Birds and Trees

 Movement caught my eye.  The Powmillon Burn was flowing fast, swollen after recent heavy showers.  A few more days of rain and the water could rise above the stone-built banks, flooding on the edges of the Allison Green.  The little park is in the centre of Strathaven, once the common ground for drying the washing, poles remaining today.  I had been wandering the scenic path between car park and grocery store.

In and out of the burn; quick dive and back to the same spot on the bank, resistant to the current taking the waters between the bridges at either end of the Green.  I stood on the recently refurbished wooden footbridge (courtesy of Adam's Community Trust) and watched as the white-dickied dipper (thank you Nan Shepherd) enjoyed the waters, putting on a show.  Diving, disappearing, and returning to the same spot.  Dipping.

I had been reading Adam Nicolson's Bird School, the author of Sea Room and many more, spending time learning of the birds on his little Sussex farm, views from a magnificent bird house designed and built, enjoyed, from inside and out.  

He tells not just of the woodland birds in and around the farm, but of the history of species, the massive decline in numbers during our lifetimes; decline not only as a result of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring exposures of pesticides, but of habitat loss and hunting, migration traps and so much more.  Our own habits of filling garden feeders come into question.  Turning wild birds into garden pets has proved devastating.  Factor in the air miles for sunflower seeds from Ukraine, nyger from India, and we have developed a huge industry that is decimating our wildlife.

Time to rethink, planting for seeds and berries would be better.  Down at Maudslie the haws were red and round and ripe.  At home the cotoneaster and the rowan are rich with winter feed, bright and glistening in the morning sun as the frost recedes.  I must walk round and check the blackthorn.  However, our last winter in our wildlife garden in Avondale is almost upon us.  Planting for seasons to follow is not on the agenda.  

Our move to Moray will see green acres swapped for a small concrete yard.  Thus far bird feeding in the yard has attracted only starlings and sparrows.  There is little scope to plant anything that may produce seeds or berries; perhaps a pot-grown sunflower may do well in a sheltered, sunny spot, though there is little evidence yet of any tits or finches to come in search of seed heads.  Walking the clifftop whins and spotting the yellowhammers and the linnets, stonechats too, may be the local bird joy ahead.

At Maudslie Woods we returned to the parking area shortly after some kind soul had filled the feeders.  They were busy, and noisy, and not just with children keen on spotting the nuthatch.  We had wandered a stretch of the riverside path, watching long-tailed tits high in the canopy whilst thinking of catching a falling leaf as luck for the year ahead.  At least we saw the tits.

Across the river a heron surveyed the river from a lofty perch, looking every bit a refugee from the days of the pterodactyl.  I had been looking for the heron at a nesting site I had seen earlier in the year, just before a bend in the river where the woods start to rise high above the banks.  

Back in the days, before Maudslie Castle was demolished near a century ago, there had been formal plantings, mixed woodlands, orchards.  And along the drive some magnificent specimens remain.

Deep and spongy bark, reddish-brown, stretching high to the sky.  Peppered with cones.  Wellingtonias, introduced from California where these sequoias can be the tallest trees on the planet.  Being only three of us on this occasion we thought not of joining hands around the trunks, for these trees would have needed twice that number for some proper hugging.

There are some simple things we will undoubtedly miss after we head to our little home by the seas and the cliffs, exchange the Clyde for the Spey.  There are other woods to walk, and plenty other birds to follow in the annual cycle.  But the nuthatch and giant sequoia, and all the tits and finches that have flocked to the garden feeders, fleeing from sparrowhawk and woodpecker, will remain as lasting memories.

Meanwhile Adam Nicolson has left plenty of food for thought as to how we do our best for the birds that remain, both in our southern garden and in our northern yard.  Bird School is well worth a read; every day a school day.