ONTHE WING
On the shortest day of the year, in the depths of winter, I expected the birds in my neighbourhood to be mute, saving the energy required for song until spring was on the horizon. But confounding this theory, the New Holland honeyeaters, the eastern spinebills and golden whistlers (pictured) were in full voice on June 22.
Already the birds of the Waterworks Valley where I live were preparing to move from the territories they had established to see them through the winter and were now beginning to scout new areas for breeding in spring.
As we huddle around log fires, the winter solstice is fixed in most human minds as the grimmest period of the year. The birds, however, see it differently. Birds have an uncanny knowledge of the celestial forces which rule our planet, and rule the seasons. The winter solstice with its freezing temperatures might fill us with dread but it means something entirely different to our feathered friends. It is actually the point where nature signals that the seasons are about to turn.
But winter takes its toll on bird numbers. Only the fittest and the wily survive, to carry genes with the strongest attributes into the next breeding season.
In modern, civilised human societies we have become conditioned to the reality of winter. Our heated homes, and our ability to store food for the winter months, makes winter a mere discomfort.
Our ancestors, however, read the changing seasons very much as the wild world does now. All primitive cultures had festivals marking midwinter in acknowledgment that from that point on things could only get better.
It’s no coincidence that in the Christian tradition the birth of Christ should fall in midwinter in the northern hemisphere, mirroring ancient ceremonies predating Christianity. And of course Easter, celebrating rebirth, coincides with the most important rituals in the primitive world with their symbols of fertility, the Easter egg among them.
In the modern world mankind does not have to look for signals from nature to determine when we are moving from the extreme cold of winter to the extreme heat of summer. Our calendars tell us that. But we can still observe the birds and marvel at how they are coping.
The birds in Tasmania which do not undertake migration know they must get a move on in establishing breeding territories. Soon the summer migrants will arrive from their wintering grounds, taking their own signs from nature to plot their course, guided by the stars at night, reading the position of the sun by day. Some species also tune in to the earth’s magnetic fields to seek direction on their travels. The solstice sets a new ley line through the cosmological landscape.