WILD HARES AND
HUMMINGBIRDS

AS THE OLD year gives way to the new, a hard frost grips the land, coating every surface with a thin layer of white. The rhynes – water-filled ditches that criss-cross this flat, wintry landscape – have frozen solid. But the broader, deeper channel opposite the White Horse Inn still contains a few patches of water and mud. A couple of moorhens are feeding, their long, green toes allowing them to walk across the broken shards of ice.

Nearby, a small, hunched, brown bird with an impossibly long bill is also looking for food, optimistically probing the half-frozen mud. It is a snipe: not a local bird like the moorhens, but an immigrant from northern Europe. Earlier this winter it flew across the North Sea from Scandinavia, in search of a milder climate. It must be wondering why it bothered.

A local cyclist pedals by. The snipe stops feeding, cocks its head to one side, and crouches back on its short legs. At the last possible moment the bird springs up into the air on powerful, pointed wings – its fast, zigzagging flight designed to confuse a chasing predator, or foil a hunter with a shotgun.

As it departs, the snipe utters a curious call, rather like the sound of a muffled sneeze, or perhaps a boot being pulled out of sticky mud – an appropriate image given the bird’s usual habitat. The moorhens, long used to the steady traffic of people along the edge of the rhyne, ignore the interruption and continue to feed.

AT THIS TIME of year, in the dead of winter, the wildlife of the parish is best defined by what is not here, rather than what is – not by presence, but by absence. Four months have passed since the swallows last twittered over the barns at Mill Batch Farm; even longer since the meadows along Vole Road hummed with the sound of bumblebees, and meadowsweet and willowherb blossomed along the narrow lanes towards Chapel Allerton.

This seasonal rhythm is the key to life here, as it is all across the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, from County Kerry in the west to Kamchatka in the east. Those swallows, bumblebees and wild flowers are not simply memories of the year now passed, but a distant promise of the spring and summer yet to come.

It is hard to believe, as I gaze over this monochrome landscape of frost, water and mud, that in just three months’ time the parish will be transformed into a scene of full, glorious colour. There will be myriads of birds and flowers, insects and mammals, all engaged in the frantic race to reproduce which defines spring. This scenario will be replicated, in different ways, across this little cluster of islands, lying just off the edge of the world’s greatest land mass.

But however hard I look now, in the dead of winter, I cannot see most of the plants and animals that make their home here in the village. Some, like the swallows and red admirals, have disappeared altogether, and are now many thousands of miles away. The swallows have travelled the farthest, all the way to the southern tip of Africa. As I and my fellow villagers shiver in the winter cold, they are swooping around the legs of elephants and giraffes, at a muddy waterhole alongside Kipling’s great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River. They will remain there until the time of the spring equinox, when they will begin their long journey northwards, back to our shores.

The red admirals – those visions of elegance in black, white and orange – have not travelled quite so far. They left us back in the autumn, and flew south to the shores of the Mediterranean. There in Andalucía, home of sherry, bullfighting and flamenco, they laid their eggs; then, their mission complete, they died. Now, in the midst of our winter, their caterpillars have already emerged under warm Spanish skies, and are feeding voraciously on fresh green nettles. Soon they will pupate, and eventually, in a month or two, emerge as the next generation of adult butterflies. These, in turn, will head northwards in April; and with luck, and a following wind, will be back here in the village gardens by the end of May.

But what of the badgers and beetles, slow-worms and small tortoiseshells, newts and bats? These creatures lack both the ability and instinct to make the epic global journey of the swallow or red admiral, and must stay put for the winter. Each is now well out of sight: either in full hibernation, or simply lying low until spring finally comes, and it can resume its active life.

The badgers hide away in their underground setts, occasionally emerging to grub up earthworms and beetles to keep up their energy levels. The slow-worms, frogs and newts are tucked inside log-piles, deep in hibernation, having slowed down their metabolism close to zero for the duration of the winter. And the small tortoiseshell butterflies? They have sought out nooks and crannies in woodsheds and garages, closing their wings to hide their colourful pattern, to avoid being found and eaten by a passing wood mouse. They will remain there, torpid and motionless, until a sunny day in March, when their wings will once again unfold and take to the air, delighting those of us who are searching for signs of spring.

Yet despite the temporary disappearance of these creatures, and the bleakness of the hard, frozen landscape, there are still some signs of life. Flocks of lapwings fly over the village centre, their strong, rounded wings giving them the look of butterfly swimmers as they surge through the still, cold air. And in the tall ash trees that emerge from this horizontal landscape like city skyscrapers, glossy blue-black rooks are already inspecting last year’s nests. Some carry twigs in their beaks, to make repairs, ready to lay their clutch of three or four greenish-blue eggs early in the New Year – well before the leaves are on the trees.

