Tag Birds

Sanctuary – the endangered species in my garden

LisaTulfer 1 Comment

My garden is nothing special – a patch of scrappy lawn, laid on top of builders’ rubble in this newbuild estate, surrounded by wooden fence panels, enlivened by a few plants in pots brought with us from our previous home.  But this past summer, it has been a place of sanctuary for an endangered species.

It started in the spring – our first in this house – when a small flock started lining up on the fence most days, communicating in their characteristic, monosyllabic ‘CHEEP!’ and speculatively eyeing up the garden.  One of the gardens on the opposite side of the road is bristling with bird feeders, so they were well provided for in terms of food.  But it was shaping up to be a dry spell, and it seemed that the most helpful thing we could do was to provide water.  I duly purchased a small glazed plant saucer from the garden centre, added a pebble (to prevent bees, who also frequent bird baths, from drowning), placed it on the patio far enough from the house not to spook the birds with our movements, and filled it up with water.

Within a day or two, the bathing facilities had been enthusiastically adopted.  For a couple of hours in the morning, and again at midday, queues would form on the fence.  I joked that they were lining up, their towels draped over their wings, waiting for their turn in the bath!  At their peak, once the first broods had fledged and the fluffy youngsters joined their parents, there could be as many as twenty individuals at any one time.  Down at the bath, there were rarely fights (although one particularly large male could be very aggressive), and it was not unusual to see anything up to six birds splashing around at the same time. 

We learned a number of things from watching the birds over several months.  When they come down to drink, they take three sips – never less, and rarely more.  Bathing is a vigorous business, and can go on for several minutes, resulting in a large pool of water all around the bath.  This also means that the bath needs to be topped up several times during the day, especially during a heat wave!  When it is nearly empty, they will fly down, stare into the bath, attempt to bathe, and fly back up to the fence, returning several times before giving up.  After a nice, long, splashy bath, the next stop is the top of the fence, and a lengthy preen (see photo), which can last several minutes and includes forceful wiping of the beak on the edge of the fence panel (the reverberations can be loud enough to be heard in the house).  Occasionally, the bathing has obviously been sub-standard, and the bird will stop in mid-preen and go back for another go in the bath, before resuming preening.

Sometimes, the birds suddenly disappear.  The chorus of cheeps is abruptly silent.  It is worth looking around, because there will usually be an aptly-named sparrowhawk perched on a roof somewhere, surveying the options for lunch.

Mono photograph of three sparrows on a wooden fence. The one on the left has its back to us. The one on the right is facing us, and we can tell by its black bib that it is an adult male. The one in the middle has its back to us and its wings extended, feathers spread, as it preens. Image Copyright Lisa Tulfer 2022.

Why aptly-named?  Because the endangered species that shares my garden is Passer domesticus, the House Sparrow, which at one point was one of the commonest bird species around human habitation in the United Kingdom.  However, populations have declined by more than 50% since the 1970s, resulting in the sparrow being on the RSPB’s Red List of endangered species.

The House Sparrow is a small, sociable, finch-like bird, with brindled brown and black markings on its upper parts and greyish cream underparts.  The adult males have a distinctive black bib – it has been fun watching the young males, even when still partially fluffy, starting to develop the beginnings of their black bibs.  They live in groups, and it is not uncommon in suburban areas to walk past a bush which is full of loud cheeps from a group of invisible (but very audible!) sparrows.  They pair for life, and normally raise two or even three broods per year – we saw the last youngsters being introduced to the garden as late as September.  This year has evidently been a good breeding year here, as the group has at least tripled in size since the spring, and it’s great to think that we have been able to contribute – by providing sanctuary and water – to the conservation effort for this species.  Hopefully they will escape the avian flu which is spreading so worryingly amongst wild bird populations in the UK at the moment (we have tried to do our bit by disinfecting the birdbath frequently).

The last few weeks it has gone very quiet in the garden.  After raising their young, groups often move to nearby farmland to feed on the hedgerow berries and the leftovers of the harvest.  The bird feeders in the garden across the way are largely deserted, too.  No doubt we’ll see them again if there’s a hard winter – access to water is often more of a problem for wild creatures when there’s a freeze than finding food.  Meanwhile, we have the memory of sharing our garden with this endangered species, being given a glimpse into their busy lives and social interactions (and bathing habits!), and hopefully having helped to secure the next generation of Passer domesticus.

I am committed to making this blog freely available, and not putting material behind a paywall. As a writer, I am doing what I love – but I still have to make a living. If you have enjoyed this post, and if you are able to do so, perhaps you would consider supporting my work by making a small contribution via the Buy Me A Coffee button. Thank you!

