Twite (Carduelis flavirostris) Photo By Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13221949

Dear Readers, I always associate the Twite, an inconspicuous little  bird,  with the cold, windy hills of the Scottish Highlands in winter. It is very closely related to the Linnet, which it more or less replaces in upland habitats. When I lived in Scotland I would sometimes see flocks of Twite exploding out of the bushes at the side of a path, sometimes in surprising numbers. When feeding in fields (the bird relies on tiny seeds for food) its plumage would make it almost invisible.

You can also sometimes see Twite in coastal areas right around the UK. There are breeding populations in  Scotland and on the Pennines, and Twite often visit from northern  Europe during the winter. Alas, the breeding population is declining, with no birds now breeding in England, and the Scottish population also declining. In Scotland, it’s suggested that the marginal habitat adjacent to farmland was important for winter feeding and for nesting, but this is increasingly being taken into cultivation. Also, the bird uses hay meadows to find the little seeds that it feeds upon, and  these are becoming vanishingly rare.

Twite (Carduelis flavirostris) Photo Imran Shah from Islamabad, Pakistan, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

While the song of the Linnet was melodic enough to lead to the bird often being caged, that of the Twite has been compared to ‘electricity crackling’. See what you think…

In ‘Birds Britannica’, Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey comment that the Twite is the only European bird derived from Tibetan fauna – it’s thought that it spread from the Tibetan plateau into Central Europe), but after the Ice Age some birds went north (our population) whilst others followed the eastern edge of the ice back to central Asia. Apart from the population of Twite in Scandinavia, the closest relatives to ‘our’ birds now live in Turkey.

Twite (Carduelis flavirostris) captured at Langar, Ghizer, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan by Imran Shah

Although they are the quintessential ‘little brown jobs’, Twite, like sparrows, seem to create a great fondness in those who see them regularly. Again, in Birds Britannica, a farmer remarks that she has started feeding the Twite and other birds, and that they follow her tractor, and even come to her voice when she calls them. And she says that she worries about them, although she says that this is unnecessary really, as they are ‘tough little birds’. I love how the living world can bring us such a sense of connection, if only we pay attention.

Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) Photo By Dion Art – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146223238

As we head towards Winter Solstice, here’s something to ponder on…

Snowy Night by Mary Oliver

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

Dear Readers, well here we are, back from Toronto, and as usual the jet lag going east is much worse than the jet lag going  west. I woke up at 2.35 a.m. and fell asleep again at about 5 a.m., so I guess I got a few hours of shut eye, but getting up at 7 a.m. was a slog. Still, I’m vertical and I’ve been out and about this morning, and I have a pile of UK Christmas cards to write, so hopefully I can keep going until this evening. 

That intense tiredness that I feel reminds me of when I used to work the 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift at the night shelter in Dundee when I was a young person. By the time I left the shelter I would be longing for my bed with an intensity that I find it hard to describe, except to say that sinking under the duvet was blissful, and that I’d fall asleep almost instantly. I imagine that sleep-deprived parents with small children, or those suffering from insomnia, might yearn for sleep in the same way.

It makes me think about how insulated from sheer physical want we often are these days – when I started doing intermittent fasting a few years ago, I realised how rarely I was actually really hungry. I’d gotten into the habit of snacking whenever I felt a bit bored, or lonely, or stressed, but often what I wanted wasn’t actually food, it was something else – a chat with a friend, a walk around the block, a few minutes reading a good book.

Similarly, I have rarely been physically exhausted this year – in previous years our trips to walk in the Alps in Austria meant that every afternoon we would be tired and aching but happy. This year, my broken leg has put limits to my exercise, although it’s amazing how tiring a walk around the block can be when your tibia is healing. There’s a special quality to being properly physically tired that’s different from just being worn out by mental overwork and emotional shenanigans.

My personal cure for jet lag is to go out and see people in the morning, however spaced out and tired you feel. There is a theory that the combination of light (even sunshine if you’re lucky) and pheromones from other people help your body clock to reset itself, and even if not, a flat white coffee helps me to keep going through what can feel like a very long day. Any other suggestions, Readers? What do you do that helps if you’re lucky enough to travel long haul (I know not everybody can or wants to hop on a plane to the other side of the world).

The view from our hotel window

Dear Readers, this hasn’t been an easy trip to Toronto, but for the last few days the sky has been blue, the sun has been shining and although it’s been cold, the wind has dropped so it hasn’t been quite so brutal. I know that in other parts of Canada it’s been much, much worse, with shedloads of snow dropping on places that we used to visit with our aunts Rosemary and Linda, and temperatures of -35 in Winnipeg, but I am not used to my face hurting because it’s getting frozen, a rarity in East Finchley for sure.John was here saying goodbye to his childhood home, and I was fascinated by a photo that his father had taken of the garden.

In the front garden there was a climbing hydrangea (much like the one that I have in the back garden), and some blousy pink hydrangeas. How English, you might think, along with the manicured lawn. But John’s Dad was English (from Cornwall in fact), and one of the things that he found most difficult about living in Toronto was the short growing season – it’s freezing from November to March, baking from July to September and in between anything can happen, so I can understand his frustration. He quite fancied moving to Vancouver, where the weather isn’t so extreme, but there was no way that that was going to happen. In the living room there are some dried hydrangeas in a vase, that have been there for as long as I can remember. I find myself wondering if they were picked from this very shrub.

And in the back garden there’s a pine tree that was planted by John and his Dad when John was a little boy, sixty-odd years ago. Now it’s taller than the house, and it’s survived the storms and droughts and other vagaries of the Canadian climate. At some point, someone new will own the house, and the garden, and who knows what will happen to the tree then? But for sixty years it’s been home to squirrels and woodpeckers and probably the odd raccoon, plus a whole myriad of invertebrates and fungi and lichen, so it’s probably done its bit for the local ecosystem. Sometimes, it’s all about letting go.

