A Natural Year. Michael Fewer
extinction as early as the fifteenth century. It was regarded as a delicacy by the aristocracy, and was often included on royal menus: the feast to celebrate the enthronement of George Neville as Archbishop of York in 1465 included 1,000 little egrets among the ‘poultry’ served. The birds’ long feathers were sought- after for plumes to decorate hats in the eighteenth century: in the first three months of 1885, 750,000 egret skins were sold in London alone. The bird was rare even in southern Europe by the 1950s, but new conservation laws saw numbers increase strongly, and by 1997 the bird turned up in coastal regions of Cork, Waterford and Wexford. In the last twenty years it has had an amazing recovery in Ireland, and can now be found in most coastal counties. I spotted my first ‘park’ egret in nearby Marlay Park in 2018, but, until this, I had never been so close to one.
It was a remarkable coincidence that the American landscape poet Mary Oliver had died, at the age of eighty-three, only a week before this encounter. I remembered some evocative lines that she had written in her poem ‘Egrets’ and looked them up again when I got home:
And that’s how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets ...
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them ...
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.
Glendoher, 14 January
The goldfinches have finally returned to Glendoher. Last year when we put the nyjer seeds out, by some magical communication system known only to birds, goldfinches, which rarely grace our garden, turned up within a day, and feasted on the seeds for a week, three and four at a time perched on the feeder. This winter we hung the feeder out again in November, but except for one visit by one bird, we saw no goldfinches at all until last week. As if they have just arrived in the neighbourhood, three pairs have been constantly coming to the feeder, with three queuing in the Himalayan birch tree while the other three feed. It is such a joy to see such bright colours against the garden’s drab background, but it is impossible to fully appreciate the wonderful plumage of the male goldfinch unless you see it up close, through binoculars.
With the goldfinch feeding on the nyjer seed this year is the tiny pink-capped redpoll; five of these little beauties, an unusual, odd number, have been coming for the last two days. The redpolls are particularly covetous birds, constantly fighting with one another in intricate and fast aerial combats for a place on the feeder; though there is enough space to take four of these tiny ruffians, rarely will those feeding put up with more than three. Birdwatch Ireland says that the redpoll is ‘a widespread breeding species, mainly in upland areas’, but although I spend a lot of time in our nearby ‘upland areas’, I have never once seen a redpoll there. Maybe it is because they usually breed in coniferous plantations, and although one will often hear the twittering of the birds that frequent conifers, it is always difficult to see them. In winter, and particularly when food becomes scarce in the coniferous plantations, redpolls come down to the lowlands seeking a variety of seeds, and nyjer seeds seem to be a favourite.
Glendoher, 15 January
When the temperature drops and frost appears, the number of bird species frequenting our garden seems to increase. I was surprised one morning, with the temperature below zero, to see tiny goldcrests and siskins in the conifers behind the wall, and later in the morning an amazing flock of about sixty to seventy goldfinches flying over the field, east to west. I hoped they would wheel and come back to our feeder, but they continued to swoop along, their gay colours brightly reflecting the sun, to the tall trees at the west of the field. They stayed there for ten or fifteen minutes, busily moving about and feeding in the upper branches. Only when a visiting seagull flew too close did they move on, flowing across to a neighbouring tree. About two dozen came to the tall conifer at the eastern end of the field and dropped down to perch in the fronds; they were beautiful to see, the low morning sun picking up their light- coloured undersides as they hung upside down to get at choice titbits. Then a magpie came chattering past and set them off again, westward ho!
Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop
From low hung branches; little space they stop;
But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;
Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:
Or, perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,
Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.
– John Keats, ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’
January will often bring other interesting visitors to our garden, including blackcap pairs, greenfinches and redwings, those small thrushes that are visitors from Iceland and Scandinavia, a mere 1,500 kilometres away to the north-west and north-east. Looking out the back window for about five minutes at dusk one frosty evening, I was lucky enough to see a large flock of redwings heading from the Spinney in the direction of St Enda’s Park, where they will roost in the middle of one of the extensive lawns. I did a rapid count which came to more than 250 birds.
A pair of bullfinches turn up every year and spend some time stripping the new growth from the cherry tree. These birds have plumage that belongs to the tropics, but because of their shyness, they are not easily seen close up. The male is dolled up in a shocking red/pink and wears a jet-black cap, while the female is a more refined sandy brown. Just one pair seems to visit us, and we always see them together.
The winter in these parts often brings long, bitterly cold spells followed by high winds and rain. Our local everyday birds, coal tits, blue tits and great tits, appear at the bird table when conditions allow, tirelessly ferrying nuts and seeds away to some cozy den in the hedges, but I suspect that winter takes its tithes, and that the cold wipes out quite a lot of the small birds. The dunnocks, as usual, act in a frisky manner in the poplar tree; they always seem to start the mating season early. With their reputation it would not surprise me.
Ticknock, 16 January
The last three days have been dark, dull and depressing, and there was no ‘pull’ from the outside, and anyway I had a lot of work to do. Today, however, I headed for Ticknock for a stroll after lunch. I was surprised to find that the snow still lay on the hill, quite thickly, more than a week after the last fall. It was very pleasant to crunch along the familiar path. An eerie yellowish glow illuminated the mountains to the west, contrasting with the black of the forest fringe and the dull white of Glendhu. To the north, the Mournes, catching the low afternoon sun, were like a golden-pink mirage on the horizon, their western flanks a series of watercolour-like brushstrokes that glowed below a dark, Paine’s grey sky. At the Fairy Castle I paused a while to soak up the life-giving view.
On my way downhill, I disturbed a liquid cloud of redwings foraging noisily amongst the crinkly beech leaves on the woodland floor; there must have been a hundred in the flock. They swooped up into an ash tree, and just like a Tunnicliffe painting, all perched facing the same way, feathers fluffed up. A bedraggled dunnock did a trapeze act in a pile of branches beside the track, uncharacteristically unconcerned at my proximity. It is glorious how wonderfully well one feels after forty minutes of