protean organism. They flash black and white as they change direction in an instant, before returning to their high-tide roost on the shingle spit. Despite the chilly air, a thin layer of heat-haze forms ripples across the surface of the water; and this, combined with the movement of the birds, creates a bizarre optical effect.

  As they come closer I can see that what I thought was one flock is, in fact, two: the smaller group being dunlins, and the larger, presumably, knots. It is liberating to be so far away that I can forget about looking at the detail of their plumage, and simply concentrate on their aesthetic qualities. As they loop, I relish the sheer pleasure of watching these birds, like vast shoals of fish, weaving complex patterns through the fresh morning air.

  What better testimony than the scene in front of me, against the hare-brained, and fortunately now defunct, scheme to harness the tidal energy of the River Severn by building a massive barrage across its mouth. A barrage which, had it gone ahead, would have destroyed this unique habitat, and driven the birds away for ever.

  Further along, on a rough patch of grass dotted with the odd pool of water, there are little flocks of starlings, meadow pipits and skylarks, all feeding on the damp, grassy area behind the sea wall. Accompanying them, to my surprise, is a rather late wheatear. This perky little bird bobs up and down on lichen-covered boulders, flicking its tail, and then running across the short, cropped grass. Tonight, if the skies remain clear, it will head off, southwards to Africa. The one I saw in the parish back in September will already be there.

  The pipits keep up a constant calling: a light, thin, high-pitched ‘sip’. From time to time the skylarks join in, with a burst of notes and even, occasionally, a snatch of full song. The sounds of autumn are much less varied than those of spring, but they have their own special charm, especially against the gentle lapping of waves over mud, as the tide begins to drop.

  I turn for home. Thus ends my brief excursion beyond the western borders of the parish; to a place which, although utterly different in landscape and character, is umbilically connected by the River Brue to my home patch. The link between the village on the levels, and the open sea, may be well hidden, but it is still deep and true.

  NOVEMBER

  ALL SAINTS’ DAY, at the beginning of November, often marks a dramatic change in the weather, as the last traces of summer finally fade, and the true character of autumn is revealed. Some years this is marked by hard frosts, but our unpredictable climate means that dank, wet weather is equally likely.

  When Atlantic weather systems dominate, wave after wave of depressions sweep across that vast ocean, and funnel up the Bristol Channel, bringing more rain to an already sodden landscape. The ground soaks up the extra water for a while, but as the weeks go by the roads are awash with muddy puddles, while little pools begin to form on the fields. Day after day, the west wind whips across this flat, open land, battering the stunted trees and hedges into submission.

  Just when the memory of the departed birds of summer is fading, the winter visitors start to arrive. Each night, the thin, high-pitched calls of redwings fall fro
m the darkness like showers of autumn rain. They have come from Iceland and Scandinavia, where they breed in the low thickets of dwarf willow and birch alongside streams and bogs, or under the eaves of rural barns. I once saw a singing redwing in Iceland, and was struck by the blandness of its song; a less tuneful version of a thrush or blackbird, without the sweetness of either. But here, in their winter quarters, their only sound is this single, sibilant note.

  By November redwings are here in force, thronging the hedgerows of the parish. As cars pass by they scatter into the air like sparks blown from a bonfire; an appropriate image, for one of their local names is ‘wind thrush’. Although they are often mistaken for starlings, there is something about their silhouette, with their blunter wings and plumper body, which marks them out as different. Only when they gather in the muddy fields to feed does their beauty reveal itself. Neater and darker than the song thrush, they show a rich, rusty-orange patch on their flanks, and a broad, creamy stripe running just above each eye.

  Whenever I see redwings, their larger cousin the fieldfare is not usually far away. This is another striking and colourful bird, its deep chestnut back contrasting with a pale grey head, and creamy-yellow underparts marked with bold, black chevrons. Noticeably longer and bulkier than the redwing, this lanky thrush is another winter visitor here, crossing the North Sea from Scandinavia. As a child I recall seeing huge squadrons of fieldfares heading south-west over the flat north Norfolk landscape, uttering the harsh, chacking call which signals their annual appearance.