WHAT TO SPOT Empty nests

Natural wonders to watch out for this week…

The winter solstice is upon us and with it the shroud of the shortest day. It is a time of year when it can feel as if all life has vanished. But take a closer look among the newly bare branches of trees and hedgerows and you will see hidden treasures that have been kept out of sight – until now.

I found one in my garden this week, wedged in a forked branch of a forsythia. A bird’s nest! Now empty, of course, leaving me free to study its elaborate design without disturbing the occupants. It was skilfully woven out of the twigs of a nearby clematis and lined with cobwebs, which glistened in the dew. My guess is it belonged to a family of blackbirds, or perhaps a wren, owing to its neat, domed shape.

It was perched just behind the bench where my wife and I had a drink most nights during the lockdown of spring and summer. All that time, we had no idea what was living less than 3ft away.

Once used for the year, most birds will not return to their old nests in spring. Generally, they choose to build afresh somewhere else, although will happily pilfer the twigs and mosses that can be recycled.

Some larger birds, however, prefer to return to the same spot year on year. I am currently watching a pair of crows bolstering last year’s nest in an ash tree where they have lived as long as I have been here. I have also seen some raven nests, which are huge cathedrallike constructions that will have been occupied by generations of birds.

The most extraordinary bird’s nest I have ever seen also belonged to a pair of ravens, who had built it on an abandoned Second World War gun emplacement at the end of a golf course in Orkney, Scotland. The nest had been discovered after the ravens – incorrigibl e mischief- makers – started swiping stray balls from the fairway and the golfers followed a trail all the way back to their lair. Due to the shortage of trees on the island, the ravens had built the nest entirely out of old fishing rope and barbed wire, using sheep wool as lining to keep their young warm.

Generally, birds prefer more natural materials. Swallows and house martins build their nests out of mud pellets stuck together with saliva. Constructing the nest is labour intensive, with the birds making up to 1,200 journeys to build just one nest. Unsurprisingly, the swallows will happily return to the same nests each year rather than going through the faff of another rebuild.

Long- tailed tits, meanwhile, weave their nests out

Birds make up to 1,200 journeys to build one nest. It’s labour intensive

of moss, hair and cobwebs and use as many as 1,500 feathers as lining. William MacGillivray, the Victorian ornithologist, once claimed he had counted 2,379 feathers in one long-tailed tit nest.

Back then, and even well into the 20th century, ornithologists would regularly pilfer birds’ eggs from nests during mating season so that they could add to their collections. Now we know the damage that can do, and leave the animals well alone as they rear their broods.

That is why the depth of winter presents such a magical opportunity to study what has been hiding under our noses. People talk of “empty nest” syndrome as a bad thing, but for me it offers a rare opportunity to examine the secrets of a life other to our own.