Cold weather can kill even a king of birds
THE recent bout of extended cold weather reminds me of one of my seminal wildlife moments from 1963. I was ten-years-old and the infamous winter was nearly over, and time was almost up for that most beautiful of birds, the kingfisher.
Kingfishers hunt their prey in water, but what if the water is frozen, what happens then?
I’ll tell you what happened, 90 per cent of the UK’s population of the bird perished, in every sense of the word. With no fish, they quite literally fell off of their perches, or froze to death in their nest holes by the thousand.
My epiphany occurred near the village of Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire. I had been out all day as usual in the biting cold with not a care in the world, and I was heading home for one of me Mam’s legendary Irish Stews. My nose was as red as a pepper, and my fingers were without feeling but, with the light fading fast, there was time for one last detour to a large pond which was sure to be frozen over and ideal for sliding on.
Mid-skid I watched as the watery yellow sun lit up the frosted snow on top of the ice and it was then that the wand was waved and like an insect set in amber, there appeared a kingfisher frozen in a patch of clear ice, an iridescent jewel frozen in time, colours intact and wings tucked in mid-dive. I’ll never forget that and I have a Bavarian priest to thank for corroboration of my childhood memory.
On the internet a couple of years ago there was a picture he took of an ice-entombed kingfisher just how I remember the one in my story. The German name for the kingfisher is very apt - Eisvogel, the ice bird. I have also heard tell that, in Scotland, salmon were seen mid-leap in frozen waterfalls, a phenomenon recorded by Sting in his song, ‘King of Pain’.
“There’s a dead salmon frozen in a waterfall. That’s my soul up there…”
Back to my story, the snow had started on Boxing Day 1962 and the big freeze had lasted until March 1963. Blizzards caused snow drifts up to six metres deep, telephone lines were brought down and temperatures fell so low the sea froze over. Temperatures dropped as low as minus 22.2C (minus 8F) on January 18, 1963 in Braemar, Aberdeenshire.
My old neighbour at Crowden, railwayman John Davies (pictured above), recalled the coldest month since 1814: “There was snow everywhere and strong winds from the north and east, us lads used to wear our pyjamas under our railway uniform.”
He added: “One train driver made the mistake of stopping for a brew at Crowden Station, unofficial tha knows, and we had to light a fire underneath to defrost parts of the engine. Good job the bosses never found out”.
John Davies, who died in his early 90s, was a top man, full of stories, many yet to be told, and full of mischief.
I remember telling him of my frozen kingfisher story and he had one of his own about a dog getting caught by his legs as the water in the residuum lodge at Heydon Brook froze so fast. He was particularly tickled, and laughed out loud, when he told me that dynamite had been used after an avalanche had blocked the railway line from Edinburgh to Carlisle near Galashiels!