Long-tailed tit on the handle of the kitchen door Sunrise at Ghyll Burn Cottage 22nd -29th April 2021
Ghyll Burn is a tributary of the River South Tyne and the cottage is a peaceful and secluded spot. It was an old stone barn, a lofty space with thick walls. deep embrasured windows and wooden beams. A flight of stone steps leads to the entrance and the kitchen on the first floor. The cottage sits within the shelter of the ghyll, with hawthorn rich in lichens and taller trees beyond; ash still in winter guise, sycamore close to leafing, birch and sitka spruce.
Jackdaw are vocal, a nuthatch trills, blue tits and great tits call. Sunlight illuminates a goldfinch on a bare ash, song thrush and mistle thrush sing.. A woodpecker drums on the metal plate atop a telegraph pole. I hear redpoll. And fieldfare, so late in April. There are ground frosts most mornings and, at sunrise, light pours through a sycamore where a flock of fieldfare chatters one to another. A lone sentinel sits in the top of a sitka spruce, a vantage point that overlooks the ghyll. Gunshots ring out, a farmer shooting rabbits. The flock falls silent, then fieldfare erupt in flight over the cottage, returning to the shelter of the sycamore when all is silent once more. Each morning, the sunrise sycamore hosts a flock of fieldfare, vocal, glimpsed in silhouette amongst contorted branches in a tree on the cusp of leafing. Always shy and nervous birds, I see them each morning, at a distance, visible when the flock settles in a bare ash. They have not overwintered here. Waves of fieldfare pass through on their migration north, to Scandinavia.
I share my fieldfare find with birder Jeff Holmes who writes ‘ I can just picture Fieldfares now back on the breeding grounds in Finland where l saw them nesting in gardens just like Blackbirds here. ‘
Long-tailed tits are nesting somewhere amongst a tangle of lichened hawthorn. The nest is well hidden but the birds are confiding and inquisitive. When we stand by the kitchen window a bird appears on a hawthorn branch, flies onto the parapet at the top of the flight of steps, then onto the handle of the kitchen door, only a pane of glass between us. Intimate encounters and daily photo-opportunities with a long-tailed tit, a creature whose subtle plumage I hope to show, the hints of pink. Tit-mouse the bird was called, a tiny inquisitee bird. One morning, the bird alights on the door handle- its beak stuffed with insects plucked from tree branches. Their young will be fed on insects, invertebrates and the eggs of moths and butterflies. Very warm days after a ground frost dawn, so butterflies are on the wing and there will be caterpillars for long-tailed tits to feed on.
I share my fieldfare find with birder Jeff Holmes who writes ‘ I can just picture Fieldfares now back on the breeding grounds in Finland where l saw them nesting in gardens just like Blackbirds here. ‘
Long-tailed tits are nesting somewhere amongst a tangle of lichened hawthorn. The nest is well hidden but the birds are confiding and inquisitive. When we stand by the kitchen window a bird appears on a hawthorn branch, flies onto the parapet at the top of the flight of steps, then onto the handle of the kitchen door, only a pane of glass between us. Intimate encounters and daily photo-opportunities with a long-tailed tit, a creature whose subtle plumage I hope to show, the hints of pink. Tit-mouse the bird was called, a tiny inquisitee bird. One morning, the bird alights on the door handle- its beak stuffed with insects plucked from tree branches. Their young will be fed on insects, invertebrates and the eggs of moths and butterflies. Very warm days after a ground frost dawn, so butterflies are on the wing and there will be caterpillars for long-tailed tits to feed on.
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