After mating, the female builds a cup-shaped nest of grass and moss on a ledge or a crack in a wall, which she lines with wool, feathers and hair. She incubates up to six eggs alone but both parents feed the chicks. The black redstart is one of the few species that relies on brownfield sites and is at risk from development of these areas, which is why green and rubble roofs can offer them a lifeline. Every building in every city should have a green or rubble roof. I want to shout this from the rooftops. I want there to be more black redstarts. Everyone would, if they just stopped for a moment and spent five minutes exploring the natural world. Why wouldn’t you want more black redstarts?
My silver fox will be on his way to the Mediterranean for winter, perhaps from northern Europe. It’s unlikely that he’ll return with a mate, although the nearby port and sparsely vegetated, stony beach could pass for an ideal habitat. I have cracks in my walls, little black redstart. I have insects and spiders. I have a heart that is full of you and your gambolling ways. For you, I will throw stones on my neighbour’s flat roof.
I lie on the sofa with tea and biscuits and an unopened book, watching birds feast on sunflower hearts on the other side of the window. It’s a drizzly Sunday and I have no urge to be outside but I like looking at it. I like being snuggled and warm while the outside entertains me. I like being in and out at the same time.
I watch house sparrows, mostly. Occasionally a robin will turn up or a blue tit or even a wren (the wren picks up spills from the tray). But mostly, it’s house sparrows. There are so few songbirds in these parts.
I feed the birds but am conflicted about it. Ultimately, I wish I didn’t have to. I wish there were enough habitats and insects for them to feed themselves in mine and neighbouring gardens. I wish climate change wasn’t dealing almost constant blows of too-hot or too-cold, too-wet or too-dry weather. I wish my Twitter feed wasn’t full of images of starving chicks in spring.
But it is, and so I’m compelled to feed the birds.
The production and sale of bird food is a multi-million-pound industry. The food is grown on land that would once have been wild – which habitats have been lost to produce it, and which species are suffering as a result? It’s usually grown using pesticides, which harm the land and wildlife where it’s grown, but then may also harm the birds that eat it (is bird food ever tested for pesticide residues?). It’s flown halfway across the world to fill single-use plastic packets we mostly buy in the supermarket to compensate for a lack of insects in our gardens. Why is there a lack of insects in our gardens? Because we mow, chop, weed, spray. We literally empty our gardens of natural food and replace it with food grown on land elsewhere – land presumably emptied of its own natural food to do so.
There’s more: the filling of bird feeders brings greater numbers of birds into smaller spaces and so bird diseases are passed between species that wouldn’t usually interact with each other. Trichomonosis was passed from pigeons to finches and is responsible for the huge crash in greenfinch and chaffinch numbers in recent years. Avian pox virus affects tits, dunnocks and pigeons. Then there are leg lesions, feather abnormalities, ‘general malaise’ caused by salmonella. All of these diseases are spread at bird feeders and bird baths. Keeping these vessels spotlessly clean will help prevent the spread of disease but what if we didn’t use them? What if we all focused on creating more natural habitats and used supplementary food only when natural food was in short supply? I love watching birds on my feeders but not as much as I love watching chiffchaffs pick aphids off my roses, or blackbirds gobbling my rowan berries. I love watching house sparrows strip grasses of their seeds, goldfinches taking knapweed seed. I laugh at gulls dancing on the lawn to lure worms to the surface.
There’s more still: recent studies have shown that feeding birds in rural and suburban areas gives advantages to more common birds over rarer ones. For example, a review of the impacts of bird feeding (in the journal Biological Conservation) by Jack Shutt and Alex Lees at Manchester Metropolitan University linked burgeoning populations of dominant garden and woodland birds with declines in subordinate woodland species. The dominant birds, with their bellies full of peanuts and suet, steal nest sites and monopolise food resources over the more timid species, which are less likely to visit feeders. Great tit numbers have increased by 40 per cent in 25 years. In the same timeframe the marsh tit has declined by 50 per cent.
The sparrows bring their fledglings to my feeders every year and I watch them fill gaping mouths with sunflower hearts, often from the comfort of my sofa. They’re doing well, there seem to be more of them each year although I’ll have no way of knowing how they fared during this year’s drought. House sparrows mostly feed aphids to their chicks, which puts them at an advantage over tits and other species, which prefer caterpillars, which tend to struggle in hot weather. There have been good numbers of aphids this year.