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Soundscape – a midsummer evening in my garden

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The back garden of this house faces south-east.  This means it’s a suntrap until after lunch – perfect for drying laundry, less good for frazzling my Fitzpatrick Type I skin – while in the evening it is a cool, calm sanctuary on even the hottest of days.  It’s been 27 degrees Celsius today, and this evening we sit outside with our books and our coffee and are comfortable for the first time since dawn.

I finish a chapter, and close my eyes.  I can hear choral music from one of the houses further along the estate.  A car draws up, doors slam.  Voices are raised in greeting.  Over on the other side, a toddler cries.  Cars and the occasional larger vehicle pass along the main-ish road at the front of the house.  Ewes and lambs call to each other – contralto, treble – in the field behind the estate.

Most of what I can hear, though, is birds.  Sparrows cheeping monosyllabically in the little lime tree beyond the fence.  It seems to be a good year for the house martins, and there are dozens of them cruising around the sky over the gardens, chirruping and scooping up the evening’s crop of insects.  They flap-flap-flap-glide, chubby little bodies with stumpy tails and triangular wings, perpetually looking as if they are about to crash.  This evening they are joined by a lone swallow, elegant, long tail streaming.

A passenger plane crosses behind the martins, tinted pink by the setting sun.  With a crash and a rumble, a tractor and trailer passes, the trailer full of silage – they’ve been going past at all hours for much of the last month, gathering fodder in preparation for the winter.

And now there’s a new sound, as a squadron of shrieking sickles moves into the airspace high over the estate.  The swifts are here!  They’ve been in the valley for a few weeks now, but mostly hunting for insects over the river.  From my study in the attic, which faces that way, I hear their screams all day.  Their forays over the estate are rarer, though, and all the more special.  There are about twenty of them this evening, freestyling through the air, their squeals the very essence of being alive.

It’s turned chillier now, and it’s getting dark – almost time to go back indoors.  But a tinkle of birdsong proves, on investigation, to be a goldfinch on the roof of the house opposite.  Usually there’s a group – a ‘charm’ – who frequent the bird feeders in their garden, but this time there’s just one.  He tunes up, does a few practice runs, then fills the cool air with his rippling song.  Into the silence that follows, the swifts screech in for one last, scything fly-past.

A border of lavender and nigella in the sunshine, in front of a garden wall with a bench in the background.

I am committed to making this blog freely available, and not putting material behind a paywall. As a writer, I am doing what I love – but I still have to make a living. If you have enjoyed this post, and if you are able to do so, perhaps you would consider supporting my work by making a small contribution via the Buy Me A Coffee button. Thank you!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Book Review – The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster

LisaTulfer 1 Comment

This book arrived three days before the swifts returned to the skies above Somerset.  When I unwrapped the tissue-packed parcel, I was captivated by the cover – Jonathan Pomroy’s illustrations are so evocative of the drama and vertiginous speed of these remarkable, ancient birds.

The Screaming Sky is a book born of an obsession.  On his own admission, Charles Foster is obsessed with swifts – where others might be content to watch them in the skies over Oxford, and be blessed by their occupation of nest sites in the roof of his house, Foster travels on pilgrimage to see them in Spain, Greece and Israel, as well as in the tropical heat and humidity of their African winter homes.  He tracks the progress of their migrations via other obsessives on the internet, and the swifts’ presence or absence in the air above him is mirrored in the highs and lows of his mood.  It is as if he cannot live without them.

This gorgeously tactile little book is divided into monthly chapters, January to December.  In each chapter, Foster explores what the swifts are doing that month, and where, as well as delving into the history, biology and statistics of these enigmatic creatures.  We know quite a bit about Apus apus, the Common Swift.  For example, they spend most of their lives on the wing, landing only to breed and occasionally when encountering very bad weather during migration.  They sleep while flying – the two halves of the brain take it in turns to sleep.  Following the cornucopia of insect life (what Foster refers to as aerial plankton or krill), they migrate inconceivable distances – the swifts breeding in Foster’s summertime Oxford spend the winter months 6,000 miles south in Mozambique.   They lay up to four eggs, but the fourth hatchling (if there is one) never survives.  Young swifts set off for their winter homes within weeks, sometimes days, of fledging. 

We know that swifts are truly ancient, having evolved over 30 million years ago. Swifts are also long-lived – they can have a lifespan of 20+ years.  They return to the place where they were hatched, spending their first couple of summers screaming around the sky with their companions and generally, it seems, having a ball, maybe even tentatively pairing up, before scoping out a potential nest site for the serious business of claiming a nest and breeding.  We know that most of the birds which travel to western Europe for the summer breeding season spend a while over Liberia, gorging on the insect soup swirling in the air after the rains.  From there, the swifts I see in Somerset will have travelled some 3,100 miles, in as little as five days.

