Robin at Walthamstow Wetlands (Photo by Faye Cooke)

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the plight of small garden birds here in the UK over the past few days. With temperatures well below zero here in the south, sparrows and finches and tits and robins have been hyperactive, looking for food from dawn until dusk to give them enough energy to get through the long, cold night. Many of them have transformed themselves into tiny feathery balls, using their feathers to create a honeycomb of warm air to prevent themselves from freezing.

This robin was very attentive when we visited Walthamstow Wetlands on Monday – we didn’t even have any crumbs to throw to him or her. Maybe next time I’ll take a pocket full of rehydrated mealworms.

Photo by Faye Cooke

Down feathers are not stiff like flight feathers – they are soft and flexible, and each thread of down is ten times thinner than a human hair. A single feather can contain miles of these tiny threads, which billow and form into spheres. Air is trapped between the layers of down, and warms up, providing an insulating layer, but also blocking the cold air that would otherwise sweep that warmth away. What amazing structures they are!

A down feather (Photo By Wouter Hagens – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103988002)

There are actually three kinds of down. Body down is what is keeping our friend the robin warm. Natal down is what covers the bodies of newly-hatched chicks, and is most obvious in birds who have well-developed chicks (known as precocial) such as chickens.

Newly-hatched chicken chick.

The third kind of down will be familiar to anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have a pigeon fly into their window. Powder down is found in a small number of different bird families, including pigeons and doves, herons, and parrots. In these birds the tips of the barbules that make up a down feather disintegrate, producing a powder – these feathers grow continuously, and are never moulted. But why? In herons, it’s thought that the powder down may help with waterproofing, and with cleaning off fish scales and other gunk, but it’s not entirely clear if this is the same in the other bird groups. What is clear is that it’s an allergen, though it’s mostly a problem for pigeon-fanciers and anyone working in aviaries or with bird collections.

Bird imprint on window – Photo by By Ted – Flickr: DSC_0069, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22653492

In her piece in ‘Nature’s Calendar’, Rowan Jaines discusses Chaucer’s poem ‘The Parlement of Foules’, in which he describes four groups of birds, each part of a different social group represented by their feeding habits. At the top are the birds of the ravine, or birds of prey. There are the seed-eating birds, though they sit apart from the other birds so it’s hard to work out their status (definitely lower than the birds of prey though). Jaines has the worm foules (blackbirds, robins and starlings) at the bottom, though I have also read an analysis that puts the waterfowl at the bottom. However, what is clear is that robins and dunnock became symbols of the working-class, suffering through the winter – as Jaines puts it ‘puffing, whistling and working without respite’.

And here’s a John Clare poem on the robin in winter. He wrote about these birds many times, but this poem is longer than most, and there is something in his description of ‘That house where the peasant makes use of a gun’ that makes me think he is speaking a bit more widely than just some robin-killing local. ‘Grimalkin’, by the way, is a cat.

The Robin by John Clare (1793-1864)

Now the snow hides the ground little birds leave the wood
And flie to the cottage to beg for their food
While the domestic robin more tame then the rest
(With its wings drooping down and rough feathers undrest)
Comes close to our windows as much as to say
‘I would venture in if I could find a way
I’m starv’d and I want to get out of the cold
O! make me a passage and think me not bold’
Ah poor little creature thy visits reveal
Complaints such as these to the heart that can feel
Nor shall such complainings be urged in vain
I’ll make thee a hole if I take out a pane

Come in and a welcome reception thou’lt find
I keep no grimalkins to murder inclin’d
—But O! little robin be careful to shun
That house where the peasant makes use of a gun
For if thou but taste of the seed he has strew’d
Thy life as a ransom must pay for thy food
His aim is unerring his heart is as hard
And thy race tho so harmles he’ll never regard
Distinction with him boy is nothing at all
Both the wren and the robin with sparrows must fall
For his soul (tho he outwardly looks like a man)
Is in nature like wolves of the appenine clan

Like them his whole study is bent on his prey
Like them he devours what e’er comes in his way
Then be careful and shun what is meant to betray
And flie from these men-masked wolves far away
Come come to my cottage and thou shalt be free
To perch on my finger or sit on my knee
Thou shalt eat of the crumbles of bread to thy fill
And have leisure to clean both thy feathers and bill
Then come little robin and never believe
Such warm Invitations are meant to deceive
In duty I’m bound to show mercy on thee
While God dont deny it to sinners like me!