Robin ( Erithacus rubecula)

Last night, as I was having a final look around the garden before the sun set, I heard a bird singing. From the cherry tree next door, a Robin was sending a rather lonely, thin little song out into world. It was a hesitant sound, with something of a wheel in need of greasing about it, but nonetheless, it cheered me to think that someone was confident enough to be staking an early claim to my back garden. If you would like to have a listen for yourself, there is a link to a Robin’s song in the RSPB webpage.

And once I’d noticed the bird in my back garden, it seemed that Robins were everywhere.

Robin in a feisty mood

As I walked up the road towards Coldfall Wood, two Robins were having what my Nan would have described as ‘a bit of a barney’ in the crab apple tree. Both birds were fluffed up and flying sorties at one another, making an agitated chinking sound. Cute and cuddly they may be, but these two rivals were deadly serious in their animosity. They were oblivious to everything else that was going on and so was I – I almost fell over a pram in my haste to get a few photos. Robins are notoriously territorial, and, in the breeding season, are said to attack anything that vaguely resembles a rival, including bunches of red feathers  and small birds belonging to other species.

Though in the UK Robins are often called ‘Robin Redbreast’, it is quite clear that their chests are more orange than scarlet. But regardless of the accuracy of their name, they are symbols of charity and compassion. One story has it that their breast colouration came about when they tried to remove the crown of thorns from Christ’s brow, and were injured themselves. Another story tells that the feathers were burnt when the Robins brought water to souls in the fiery pit of Hell, and indeed one Welsh name for the bird is brou-rhuddyn – ‘Breast-burnt’. However, the stories surrounding Robins date back further than Christianity – they were sacred to Thor, for example. No bird is held in greater affection in Britain: the Robin features on Christmas cards as a symbol of hope and energy in the snowy midwinter, and it is an unusual person who isn’t delighted to have one in their garden. This is not the case on the Continent, however, where Robins are fair game and can end up on a skewer like so many other songbirds.

The European Robin is a member of the Old World Flycatcher family, which means that it is related to such rarer birds as the Stonechat and the Whinchat. None of the other members of the family have that distinctive rotund shape, however, and none of them are as tame and confiding as the Robin.

Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) (“Saxicola rubetra -Belgium -male-8” by Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium

European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) (By Amurfalcon (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) )

The European Robin is also very different from the American Robin, which is a thrush rather than a flycatcher, and is several times larger than our bird.

American Robin (Turdus migratorius) (“Turdus-migratorius-002”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

I find some of the folklore about Robins particularly evocative. There is a belief, for example, that if you kill a Robin, the hand that did the deed will always shake, as if some of the febrile energy of the bird has passed into your very bones to punish you for your iniquity. William Blake wrote that ‘A Robin Redbreast in a cage/puts all Heaven in a rage’. This little bird that has lived alongside us for so long that it is surrounded with a protective web of folklore, forbidding humans to harm it. How unfortunate that the rest of the animal world does not have  similar prohibitions against cruelty and wanton slaughter.

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

Dear readers, there is something about the stark black and white patterning of the Great Spotted Woodpecker, combined with the red patch of the vent, that reminds me of the paintings of Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian, 1926 – Composition in Red,Blue, Gold and Black

This bird is a female – the males have a small patch of red on the back of their heads, and the juveniles have a complete red cap.

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker (By Ken Billington (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Juvenile Great spotted Woodpecker (By Jason Thompson (Flickr: Great Spotted woodpecker (juvenile)) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

I tend to see the woodpecker in the garden during the winter. In spring and summer, they spend much more time in Coldfall Wood. Last week, as I walked through the hornbeams, I heard an extraordinary sound, midway between a creak and a drumroll. I followed the noise, eager to see if it was what I thought it was. After some time standing at the bottom of a tree, almost falling backwards as I leaned further and further back, I saw this:

A woodpecker was drumming away on a dead branch, the sound echoing through the trees. The bird’s head was just a blur as he knocked his beak repeatedly against the wood – he is able to make between five and twenty strikes per half second. This wasn’t an attempt to make a nest hole – he was declaring his territory. After every session of drumming he looked around, as if listening, and sure enough, another bird was answering his challenge from the other side of the wood. Both male and female Great Spotted Woodpeckers drum, which makes me think that they share a territory during the breeding season, and that both sexes are involved in defending it.

I wondered if the Woodpecker was choosing his branch with care, in order to make the maximum amount of noise. If so, he joins an elite company of animals who use the world around them to create displays. I am thinking particularly of a male chimpanzee that I knew in Cameroon, who would choose a hollow tree to kick when he was displaying over all others, presumably because of its deep, bass-drum quality.