And maybe you’ll forgive me this poem, by Elizabeth Bishop. What an extraordinary poet she was! See what you think.

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

A bioluminescent Christmas Tree (Photo New Scientisthttps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435214-200-bioluminescent-christmas-tree-glows-with-festive-cheer/)

Dear Readers, having waxed lyrical about the wonders of the Toronto Eaton Centre Christmas tree yesterday, how about this one? It’s made from blocks of balsa wood impregnated with Ringless Honey Fungus (Desarmillaria tabescens).

Ringless Honey Fungus (Photo byThis image was created by user Dan Molter (shroomydan) at Mushroom Observer, a source for mycological images.CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

The mycelium of this fungus is bioluminescent – when exposed to air, an enzyme in the fungus produces a chemical called luciferin, which glows green and gives this rather eerie effect – I must say that the ‘tree’ reminds me more of the Blair Witch Project than something festive, but maybe it’s just me. Luciferin, though, is extremely cool – it’s actually a family of several chemicals that produce light, and can be found in many living things, from bacteria and various sea microorganisms to squid and shrimps. In the photo below, a marine organism known as a dinoflagellate is bioluminescent when agitated, in this case by the movement of the waves.

Dinoflagellate bioluminescence (Photo by By Mike – Red Tide at midnight, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8957092)

So, the makers of the Christmas tree wonder if the bioluminescence could be harnessed to make eco-friendly household lighting. There have been experiments using light-producing algae in the past, but keeping the algae happy and alive for any length of time has proven to be tricky. Plus, living things tend not to like extremes of temperature, so the possibility of having eco-friendly outdoor lighting using bioluminescence in, say, Toronto (where it’s currently -15 degrees) is pretty slim. Finally, although the light emitted is pretty, you aren’t going to be able to read a book by it.  Still, it will be interesting to see what the scientists come up with.

Eaton Centre Christmas Tree

Dear Readers, earlier this week we accidentally came across the ‘magical Christmas Tree’ at the Eaton Centre in Toronto. It looks pretty impressive in its ‘normal’ state, a huge twinkly red and gold edifice that sails past three floors of shops. But on the hour all sorts of exciting things happen – it changes colour, snowflakes shimmer against the walls and ceiling, and occasionally a Canadian Maple Leaf flag appears.

And if you have fourteen minutes to spare, you can watch the whole lighting ceremony on Youtube here including a children’s choir singing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, possibly the most long-winded of Christmas songs, but still something to mark the season.

And there’s the Christmas reindeer, of course….

Photo by Sikander Iqbal, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

So with all this going on, I wonder why I don’t feel more Christmassy? I’ve mentioned that I’m in Toronto on family business, and this week we’ve been doing a lot of house clearance, which always makes me a little melancholy, though there’s something very satisfying about making order out of chaos. What gets me most, though (and this has been a theme in every house that I’ve ever cleared, including my parents’ little bungalow) are the things kept ‘for best’ that are still in pristine condition, sometimes even wrapped, because the owners were waiting for a special day to use them. I’m determined to find a way to use the things that I’m lucky enough to have, even if it means that they get broken or spoiled. The bulk of my belongings will end up in a skip if I don’t find a way to use them, or to pass them on to people who need them. And how much easier it would be to start on this soon, when I get home! I will let you know how I get on. I think I might feel much lighter, and clearer, if I wasn’t so bogged down with ‘things’.

Photo by Juliescribbles, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers, I don’t know what it is about wet concrete that means that animals want to walk in it, but it is fun to be in Toronto and to see footprints that you’d never see in the UK. The prints above are, I think, those of a raccoon (known semi-affectionately as ‘trash pandas’ around here), probably the most ingenious and adaptable animals in Canada. I’ve written about them before; – there was the story about how raccoons broke into the so-called ‘raccoon-proof bins’ introduced by Toronto mayor John Tory (and yes, yes he was a Tory) – they managed to ‘crack the lock’ within days of the bins being deployed. And then there were the raccoons that broke into a Toronto bank (well, with those black masks it had to happen eventually I guess!)

It seems as if Toronto has reached ‘peak raccoon’, though, with the creation of a new children’s playground called ‘Raccoon Park’ (located close to Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue East).

Raccoon Park

While not everyone loves raccoons, the local councillor, Josh Matlow, who opened the park, had a few things to say about it.

“I know that not everyone is wild about the raccoons, but this is our way of signing a peace accord, saying we celebrate Toronto’s icon, but most importantly, have a little fun with it,” he said.

“If any raccoon does come to this park, they will be safe. They do have safe harbour here at Raccoon Park,” he added.

Now, if only it wasn’t going to be below zero and snowing later this week, I would probably go to take a look.

Photo by Georgios Liakopoulos, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

I love this. See what you think….

Romance

By Susan Browne

I swim my laps today, slowly, slowly,
reaching my arms out & over, my fleshly oars,
the water silken on my skin, my body still able
to be a body & resting at the pool’s lip,
I watch other bodies slip through the blue,
how fast the young are
& how old they become, floating, floating,
forgetting the weight of years
while palm trees sway above us,
a little wind in the fronds, children playing
in the fountains, one is crying, one is eating
a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, I’m hungry
& wonder, has everything important happened
& what is more important than this,
like a secret adventure, like an affair I’m having
with everyone I see, their soft or washboard bellies,
their flat or rounded butts, their rippling hair
or shiny domes, their fragile ankles,
their beautiful bones, all our atoms swimming, swimming
& making us visible & I shove off the wall,
reaching my arms out, embracing the whole
magic show, with ten more laps to go.