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Nature Notes

Nature Notes 29: Winter Tribes

  

The solstice approaches. Now the days will lengthen, though it will only be by a minute a day until early January. Clear nights have brought hard frosts, daylight hours rushing clouded fronts and dimmed light, mizzle of rain one day, thick wet snow previously. The crescent moon wanes, rising today at 1 am and setting at noon. The sun will set at a quarter to four. The short days and long nights of winter draw us together.

Three days ago, I rose in the dark, and sat in padded jacket in the garden, watching the light gradually wash trees and brickwork. The birds came: blackbirds early as ever, the squabbling robins, fighting over a feeder and territory. No groups for them. But overhead rooks and jackdaws again have congregated into great flocks. Later they stride across the pasture out back, probing the frozen soil. Then come gulls, cleaving long distances with barely a twitch of wings angled sharply at elbows. I slip inside for more tea and Fitter’s guide, and wonder at the variability of gulls. Winter and summer plumage, juvenile and adult – all different. These have black tipped bills, dark ear patches; so black-headed gulls, but without the black head. The pigeons remain in their tribes, no snapping of wings these days, but racing in stable formation over the poplars. Later, starlings come in a swarm, and destroy the fat balls at the feeders. They fight one another, squeaking and leaping, and ignore the goldfinches and tits, who swoop in from every angle, tiny by the spangled aggressors.

 The frost is hard when I cycle. My lungs gasp. Puddles in the road are solid white with ice, crushed where cars have passed. On tight corners, the bike twitches on the rimed road. Other tribes are abroad. Dogs and their walkers, some striding out with Labradors, black and sleek; others slow moving with elderly, greyed animals. In the village at the far end of the valley, the bells clang, calling those in furs and finest to the church. From a distance I call, coming through, so that the horse riders can move aside. We greet about the cold morning. Up at Workhouse Hill, a couple step aside, holding their dog with hind legs strapped to a pair of wheels. On top of Clickett Hill, the two oaks are still in leaf, mostly russet, a few still golden-green. The winds have stripped every other leaf from the skeletal woodland. By the river, a herd of Ronaldsay sheep totter on thin legs, brown bundles on the icy meadow.

In central London, I walked through St James’s Park, the lake frozen and the gulls studying alone on the ice. Continental visitors have wandered around from Westminster, and gather for photos before the ravenous ravens. A man in suit walks fast towards Whitehall’s Georgian blocks, and throws a baguette at the birds. Ravens and gulls fight. The plane trees hold many leaves green, bark shedding strips of yellow and brown. Two cherries have flowered delicately pink. A tribe of policemen stand by a vehicle this side of the Treasury, watching the land and the people in their own acute way. On the far side of the lake by Duck Island Cottage are two swans, but they are dwarfed by two white birds with elongated beaks with pouches. Here, then, are pelicans, fed daily by the Parks people, first donated by the Russian ambassador in the late 1600s. There are said to be five in all, social and gregarious, so far from the comfortable sub-tropics of home.