And then there was a cackle and another Great Spotted Woodpecker appeared. The two birds flew up and clashed wings, like dragonflies, before heading out over the houses. A third bird also joined in, possibly the original bird’s mate, so for a few seconds the blue sky was patterned with black and white and red shapes. And then, all was silent again. But there was no doubt in my mind that spring had already begun, and the great battle to reproduce had started all over again. As broken as the world sometimes seems, the great engine of the seasons is still working.

To see a short video of one of the woodpeckers drumming, please see below. Quality isn’t great, but you can hear the bird (though you might want to take a seasickness pill before viewing 🙂 )

Dear Readers, the wind is whistling down the chimney, the rain is racketing on the skylight and the bird feeders are blowing almost horizontal in the gale, and yet I have indisputable evidence that, for some at least, spring is on the way. Earlier this week, during a muddy, blustery walk in my beloved Coldfall Wood, I heard an extraordinary cacophony coming from an area which has been coppiced, so it is a little more open than other parts of the forest. There is a large dead tree there which, with great wisdom, has been left standing. It was attracting a lot of attention.

The Ring-necked Parakeets, which I’ve written about in an earlier post, have arrived in force to look for nest sites. They investigated the dead tree with much interest, peering into holes, biting off chunks of bark and hanging almost upside down to make sure they had viewed their new ‘property’ from all angles. There was much ‘discussion’ about which was the best site, and much to-ing and fro-ing as each pair flew from hole to hole.

Here, we can see a pair – the male is the one with the dark ring around the neck. What handsome, unexpected birds they are, livening up the woods with all that lime green and teal blue, and the bright red of their beaks! They are Britain’s only parrots, and the RSPB estimates that there are about 8600 breeding pairs in the UK, nearly all of them in urban or suburban areas. A recent study showed that their presence at garden birdtables ‘put off’ other birds, but I would be interested to see, firstly, whether the parrots actually stay for very long, and also how they compare in deterrent effect with other large, energetic birds. Certainly, no one in my garden, not even the Woodpigeons, feeds near the Great Spotted Woodpecker or the Jay when he visits.

By staking a claim to their nest sites now, the parakeets gain an advantage over other birds, who won’t start pairing off until later in the year. By doing this, they compete with Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, who would normally use the holes. At present, though, there seems to be enough dead wood around, both in the wood and the cemetery nearby, for all three species to jog along nicely together.

In much of their range overseas, Ring-necked Parakeets have become a significant agricultural pest, and indeed Natural England have put them on their ‘General Licence’ of birds that can be shot without special permission if they are causing damage. One vineyard owner in Kent lost his entire crop of grapes when a flock of the birds descended and ate the lot. However, at present, this is a rare occurrence, and the sight of parakeets setting up home in a North London wood is more a cause for delight than trepidation. Let us be generous here, and enjoy these vivid, feisty birds as they bring a hint of the summer to come to our windswept, damp, dreary landscape.

As a Christmas present to myself, and to the birds, I decided to buy a new bird feeder. I don’t usually include peanuts on the bill of fare, but this terracotta acorn rather took my fancy. I dangled it from a branch of next door’s cherry tree, filled it up, and sat back to see what happened.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “For once, the little birds will have somewhere to feed that isn’t mobbed by squirrels or bigger birds”.

And to start with, I was right.

Great Tit checking out the new feeder

But not for long.

Jay (Garrulus glandarius) sussing out the new feeder

I have been visited by Jays before. With the oak trees of Coldfall Wood less than a quarter of a mile away, it’s not surprising that they sometimes pop in. In the fall, Jays eat thousands of acorns and bury what they can’t eat immediately. Many an oak seedling has started its life as a forgotten part of a Jay’s larder. But it has been over a year since I’ve seen a Jay. How did this one work out that there was something of interest? I know of their intelligence, but their food-finding ability is uncanny.

The Jay is one of the shyest of the British crows and is also the most brightly coloured. This has not always been to its advantage: the iridescent blue wing feathers were much coveted by milliners, and were used to make fishing flies. These, coupled with its  striking russet-pink body feathers, and the sharp black-and-white markings on the face, combine to make a bird that looks, as W.H. Hudson once wrote, ‘not altogether unworthy of being called the British Bird of Paradise’. Many a novice birdwatcher has mistaken it for something altogether more exotic and rare, such as a Roller.

A good view of those turquoise wing feathers

The bird turned his head from side to side, trying to judge his angle of approach. After all, the feeder was hanging from a flimsy branch, and had no obvious perches.

Not that that was going to stop him.

Each visit was so fast that it felt like a smash and grab. The jay hoovered up a beakful of peanuts and flew off.

It was as if I’d imagined my visitor. Surely nothing so bright and daring could have stopped by this ordinary suburban garden? The feeder swung gently from side to side, rocked by the Jay’s volition, until finally it hung still. When I checked it later, it was as if it had been wiped clean. Not a single peanut was left.