No feather of a doubt – birds can lift winter gloom
AFTER a warm autumn, this is winter proper. The coming days will bring the hardening of morning frosts and the first flurries of snow on high hills.
Perhaps it is because we are coming out of the third warmest autumn on record, and turning on the heating is suddenly a luxury, but the first few days of December feel particularly hard this year. Fortunately, there is plenty of seasonal cheer outside as birdwatching in winter is just the thing to stave off the gloom.
Forget the naysayers who speak of a silent winter. Ignore the words of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97: “the very birds are mute:/or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer”. December is, in fact, the ideal time of year to watch birds – not least because the balding trees make it much easier.
Come winter they hove in off the fields and, in the case of some species, from the far frozen north. Long-tailed tits – which I learnt this week were once nicknamed poke puddings as their rotund pink breasts resembled the balls of suet cooked in cloth – colourful redwing, fieldfare, robins and goldfinches, along with striking blackbirds and others, cluster in our gardens in search of food.
If you think this year has been a bad one for mankind, birds have had it worse. They are in the grip of the worst outbreak of avian flu ever witnessed and millions of them have perished.
So far it is largely seabirds and domestic poultry that have borne the brunt, but there are fears for garden birds, too. Accordingly, some have wondered whether we should feed the birds at all this winter, or would that create super-spreader events?
Well, your weather correspondent has done some digging. According to several experts, we absolutely should still feed the birds this winter, but take care to wash out feeders in between filling them up. So put your minds at rest and stock up on sunflower hearts.
Birds will need us as cold air streams from the north next week. And we will need them.