Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (4 page)

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.

A
S 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.

B
UT
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.

E
VENTUALLY, 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.

Then I see what I am looking for, a short way from the main flock: three sandy-coloured birds, their paleness standing out against the dark, loamy soil. They are skylarks, the iconic British farmland bird; yet here in the parish, hardly a common sight. This is partly because the ground is almost permanently soggy, unsuitable for arable crops. But it is also because like so many of our familiar countryside birds, the skylark has suffered a catastrophic decline, numbers falling by more than half in my own lifetime.

When amateur birders all over Britain took part in the British Trust for Ornithology’s first
Atlas
survey,
back
in the late 1960s, the skylark was Britain’s most widespread bird. Today, both its population and range have contracted dramatically. Modern farming methods – industrial processes that have no place for, or concern with, nature – are largely responsible. But those of us who enjoy cheap food, and the convenience of supermarkets, must also bear our share of the blame. For if we cannot safeguard a bird as intrinsic to our landscape as the skylark, what hope is there for rest of the countryside and its wildlife?

On sunny days in early spring, I do occasionally hear the song of the skylark, as it flies high in the skies above the parish fields. Straining my eyes to find this almost invisible dot, I marvel at its ability to sing constantly for hours on end. But my pleasure is tinged by sadness, as I think about the two million or more pairs of skylarks we have lost in the short time that I have been on this earth.