Along the lanes leading out of the village, fieldfares and redwings throng the hedgerows, greedily gulping down the last remaining berries. These smart, colourful thrushes are winter visitors, who arrived last autumn from the north and east, in search of food. Food is also the top priority for the sparrows, robins, tits and finches congregating in the centre of the village, where my fellow parishioners generously provide kitchen scraps, nuts and seeds to keep the birds alive at this difficult time.

Whether these small birds survive the winter depends on two things: the prevailing weather pattern – either mild and damp, or cold and snowy – and the food and water we provide. Only when spring finally comes will we in the parish, and in towns and villages throughout Britain, discover the fate of these, some of our best-loved wild creatures.

THE PARISH CHURCH is by far the tallest and most impressive building in the village – a landmark visible from every corner of the parish, and often beyond. It is the oldest of our man-made structures: dating back to just before the Norman Conquest, when the village itself is first mentioned in historical documents, although the building was restored and rebuilt between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Today, the church tower sports a large clock, installed for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887; and a fine set of bells, which still ring for weddings and parish festivals.

Whenever the solid grey tower hoves into view, I imagine one of our ancestors using it to find his way through this flat, and often featureless, landscape. Walking the dozen miles from Brent Knoll to Glastonbury Tor, he would have passed just to the west and south of the church, before heading out across the bleak wastes of Tealham and Tadham Moors, his feet splashing through the flooded fields as he passed. Continuing through the ancient settlements of Meare and Godney, he would finally reach the safety of high ground, on the tor itself.

The church still plays an important part in the life of the village community. In the hallowed ground surrounding the building, a scattering of gravestones marks the resting places of the ancestors of many of today’s villagers. The names carved here – many so weathered as to be almost illegible – are a tribute to the longevity of the main local families. There are Puddys and Pophams, Ducketts and Fears – with no fewer than ten members of the latter family buried beneath a single, imposing headstone.

As well as what it tells us about the human history of the parish, the churchyard also has a crucial role to play in its natural history. In the British countryside, where almost every scrap of land has been ploughed, planted with crops, or sprayed with pesticides, churchyards are among the few places that remain largely untouched by progress.

In a world of rapid and unpredictable change, the churchyard has become a precious haven for plants and animals. The notion of ‘sanctuary’ may have lost much of its original meaning, but for the wildlife of a country parish like this, churchyards do offer a refuge hard to find elsewhere.

In the middle of January, though, the casual observer may be forgiven for wondering where all this natural life has gone. But frost is not the only thing covering the graves. For here, surrounded by eternal reminders of death, is a particularly tenacious form of life: lichens. In this churchyard, as in churchyards all over Britain, they are everywhere: on the surface of the gravestones, covering the trunks and branches of the trees, and smothering the walls of the building itself, especially on the damp, shady side.

Although we often think of lichens as lower forms of plant life, they are the outward form of a complex symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga. They may have humble origins, but are nevertheless extraordinarily successful. Paradoxically, it is their very ubiquity which renders lichens invisible to the casual viewer. They are an integral part of the living landscape, almost seeming to infect the brick, wood and stone surfaces they grow on. But when I pull off my glove and run my hand across the cold surface of an ancient gravestone, the lichens flake off, leaving a greenish-grey stain on my palm.

Like these gravestones, and the church itself, lichens go way back in time. Some of those here today may have already been in existence when the newly crowned King James II defeated his rival the Duke of Monmouth, down the road at Sedgemoor, in 1685. Others could be even older: for one lichen-covered stone, now weathered beyond readability, predates the current sixteenth-century building. The surface of this huge, flat slab is home to dozens of different lichen colonies of varying hues, from mustard-yellow, through moss-green, to a clean, icy grey. Together they create that pleasingly soft-edged effect familiar to all country churchyards.

What a contrast with the polished, black marble headstones in the new cemetery just along the road, where the village’s more recently departed souls lie in rest.

ANOTHER ANCIENT FEATURE of the parish churchyard is equally easy to overlook. As I walk around the gravestones, I pass beneath compact, bushy trees with dense, bottle-green foliage. Come the autumn, these will be dotted with bright, plastic-looking, orange-red berries, much beloved of the local thrushes and blackbirds.

These are yews; along with juniper and Scots pine, one of only three conifer species native to Britain. Yews are also our most ancient living thing, with some specimens, such as the Fortingall Yew in a Perthshire churchyard, well over two thousand years old. And of all Britain’s native trees, the yew is the one most closely associated with churchyards.