However, there is so much we don’t know about swifts.  There are myriad theories, for example, about how they navigate over these immense distances, how they decide that the time is right to start their migration, how they re-unite with their mate, and what accounts for the wide variations in how long it takes individual birds to make the journey.

Foster explores the place of the swift in literature, the emphasis on the bird’s speed (the clue is in the name) and its totemic role as the essence of the northern European summer.  He also rails against the appropriation of the swift as somehow the possession of the observer.  Swifts, he says, are not ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ or ‘his’.  They are their own selves, untameable, masters of the sky in a way that we can only dream of, and in no way reciprocating the sense of connectedness we feel with the swifts who condescend to make fleeting use of our roof-eaves and insect supplies.  It is this unconquerable wildness which, for Foster (and for me) makes swifts so compelling.

Perhaps more than anything, though, he is full of admiration for their mastery of their environment, the sky: ‘they inhabit the air as fish inhabit the sea’.  Their speed and seemingly effortless command of the tides of the air is not only functional (hunting insects) but also seems to have a powerful element of fun and joy: ‘not everything is about the algorithms of survival’ and the screaming parties of swifts hurtling through the sky are ‘colossal fun’.

I love this book.  The blend of facts and personal enthusiasm for the subject makes it an engaging read, and Jonathan Pomroy’s illustrations are perfect.  Of course, I loved it all the more – and was so excited when I heard that Little Toller Books were going to be publishing it – because of how I feel about swifts.  The sight of those exuberant little black sickles slicing through the late spring sky at the end of their epic migration is viscerally energising.  Shrieking squadrons, skimming just over my head between the red-brick cliffs of the town houses, sound so intensely full of life that they make me feel alive, too.  And the day in August when suddenly the sky is silent, empty of little black sickles as they follow the call of their African winter home, is the day the year turns towards winter for me, too.

The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster, illustrated by Jonathan Pomroy, is published by (and available from) Little Toller Books, 2021.  ISBN 9781908213846

Photograph of the front cover of The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster

Family life – the swans of Oxburgh Hall

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As the summer comes to a close, I’m sharing a family saga that’s been unfolding over the past few months.  I am fortunate to have Oxburgh Hall (National Trust) just down the road, and the fine moat is home to a pair of swans.  Last summer, while swan couples in the surrounding countryside reared their families, there were no little silver puffballs for the Oxburgh swans.

This year, however, they had more luck.  Back in June, they were proudly showing off their single baby.  Small, fluffy and grey, they guarded it fiercely.  Any visitor venturing too near was seen off by a hissing parent.  As an adult swan can easily break your arm if sufficiently cross, visitors wisely left well alone!  We got some nice pictures though.

Cygnets (baby swans) are quite vulnerable.  As well as having the usual youngsters’ talent for getting into life-threatening scrapes, when they are tiny they are also vulnerable to predators such as foxes, herons and raptors.  Prolonged wet periods can cause them to get waterlogged and chilled, and in hot weather they can easily overheat.  They can also be targeted by parasites, which weaken their system.  About a third of hatchlings don’t make it past the first two weeks of life.  They are not fed by their parents, but feed themselves from the start, so they have to learn quickly how to find enough suitable food to fuel their rapid growth.

On my next visit to Oxburgh, in July, I was thrilled to find that the lone cygnet was not only surviving, but thriving!  The parents were a little less protective now that the crucial first couple of weeks were past, and our little cygnet was growing well.

Much less fluffy, s/he (too early to tell if it’s a cob or a pen) is a sturdy little thing, and seems to have mastered the art of hoovering food up out of the moat.  It was actually quite hard to get a photograph, as the cygnet spent most of its time upended, feeding!  I got dozens of pictures of its backside, but not many of its head…

Fast forward to late August, and there was a heart-stopping moment as we couldn’t find the swan family.  We walked all round the moat, searched the fields, but there was no sign of them.   Just as we were about to go and find a member of staff to enquire what had happened to the swans, we spotted them in the river beyond the moat.  The cygnet is now HUGE!  It is rapidly growing to be as big as its mother, and is confidently swimming off by itself.

I stood on the little footbridge to take this photograph, but had to move aside when the flotilla headed my way, with the parents hissing loudly – they wanted to swim under the footbridge, and objected to my presence!  I obediently made way (I don’t argue with swans) and they ducked under the bridge and headed off downstream.

It’s been lovely to follow this youngster’s progress, and it’s great that the pair have finally managed to raise young – even if it is just the one.  Maybe they are an inexperienced pair and they’ll be more successful in future years – it’s a good excuse to keep going back to Oxburgh Hall to find out!