A report and a plea from our regular bird feeding correspondent in Meath: Please go on putting out nuts and seeds and fat for the birds, even when the savage weather calms down. She does, even though the ungrateful finches are stripping her prunus autumnalis of their lovely winter flowers. That's birds for ye, as some one said in another context. The recent frosts were worse than the stormy periods. She had to keep refilling the many feeding devices almost daily.
And the birds persist in coming to the feast in spite of what are now daily, and sometimes three or four times daily, swoops along the edges by the sparrowhawk, who has a perfect view from the top of a nearby willow. He can only take them as they fly to and from the feeding devices, for the food is, mostly stored well into the hawthorns. The other day she saw a swoop and a kill, just one feather floating down in the airstream behind him.
There are the natural sources of food, too, the fruit on the trees, and she notices, after a day's absence, that all over the path around the house were ball of moss - dug out from between the Liscannor flagstones by birds, after worms and what not.
And where do all these small birds shelter at night? Some in old nests, others in holes in trees and among the ivy on the trees. There are also, on her land, two huge stacks of prunings from bushes, smaller tree branches, lumpy rolls of dried cleevers and assorted weedy junk. They were due to be burned when the first frosts came or when the stuff was more dried out. Now, of course, it occurs to her that both of these stacks are obvious shelter for birds and animals of one sort and another. You might save them from being burned by beating around with sticks and making noise, but what of their value as shelter?
So they will stay there until spring puts leaves on the hedges and trees, and the inhabitants will have moved out. Alternately, when the time comes, trample it down - there are a couple of hefty men available, and let it go to mulch (hah!). The hard weather brings many visitors other than the garden birds. More squirrels now; and, walking in stately fashion among seeds that drop to the ground, the other way, a cock pleasant "as big as a turkey and a lot more handsome. The daddy of all cock pheasants in Meath."
Other games birds - mallard (the house is beside a river), are not clients. Snipe stay away, of course. And woodcock are seen only in unusual years. Already a large hunk of an old willow, leaving a big hole in the trunk, has come down. And winter has only begun.