picking up their light- coloured undersides as they hung upside down to get at choice titbits. Then a magpie came chattering past and set them off again, westward ho!
Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop
From low hung branches; little space they stop;
But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;
Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:
Or, perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,
Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.
– John Keats, ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’
January will often bring other interesting visitors to our garden, including blackcap pairs, greenfinches and redwings, those small thrushes that are visitors from Iceland and Scandinavia, a mere 1,500 kilometres away to the north-west and north-east. Looking out the back window for about five minutes at dusk one frosty evening, I was lucky enough to see a large flock of redwings heading from the Spinney in the direction of St Enda’s Park, where they will roost in the middle of one of the extensive lawns. I did a rapid count which came to more than 250 birds.
A pair of bullfinches turn up every year and spend some time stripping the new growth from the cherry tree. These birds have plumage that belongs to the tropics, but because of their shyness, they are not easily seen close up. The male is dolled up in a shocking red/pink and wears a jet-black cap, while the female is a more refined sandy brown. Just one pair seems to visit us, and we always see them together.
The winter in these parts often brings long, bitterly cold spells followed by high winds and rain. Our local everyday birds, coal tits, blue tits and great tits, appear at the bird table when conditions allow, tirelessly ferrying nuts and seeds away to some cozy den in the hedges, but I suspect that winter takes its tithes, and that the cold wipes out quite a lot of the small birds. The dunnocks, as usual, act in a frisky manner in the poplar tree; they always seem to start the mating season early. With their reputation it would not surprise me.
Ticknock, 16 January
The last three days have been dark, dull and depressing, and there was no ‘pull’ from the outside, and anyway I had a lot of work to do. Today, however, I headed for Ticknock for a stroll after lunch. I was surprised to find that the snow still lay on the hill, quite thickly, more than a week after the last fall. It was very pleasant to crunch along the familiar path. An eerie yellowish glow illuminated the mountains to the west, contrasting with the black of the forest fringe and the dull white of Glendhu. To the north, the Mournes, catching the low afternoon sun, were like a golden-pink mirage on the horizon, their western flanks a series of watercolour-like brushstrokes that glowed below a dark, Paine’s grey sky. At the Fairy Castle I paused a while to soak up the life-giving view.
On my way downhill, I disturbed a liquid cloud of redwings foraging noisily amongst the crinkly beech leaves on the woodland floor; there must have been a hundred in the flock. They swooped up into an ash tree, and just like a Tunnicliffe painting, all perched facing the same way, feathers fluffed up. A bedraggled dunnock did a trapeze act in a pile of branches beside the track, uncharacteristically unconcerned at my proximity. It is glorious how wonderfully well one feels after forty minutes of strenuous walking, especially after the worst of the climbing is over. I arrived back at the car ten feet tall, with great swinging strides, the world at my feet!
Glendoher, 20 January
Brushing my teeth in the bathroom this morning, I glanced down into the garden to see two foxes mating on the grass under the birch tree. I raced down to get the camera, and by the time I returned they had finished the ‘vigorous’ stuff and were standing, bottom to bottom, tails intertwined. The female was facing me looking very relaxed, blinking contentedly, but the male was agitated. It was a case of being unable to withdraw! They remained there as I opened the window and started to take photographs, and the male, looking over his shoulder, looked at me as if to say ‘Do you mind?’ They stood there in this strange stance, clearly waiting for the remains of their passion to subside for a few minutes, with me clicking away, when the back door opened next door. This broke the spell: they tried to make a dash for it, but they were still connected! They ran, almost in circles, like some strange Martian eight-legged creature, for enough time for me to get off two more shots before they finally came apart, one leaping over the back wall and the other the side wall.
I’ve been hearing them almost every night, varying from the awful scream of the vixen to a chucking sound like birds in a bush, and I have spotted them individually around the garden and the front, but this was an unusual sight!
February
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still...
– Helen Hunt Jackson
Glendoher, 4 February
After a seeming unending series of rather dull, overcast days with a damp mist hanging in the air, January morphed into February, and spring finally arrived in Glendoher. It always begins with a quietness. At the end of winter there is often a lull, a calm, as nature composes herself and works behind the scenes for the next great thrust. I wonder, was it this quietness that led the Romans to dedicate 19 February to Tacita, the goddess of silence? There is an acute feeling of expectation in the gardens and in the woods and on the hills, the buds on trees and shrubs are almost bursting with tightly vacuum-packed herbage and ready for their big moment. During the last weeks of winter there are occasional ‘pet days’, with an hour or two of warmth borrowed from June, as if testing is taking place, or an assurance is being given, a ‘trailer’ of what is to come. I feel that if I listen hard enough on these quiet days, I will sense the hum of the boundless power that is being held in check in all nature, awaiting the signal to burst gloriously forth in colourful rebirth.
Sometimes it seems to me that it is the widespread outbreak of birdsong that makes the first announcement of the arrival of spring. The blackbird that I have heard practicing on all those dark winter mornings is now note perfect, and its mellow tunes can also be heard in the early dusk. The song thrush announces its arrival in the area, and becomes daily more melodic as the days lengthen. My mother used to tell us, as children, that if we heard a call that sounds like ‘cherry-dew, cherry-dew, cherry-dew’, it was probably a thrush.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy unlimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
in blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
– Thomas Hardy, ‘The Darkling Thrush’
Glendoher, 6 February
Today is startlingly bright and sunny for a change, and there seem to be a lot of birds competing for the same territories. Five or six blackbirds are constantly on the go in the garden, and long-tailed tits in our Himalayan birch are almost becoming a common breakfast-time sight. Teresa saw a flock of waxwings nearby in