Until 2022, Ukraine was the largest global producer of sunflower seed, but sunflowers are grown all over the world, with countries such as Russia, Argentina, Romania and China producing the largest crops. Sunflowers and other seed-producing plants are, of course, grown for a variety of uses, but what of the insects grown to add to suet mixes? And the cows used to make that suet, where did they live? Did they have a nice life? Did they breathe fresh air and feel grass beneath their feet? Where are the mealworm factories?
I miss the hum and buzz of insect life. I miss seeing clouds of insects, feeling the sigh of flying things scatter as I brush past the plant they’re resting or feeding on. This year has been particularly bad and there may be better ones. But, on the whole, things are only going to get worse. Global food supplies are faltering and, with them, so will supplies of bird food. We all need to do more for birds at home.
I have long grass and native plants, berrying shrubs, seeds. I water the ground so the worms don’t retreat quite so far beneath the soil surface. I keep my pond topped up. Next year, I’ll grow sunflowers. Lots of them, a whole pack’s-worth if I can. If I can grow my own food to harvest and store for use later that would be better than relying on global food industries, wouldn’t it? I realise not everyone can do that. I can’t promise I won’t buy another packet of sunflower hearts or mealworms, that I won’t buy fat balls at the sight of desperate birds in desperate weather, but I can try. That’s all we can do, isn’t it?
Each winter a robin comes to the garden, a gentle soul that seems at home here among the house sparrows and starlings, the seagulls and the occasional wren, tit and blackbird. I see him only in winter; in summer there are other robins but they are scarce and spend little time in the garden, and never use the hanging bird feeders. This one is always here and has crafted the art of taking sunflower hearts from the seed hopper, balancing on little perches and dashing back to the climbers to eat his quarry.
Robins are a migratory species. Most people think the robin in their garden is the same individual all year round but many hold their territories in summer only, flying south for winter. ‘South’ could be anywhere: Leeds if your summer residence is Edinburgh; Brighton if you’re from Birmingham. Some fly to the UK from Scandinavia or fly from the UK to overwinter in France. Never underestimate your individual robin, or the individuals you think are your one robin.
This one spends every winter in and around my garden. He sings his song, eats sunflower hearts and bathes and drinks in my bird baths and pond. When I stand in the kitchen looking out on to the garden I know he’s there, even if I can’t see him. He will be on the ground beneath my tiny hedge or in next door’s wisteria, waiting for the perfect moment to nip out and grab a sunflower heart. He also seems to like perching from the rowan tree and I hope he arrives in time to eat some of its berries before the blackbird and starlings gobble them all (I make a note to keep an eye out).
On the night camera I watch him drink and bathe in the pond at dusk, his big eyes enabling him to stay out later than other species. I don’t know where he sleeps; one evening I was outside after dark and he arrived, suddenly, on the fence, his little feet landing with a scratch. I stood still and watched him for a moment before he flew off again, to who-knows-where.
I always miss him when he leaves, there’s no one to fill his boots when he’s gone. There’s a pair somewhere in the neighbourhood but I don’t think they have much breeding success so I rarely see them in what must be a large and lonely territory. Neighbours have told me robins have nested with them a few times but their nests have always been predated by magpies. Others have told me about the squirrels that got their blackbirds and the cats that took their goldfinches. On top of predation there’s less invertebrate food (caterpillars and insects), thanks to increasing amounts of paving and plastic and, these days, any food that is here is often destroyed by too-dry, too-cold, too-hot, too-windy springs that neither the invertebrates nor the birds have evolved to deal with.
So the landscape here isn’t good enough for the robins, the weather isn’t good enough for the robins and the ratio of predator to prey seems to put the robins at a disadvantage. The same goes for the blackbirds, goldfinches, tits and wrens, all of whom I see so little of in the garden.
The predators do well. That’s the problem with compromised habitats: the clever, adaptable species will be clever and adapt. Domestic cats are fed at home, but crows and magpies have a varied diet that includes food scraps thrown away by people, and crows won’t think twice about ripping open a bin bag to reach food to feed their young. In dry springs they manage because they take food from bins and soak it in water (often my pond) so their nestlings have moist food to eat. It’s probably not very nutritious – white bread and pastry, crab sticks, bits of fried chicken from the high street – but it appears to be enough to get their chicks through, while other species struggle. I’ve seen crows swoop in to steal treats from dogs in the park, and raid next door’s solar panels for pigeon chicks that were nesting beneath them. Numbers of songbirds are decreasing while numbers of predators are increasing. So the predators are outcompeting but also eating the songbirds. What hope do they have?
