Fallen Apples

I know its cold when redwings arrive on the village green. There are never great numbers, and they spread themselves out, some feeding on the frozen ground, but most turning over the leaf litter by the hedgerows close to the common. It will have to get much colder before fieldfares join them, but even when they arrive, we usually only get a few.

I wrap up and head off for a favourite field in west Gower in search of golden plovers. It’s raw, but with little wind, bearable. Why particular fields attract plovers each winter is a mystery, but the stubble is alive with hundreds of lapwings, black-headed gulls and golden plovers. I choose my preferred farm gate high up above the field, and with the light behind, start to count. Starlings invariably mingle with lapwings in winter, and at least 600 feed amongst the lapwings and golden plovers. These remote open fallow fields are always a good bet for birds of prey and sparrowhawk, buzzard and hen harrier, all turn up within a few minutes.

Winter finch flocks are well formed now, and the Natural Resources Wales (formerly Countryside Council for Wales) puts out seeds for finches in the yard of a deserted old farm nearby. Amongst the chaffinches, I pick out brambling and yellowhammers, but also a few reed buntings and tree sparrows. These declining little sparrows nest in the boxes put up on the trees surrounding the farm buildings, and never seem to stray far from the farm.

I arrive home to watch a single male blackbird defending the small area underneath the bird feeders, and news from my daughter that there at least 30 fieldfares gorging on the fallen apples in her Shropshire garden. I can’t decide which is best, fieldfares in the frozen north, or the blackbird in the slightly warmer south.