feeding the birds

I finally decided it's time to feed the birds, despite the four cats (only one of which has shown any hunting prowess in the past year and that was with mice). The snow's been lying for four days, the ground is frozen and flakes are still fluttering down intermittently.

Using bamboo canes, I managed to rig up a wigwam in the middle of the garden and wedge a plastic tray of seeds and raisins in the top. Any feeding birds should be safe from the cats while they perch on it at least. The RSPB is now predicting a major impact on bird populations and urging people to put out food in their gardens so I hope I've done the right thing.

BBC news online has a few stories about wildlife struggling to cope with the long freeze. Apparently many aquatic animals and birds congregate around power station outlets in rivers to keep warm - including hundreds of manatees in Florida. Fish-eating birds such as bitterns and kingfishers are really struggling as most open water is covered by thick ice. We may see kingfishers turning up in warmer urban areas.

I'm not generally a big fan of zoos, but I was amused to read that meerkats are cuddling up with anteaters in their enclosure at London Zoo and have discovered that they can get closer to the heaters by sleeping on top of them.

Yesterday we came across a homeless man begging in a doorway on the high street. He'd been unable to find a bed in a hostel for the past few nights and was sleeping in a shed on an allotment, burning a calor gas cylinder to keep from freezing - now his gas had run out. After buying him a cup of tea and some biscuits, I decided to call at a church on the way home, thinking someone might be able to help him. While I was talking to the minister, he asked me if the guy standing behind me in the doorway was the rough sleeper in question - my partner! Lol! After the embarrassment died down, the minister promised to go and talk to the real homeless guy and thought he could find him somewhere for a night or two, although our town (not so far from London) has no real provision for rough sleepers.

Snow and more snow. It's a hard and hungry time to be wild unless you're hibernating. If I didn't have four cats I'd be scattering food in the garden for birds and mice. In the meantime, since it's too bleak to go out and watch the wildlife, I'll share a poem I wrote before xmas while recovering from a cold. Hope it strikes a chord...

Wildlife spectaculars

Not the bloody wildebeest migration
Again!
We know the crocodiles lie in wait:
We've seen the bone crushing
Splash of jaws.

Or is it the salmon-hungry
Grizzly bears
Wading through Alaskan torrents?
Butter-fingered paws mauling, gory fish
Flailing with futile energy.

Lemurs I love:
Sinuous sifaka dancing
Sideways;
Miniscule mouse lemurs,
Impossible primates:
Tiny hands, big, searching eyes.

But it's always the ring-tails,
Strutting their stripey charisma.
You'd think Madagascar
Had a plague of them.

Most of all I mind
The meerkats.
I've watched them leave their burrows at sunrise
To bask in the Kalahari desert.
Please don't give them names
Like Zaphod
And cast them in a furry soap opera.

Those clever capuchins in Brazil
Have got themselves a good agent.
Three times at least this year
They've been seen on TV,
Since their tool-using, nut-cracking antics
Were discovered.

Last week I watched a wood mouse
Watching us
From a bank of bronzy beech leaves.
Sleek, twitching, alert,
Apple-pip eyes, nimble hands and ears tracking our voices.
We had disturbed it and it looked at us,
Perplexed.

Nature Sleeps

I'd love to be in Madagascar now, instead of frosty southern England where nature seems to be fast asleep, or hibernating with the bats until spring comes...But maybe the winter sleep is what makes the sunny months so precious: the brief flight of bumblebees, painted ladies, dragonflies hovering over the water. I'll try to use this pause to learn the calls of British birds, so I can pick them out in the woods when breeding season arrives.