December orchard 'Look at all those birds! '
The low winter sun casts a raking light and long shadows. A hedge and trees thick with ivy give shelter and a roost when darkness falls, and night comes early on a winter's day. Yesterday the temperature never rose above zero. Today it's 1 degree and bitterly cold out of the sun. Our shadows peep above the stone wall as we peer amongst orchard trees leafless and bare of fruit. Rosy windfalls lie in a sprinkling of snow and birds feast on them. What are all those birds amongst the fallen apples?
The low winter sun casts a raking light and long shadows. A hedge and trees thick with ivy give shelter and a roost when darkness falls, and night comes early on a winter's day. Yesterday the temperature never rose above zero. Today it's 1 degree and bitterly cold out of the sun. Our shadows peep above the stone wall as we peer amongst orchard trees leafless and bare of fruit. Rosy windfalls lie in a sprinkling of snow and birds feast on them. What are all those birds amongst the fallen apples?
The reveal comes slowly. In the brief hours of December daylight and in bitter cold the birds are intent on feeding and the scene is almost silent. I hear the chack chack of a fieldfare, soft and intimate. Light filters through trees so the ground is patterned with spotlight, shadow and gleaming snow. An orchard interlude on a fine winter's day could last through the foul weather of days to come and photography will make it last. Where a spotlight falls on a bird I zoom-in and study detail that eluded me at the time. Light falls fitfully and birds are head-down, beaks stabbing into fallen apples. There are more fieldfare than I had thought. Sunlight works wonders, showing the iridescence of starling, the warm colour high on the breast of mature fieldfare.
A robin looks tiny beside starling, blackbird and fieldfare. I hear redwing call but cannot find one amongst the images I take. In this blast of Arctic weather many of the starling will have flown in from Scandinavia and the North to relatively milder weather here. The sun spotlights their iridescence and white spots are a feature of their winter plumage. Male blackbirds have yellow beaks, the female is brown with speckled markings high on the breast. There may be mistle thrush amongst the feeding birds but the light is tricky. There are hints of blue on the ground amongst the birds, reflections of sky-blue on snow. Fieldfare and mistle thrush are both large thrush but the fieldfare tail is black as can be seen on images. Both thrush have white arm-pits, distinctive in flight.
Fieldfare arrive from Scandinavia in autumn and their numbers swell as the weather grows harsher. They are gregarious birds, found in flocks. They're nervous, wary, and often they will take refuge in the crowns of tall trees, flitting down to feed on yew arils, on hawthorn, holly and juniper berries. Today, it's bitterly cold so they gorge on abundant apples and all the birds are amongst the windfalls.
To come upon fieldfare feasting on the ground is a rare treat. We are half-hidden behind a wall so we are fairly close without disturbing them. Numbers are much depleted and fieldfare is on the red list. Years ago, I was walking with a friend in the Quantocks when we reached a neglected orchard near Holford to find fieldfare and redwing feeding on apples. The image lingers in my mind's-eye, our focus was birding not photography. Knowing where winter thrush may be found is helpful but there's a deal of luck involved. I wonder how long those windfalls will last. February is the hungry gap, when autumn fruits have already been discovered and consumed.
Next day temperatures hovered around freezing, rose to 2 degrees just before sundown- although the sun did not appear. There was sleet and a thin, watery snow. I thought upon the birds we had watched feeding on orchard windfalls. As we all struggle to keep cosy indoors picture those vulnerable creatures roosting in a hedge through a long winter's night.
The Woodland Trust tells that the name Fieldfare comes from Anglo-Saxon Feldware, traveller of the fields. Whilst writing About Scout Scar I was reading Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds 1797. His wood engravings are exquisite in closely observed detail and an evocation of habitat. His was close observation in the field, then drawing from skins- natura morta, still life. His engravings cannot show the animation glimpsed in a still photograph, or realised in video. His starling and bullfinch are detailed studies in black and white. He catches neither the iridescence of starling plumage nor the warm colour of bullfinch. If only we in our time might experience the abundance an 18th century naturalist would have known, the everyday vitality of huge flocks of fieldfare and murmurations of innumerable starling. We have all the opportunity of 21st century binoculars and cameras but loss of species and of a dramatic fall in numbers means we have to search for sightings that would have been daily fare for Thomas Bewick.
Next day temperatures hovered around freezing, rose to 2 degrees just before sundown- although the sun did not appear. There was sleet and a thin, watery snow. I thought upon the birds we had watched feeding on orchard windfalls. As we all struggle to keep cosy indoors picture those vulnerable creatures roosting in a hedge through a long winter's night.
The Woodland Trust tells that the name Fieldfare comes from Anglo-Saxon Feldware, traveller of the fields. Whilst writing About Scout Scar I was reading Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds 1797. His wood engravings are exquisite in closely observed detail and an evocation of habitat. His was close observation in the field, then drawing from skins- natura morta, still life. His engravings cannot show the animation glimpsed in a still photograph, or realised in video. His starling and bullfinch are detailed studies in black and white. He catches neither the iridescence of starling plumage nor the warm colour of bullfinch. If only we in our time might experience the abundance an 18th century naturalist would have known, the everyday vitality of huge flocks of fieldfare and murmurations of innumerable starling. We have all the opportunity of 21st century binoculars and cameras but loss of species and of a dramatic fall in numbers means we have to search for sightings that would have been daily fare for Thomas Bewick.
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