The reasons for this connection are buried deep in our distant past. The yew’s legendary longevity meant that it was often planted by our pre-Christian ancestors, as a symbol of long life. Many parish churches – probably including this one – were built on existing pagan sites. We know from the eighteenth-century historian John Collinson that ‘a fine old yew tree in a decaying state’ was still growing here in 1791, and would have dated back much earlier.

There is another reason why yews are often found in churchyards. Their leaves, bark and seeds are poisonous to livestock (and indeed to humans), so they may have been deliberately planted to discourage farmers from letting their animals graze in the church grounds. The yew also owes its survival to the flexible qualities of its wood, which made it especially suitable for making the weapon of choice in early medieval England: the longbow.

AS I WALK past the churchyard, I hear a distinctive sound coming from the dense, dark foliage of the yew trees. A high-pitched, rhythmic snatch of birdsong, almost childlike in its tone and pattern – ‘diddly-diddly-diddly-diddly-deeee’. This is the sound of the smallest bird in the parish, and indeed the smallest in Britain: the goldcrest. Tiny, plump, and decked in pastel shades of green, the goldcrest can sometimes be glimpsed as it flits around the outer foliage of the yews, before plunging back into the dark interior.

This creature is a true featherweight, tipping the scales at just one-fifth of on ounce: about the same as a twenty-pence coin, or a single sheet of A4 paper. Small size is bad news if you want to survive during long spells of cold weather. The smaller you are, the higher your ratio of surface area to volume; which means that a bird the size of a goldcrest loses heat very rapidly indeed. So like other small birds, it must feed constantly through the short winter days, to get enough energy to keep it alive through the long, cold nights.

Most insect-eating birds don’t even try to survive the British winter; instead they head south to warmer climes, where food is easier to find. But the goldcrest has a secret weapon: its association with evergreens such as the yew. Because these trees don’t shed their leaves in winter, their dense foliage is home to thousands of tiny insects. The goldcrest is the only bird small enough to survive on these minuscule creatures, and will spend the coldest months of the year inside our churchyard yews; feeding by day, and huddled up for warmth by night.

On bright, sunny days, even in the middle of winter, I occasionally see the male goldcrest puffing up his chest, momentarily flashing his golden crown like a shaft of sunlight piercing through a winter sky, and issuing a burst of song. It is a curiously optimistic sound for this time of year, and a reminder that however cold the weather may still be, spring will eventually arrive.

BUT NOT QUITE yet. Overnight, an unexpected, silent visitor has come to the village. Powering southwards down the length of England, across the Cotswold and Mendip Hills, it reached here in the early hours. As dawn breaks, we open our curtains to a landscape transformed into a sea of white. Our village, the county and the whole country have come to a standstill, in the worst winter weather for thirty years.

The village children can hardly believe their luck. A cheery local radio announcer confirms what they all hope to hear: school has been cancelled. And every child, in every home, has undergone a miraculous transformation. Clothes have been pulled on, breakfasts eaten up, and coats, boots and gloves donned with joyful enthusiasm. They can hardly wait to get out of the door – not for their lessons, but to play with an unfamiliar and exciting substance: snow.

With the snow still falling, all is silent. Apart from the occasional sparrow’s chirp from the hedgerow along the lane, I hear nothing. The birds are far too busy to think of anything other than finding something to eat. If they fail to do so, they will die – and soon. Cold weather on its own will not kill birds, but snow does: for it covers up their food supplies. So the arrival of this white blanket from the north is very bad news indeed.

Which is why, since first light, the bird-feeders outside my kitchen window have been chock-full of birds. As well as the usual great tits and goldfinches there are greenfinches, chaffinches – even a pied wagtail, grimly clinging on to the feeder as he pecks at the life-giving seeds within.

The snow acts like a photographer’s reflector, making the birds glow with unexpected clarity. Familiar species appear, quite literally, in a new light: the olive-green of the greenfinch, orange-red of the robin, and brick-coloured breast of the chaffinch all enhanced by this natural uplighter.

Livestock means warmth, and in Mill Batch farmyard a morose-looking herd of dairy cows has attracted a flock of starlings. Some birds are perched on the telegraph wires above, but most are sitting on the backs of the cattle, enjoying the benefit of warmth from the weighty bodies of these huge beasts, as they munch on a fresh supply of hay. For one brief moment the starlings remind me of oxpeckers perched on big game, in the heat-haze of the African savannah.

