More visitors came. Towards the end of the winter when the seeds had all gone from the alder cones, the feeder would be invaded by troupes of hungry siskins. Squirrels that had woken early from their winter sleep would join the birds, and field mice too. A pair of marsh tits arrived, and a pair of willow tits. Marsh and willow tits look almost identical; there are subtle differences, but the differences between individuals can be greater than that between species. I could spend hours trying to work out who was who. Their habits vary though; marsh tits nest in any tree hole they can find, like most tits, while the willow tit is the only one that excavates its own nesting hole. With their tiny beaks they need very soft wood, so they tend to live in the wet and boggy alder woods, where there is rotten wood everywhere. They fill a different niche, and occupy different territories. And like other birds that look very similar, such as willow warblers and chiffchaffs, they have quite distinctive calls. It was through their calls that I finally learned to tell them apart, and in time I could recognize each of the four individual birds. The marsh tits took over the cotoneaster by my porch and worked their way through its berries; none of the other birds would touch them, not even the barely distinguishable willows. And every time I opened my front door the marsh tits would scold me loudly with their chickadee call.
There were some notable absentees. The bird tables in the village were dominated by greenfinches, but only a single one ever found its way to mine. Even closer at hand, down at the farm, the barns were raided by gangs of chattering house sparrows, but again only one single wanderer ever found its way to my table. A slight difference in altitude can change the whole ecology of a place; it could be another country. Down by the river the collared doves cooed, but I never once saw one up at Penlan. There were hedgehogs down on the valley floor too, but my cottage was above the invisible barrier for them as well.
The cold weather brought the birds in droves; they thronged to the table. Blackbirds and song thrushes, much shyer here than in the parks and gardens of the city, magpies and jays that dived in from the cover of the fruit tree, the new kings. Dunnocks picked in the snow for fallen morsels, and the garden wrens that usually ignored the table joined in too. The most surprising visitor was a treecreeper, a tiny mouse-like bird with a unique feeding style. Starting at the bottom of a tree, they work their way up the trunk in spirals, with little jerky hops, winkling out microscopic insects from the bark with their needle-thin bills. When they reach the crown they fly down to the bottom of the next tree and start again. They can work their way through an entire wood doing this, and they never pause to rest because their prey is so tiny. Little creatures like these must eat constantly to keep their energy up, like the common shrews that I sometimes found in my woodshed picking through my wood supply for insects, in a constant state of high excitement. It is the tiniest birds that are most vulnerable in the cold weather, not because they freeze but because they starve. The treecreeper took to the peanut-feeder, but its feeding style was ingrained; it would start at the bottom and work its way up in spirals.
So while the world around me was frozen and still under its deep blanket of snow, around my cottage was a hive of activity. It helped make the experience of being snowed in feel not like a chore but a privilege, a holiday. I wonder how many birds made it through that hard, hard winter solely because of my intervention. I could spend hours each day sat by my narrow slotted window watching their comings and goings, their battles for supremacy. But every now and then I would have to leave my post and stand by my fire, slowly turning, because in this cold the fire can burn your front while your back still freezes.
Inevitably, the sparrowhawks found the table too; such a congregation of birds would not go unnoticed for long. Whenever I looked out at the table and found it bare of life, I knew it was because the hawks were close at hand. One morning when I went out to replenish the food supply, I surprised the female lurking in the depths of the fruit tree. She burst out of the tree, with a clatter that would have done justice to a woodpigeon. Her wings clapped once above her back, and once below. On the downstroke her wings flicked the topmost strand of the sheep-fence that topped my drystone wall, and set it zinging. Then she raced down the front field in alarm, jinking wildly like a panicked snipe. Sparrowhawks live by the element of surprise; I don’t think she much liked having the tables turned for once.
Eventually the thaw came. I felt as though I had been through a rite of passage; I had experienced the worst that the elements could throw at me, and come through it unscathed. I looked forward to getting out and resuming my rambles, seeing how the wildlife had coped with the hard times just gone, but I hadn’t run out of anything I couldn’t manage without. I didn’t need to rush to town to replenish my stocks. Town could wait. A bit more alone time would do me no harm at all.
The sun was starting to set. I wrapped up warm and left the cottage, walking down the hill past the old crook barn, over the old bridge, and to my secret clearing in the woods. I had my own personal bench here. Twin oaks had grown too close together; as their canopies reached for the light they leaned away from each other so their trunks formed the shape of a V. Their roots had entwined and meshed together and made a comfortable seat, and this is where I stopped and waited. As the skies began to darken the first flock of redwings flew in, at least two or three hundred of them. They seemed to fly in perfect synchrony so their brilliant red underwings flashed on and off in unison. They were roosting in the jungle on the far side of the clearing, but they didn’t settle yet, they circled above the trees. More flocks arrived from every direction, in their hundreds. They must have been coming from miles away, from tens of miles away, until there were thousands of birds converging into one massive flock. They spiralled up into the sky, swelled into a huge bubble that suddenly burst, and scattered. They twisted and turned, shape-shifting, rising, falling, assembling, dispersing. Anyone who has seen the incredible massed aerial displays of starlings at their winter roosts will know the sight; this was like that but with added colour. It was an awesome spectacle; there were moments that made me want to gasp like people do at the grand finale of a firework display. And that is just what it was like; as the flock burst into a sudden explosion of crimson I could have been in a ringside seat at my own private firework show. Finally the last light faded away and the birds all settled into the trees. And then I left them, and trudged back up the hill in the darkness to where I hoped my fire was still burning so I could warm my bones.
4. My Familiar
The totemic bird of mid-Wales is the red kite. They are stunning, graceful birds with a wingspan greater than a buzzard’s, perhaps five feet across. Their narrow black-and-white wings have a characteristic kink, their little pigeon-like heads are pale grey, and their breasts and that distinctive forked tail are a glorious rufous orange. They sail effortlessly on the updraught, constantly flexing and torquing their tails, a rudder to finesse their every movement. We are lucky to have them; they were brought back from the brink of extinction. It is thought that every one of them may be descended from a single female that clung to life here in my hills. Formerly they were widespread; notoriously they once long ago scavenged the rubbish tips of London, like the black kites that still feed on the rubbish tips of India in their thousands today. But centuries of persecution pushed them ever back, until they retreated to their last stand in the fastness of these hidden valleys. It is easy to understand why they were so vulnerable: when you see one floating by, as often as not it will approach and circle directly over your head to get a better look at you, in spite of all those generations of harassment. It was curiosity that killed the kite.