Out in the fields, where the wind blows the falling snow almost horizontally across the flat land, nothing stirs. All wild creatures have sought shelter. Even the sheep have forsaken their usual feeding places, and are huddled together in a corner of the apple orchard; where the dirty yellow of their wool presents a stark contrast with the all-new whiteness of their surroundings.

FOR THE BUZZARD perched on top of an ash tree by Perry Farm, peering down upon a landscape of white and grey, life goes on, though rather more slowly than usual. Buzzards, like all large birds of prey, take a lot of effort to get airborne; so during the winter they conserve their energy by staying put for most of the day.

As I approach, his piercing yellow eyes stare intently at this intruder into his space. He lifts his tail, and empties his bowels in preparation for flight. A moment later, he spreads his broad wings and launches himself into the air, every flap a major effort. He is joined by his mate, and they gradually gain height in the chilly air, attracting the attention of a lone crow feeding in the nearby field. The crow may be about half the weight of a buzzard, but he is still prepared to have a go at his larger rivals. As often happens, the smaller bird wins the skirmish, and the buzzards head off.

I move on too, down the icy lane, enjoying the clear blue sky and windless conditions. A farmer has put out a bale of straw for his sheep, and they line up patiently to feed, shuffling slowly forward like pensioners waiting to board a bus. Turning westwards, I head along the broad, straight track between Binham Moor and Kingsway. Like many of the paths criss-crossing this and other local parishes, this is a ‘drove’ – a vital means of moving livestock from one place to another, across this watery landscape.

The first droves were made in Anglo-Saxon times, but their heyday was during the late Middle Ages, when a rapidly growing urban population needed food from the surrounding countryside. Sheep, pigs, cattle and geese would all have been driven down these tracks to be sold at market. Only with the coming of the railways in the nineteenth century did this custom eventually decline. But the droves themselves remain: allowing me to venture off the metalled roads and lanes, and into the heart of the countryside.

On such a calm, clear day, the sound of my feet trudging through deep snow creates a pleasingly soporific rhythm, in contrast to the silent world all around. My mind begins to wander until, along a sunlit hedgerow, a sudden burst of song jolts me out of my daydream. It comes from a tiny, chestnut-brown bird, flitting up from the base of the hedge above the frozen rhyne. It is a wren, so small it would fit into my hand, yet with a very loud voice. I wonder why it is singing on such a bitterly cold day, when in answer to my question – and the wren’s – comes a second burst of song, from a rival male barely 10 yards away. I have stumbled across the boundary between two territories, where later in the spring these adversaries will – if they survive the winter – fight for the right to breed.

Along the first stretch of the drove, the snow is covered with footprints, and the outlines of horses’ hooves. But after passing through a rusty gate, I find pure, fresh snow, save for the tracks of a pair of roe deer, and the prints of a fox. A disconcerting crunch beneath my feet reminds me that beneath the thick layer of snow there is a much thinner layer of ice, with water beneath. Fortunately, it is firm enough to bear my weight.

The last time I walked along this drove, during the height of summer, I was serenaded by the sound of birdsong, amid fluttering painted lady and small copper butterflies. Now, as I scan the fields on either side, my breath steaming in the icy air, I see nothing – not even the roe deer that passed this way earlier.

AS THE HARDEST winter for thirty years rapidly turns into the worst in my memory, the birds are flocking to the centre of the village; into my garden, and those of my neighbours. Outside our kitchen window there is a scene of almost constant activity; even before the weak winter sun has risen, the birds are gathering, desperate to feed.

Even in this dim half-light they are easy to pick out, especially the blackbird, dark against the white ground, his short legs sinking into the snow. Once the sun is up the whole gang is here: blue tits and great tits gathering on the feeders; song thrushes and dunnocks beneath, picking up the spilt seed; and robins, vainly trying to defend their little patch of snow-covered lawn against their bitter rivals.

The robins look almost indecently fat and healthy, but this is a cruel illusion. The only way these birds will survive is if they can preserve what little warmth they still have in their bodies, so they fluff up their feathers in an attempt to do so. Many are losing the battle, and with each night that passes, a share of the birds that visited us the day before will now be dead.

My youngest son George is fascinated by all this activity, and loves to stand at the kitchen sink to watch. He is getting pretty good at naming the birds; though I am sceptical when he confidently announces the presence of a redwing. But it turns out he is right – this small, dark, northern thrush is indeed here in our garden. And we’re not alone. Reports from all over the country confirm that redwings, along with their larger cousins the fieldfares, are heading into our gardens to search for food.

About a million individuals of each species arrived in the country back in October and November, with a good number reaching this parish. During the autumn and early winter they flock along the hawthorn hedgerows, grabbing as many berries as they can. By January they have usually switched to feeding in muddy fields, where they forage for worms in the loamy soil. But with snow now covering the earth, and most berries having been eaten, they have no choice but to join their more familiar relatives in our gardens.

The huge difference between this and past ‘big freezes’ is that these birds will find plenty of good-quality, high-energy food; provided, of course, by us. Even in the last freeze-up, back in 1979, bird-feeding was not particularly widespread; and in 1963, 1947 and 1940 – the twentieth century’s other long, hard winters – it was in comparison almost non-existent.

Many of the older villagers can still recall the winter of 1947 – the second coldest in living memory. This was before the days of central heating, while post-war rationing meant there was little or no food to spare for the birds. What a contrast with today, when millions of us up and down the country provide not just kitchen scraps but designer foodstuffs for our garden birds. I reflect that we – and the birds – have never had it so good.

BUT I ONLY need to walk down the lane that runs behind our house, towards the little hamlet of Perry, to realise that for birds which cannot seek refuge in the village gardens life is still very tough. I see signs of desperation everywhere I look. A gaggle of moorhens pick their way across a small patch of snow, marginally less deep than the rest of the field. The rhyne below, where they would normally find their food, is frozen solid.

Further along, a small, slender bird is fluttering weakly across the ice: hunched, grey, with a sliver of lemon-yellow peeking out from beneath its long tail. It is a grey wagtail, hardly recognisable as the graceful creature I am used to seeing. Feeding mainly on tiny insects, often picked from the surface of the water, the grey wagtail is perhaps the most vulnerable bird in the parish to ice and snow. I don’t imagine this bird will survive more than another night or two.

Even large waterbirds face the same fate. On the marshes a few miles south of here, bitterns and water rails are forsaking their reclusive habits and coming out into the open, desperate to find something – anything – to eat. As I drive the children back from school, along the ice rink that used to be the road, we pass a hunched, forlorn creature, perched pathetically on a wooden gate: the local heron. He looks as if he has given up all hope, and with all the surrounding waterways covered with ice, perhaps he is right.

Not every creature suffers from the harsh weather. The buzzards sit and wait, occasionally flapping across the countryside in search of something dead or dying. Foxes, too, are out in force. There are plenty of opportunities for both predators and scavengers here in this frozen landscape.

And once the snow and ice have finally melted, what are the prospects for Britain’s birds? Come the spring, it is likely that vulnerable species such as the wren, long-tailed tit, goldcrest, kingfisher and grey heron will be here in much lower numbers than usual.

But if we take the longer view, we realise that this winter is part of a pattern of extreme weather events, a pattern these birds have evolved to cope with. Small birds only live a year or two, producing large broods of young to compensate for their brief lifespan. So in three or four years’ time, when this winter is but a distant memory, their numbers will probably be more or less back to normal.

There may even be benefits from a return to what the newspapers are calling a ‘proper’ winter. Diseases and parasites are killed off by a long cold spell; while hibernating creatures such as hedgehogs will stay fast asleep, rather than emerging too early as they do in mild winters. And this spring is likely to be ‘on time’ compared with recent years, when unseasonably warm weather has encouraged birds to lay their eggs as early as January, only to be hit by freezing weather in February or March, which cuts off their food supply and kills their chicks.

EVENTUALLY, OF COURSE, the cold spell does come to an end, and the snow retreats as rapidly as it arrived. The first weekend after the thaw, the landscape is back to its normal winter state: soggy mush. The rhynes are full to the brim, the layer of ice now replaced with a thin film of duckweed, punctured only by the occasional discarded drinks can.

The birds are back, too. A song thrush, the first I have heard this year, sings his famously repetitive tune in the tall trees by the village stores. Blackbirds feed beneath the hedgerows, while jackdaws, rooks and crows grub up worms in the muddy fields, just as they did before the snow came.

As I cycle along River Road, towards the southern boundary of the parish, I hear a familiar high-pitched note. There is a movement in the corner of my vision, and I spy a grey wagtail as it flies away, the telltale lemon patch beneath its tail reflecting the morning sun. Despite my fears this individual, at least, has managed to survive.

I hide my bicycle behind a convenient hedge, and walk across a muddy field; deeply rutted with tractor tracks, and dotted with patches of standing water. A familiar sound – perhaps the sound of the countryside – comes from somewhere ahead of me, but with the sun shining straight into my eyes I cannot see the bird that is making it. I skirt around to get a better view, past a clump of molehills, and realise, to my surprise, that there are more than a hundred birds feeding here. Most are redwings, with their usual companions, a dozen or so fieldfares; and a couple of meadow pipits.