Starlings and house sparrows do OK because they nest in holes in our houses, of which there still seem to be plenty (in other areas they’re not so lucky). But anything that nests in a hedge, tree or wooden bird box seems to be at a disadvantage, both here and in all urban areas. Which is yet another reason why we all need to work hard to make these areas wilder.
Common wasp, Vespula vulgaris
The common wasp is one of the most misunderstood insects on the planet. Like honeybees and bumblebees, it’s a social insect, forming massive colonies run by a queen in which hundreds of sterile female workers gather food for their siblings as the queen lays more eggs. Bees are vegetarian and eat pollen and nectar, but wasps are carnivorous and eat caterpillars, aphids, thrips and other insect ‘pests’. If it were not for wasps, the leaf munchers would eat all the leaves, including crops we need for food. No one notices wasps from April – when they emerge from hibernation – to August – when they become annoying – because they are so busy patrolling our plants for invertebrates to return to the nest. It’s when there is no one to take food back to that we start to notice them. Why?
Common wasp nests are annual. The queen creates her nest in spring and starts laying eggs, and the nest grows and grows throughout summer. Towards the end of summer, she stops laying eggs and the nest begins to die down. The workers, who have been collecting insects to feed their siblings, have less and less to do.
There’s more: during spring and summer, as the workers feed their siblings with grubs, the grubs discharge a sugary solution, which the workers eat. The solution is a reward for their work but, as they become redundant, the sugary treat dries up. So they seek out sugar elsewhere: your beer, your open jar of jam, your ice cream. They also take nectar from flowers (they are efficient pollinators), but so too will they find grapevines and plum trees and can destroy whole crops. Then, when the fruit falls and ferments, the wasps eat it, and some suggest they get ‘drunk’. Along comes the human, flapping the wasp away – of course, you are a huge threat.
Towards the end of the season, the queen starts laying the eggs of daughter queens. Like social bees (bumblebees), these wasps mate before entering hibernation. Research has shown that they don’t hibernate alone – they carry yeasts in their abdomen. Yeasts present in the air throughout summer disappear in autumn and reappear in spring; it’s one of the reasons why your sourdough loaf takes longer to rise in winter. For years, scientists couldn’t understand how the yeasts would disappear as temperatures dipped and reappear when they rose again. But now they know: yeasts sleep and wake with the wasps. That we have bread, wine, beer and all other things made using yeasts is partly due to wasps.
To garden for the common wasp is to give it space. Let it live! They make paper nests in sheds, lofts and underground. If you can, give a nest a wide berth throughout summer or remove it early in the season so the queen can find another spot to start again. Wear light clothes and stand still if one flies around you. Leave wasp nests in your roof, keep your eyes peeled in early summer for wasps gathering caterpillars and aphids from your plants, and marvel at how hard they work. Then, as the season fades, let them have a bit of jam. Go on, it’s a nice thing to do, a kind thing, and it might just save your plums.
December
I greet the first frost, like the first rains after the drought, with the biggest, happiest grin. It’s absolutely perfect: crisp and clear, with no biting wind to dampen the newness of it.
I head out in it, to the gym, at 6.30 a.m. It’s still dark, with a nip in the air I’ve felt for the first time today. I’m wearing gym leggings and ankle socks, but a jumper, coat and hat for warmth. I stride into the beginnings of a bright orange sun. I am cheerful; it’s cheering when the weather behaves as it should.
People always say, ‘What climate change?’ when the weather behaves as it should. As if to say ‘See? No problem! The world isn’t ending. Carry on!’
I reserve the very hardest stares for these occasions, because it is always the same people who failed to notice that it didn’t rain for the entire month of April, who don’t see the vanishing bees, the hungry hedgehogs, the caterpillars clinging to life on shrivelled plants. They notice only the weather that affects them – and here, now, it’s inconveniently cold. Of course, they love the milder winters that climate change has so far brought us. To them, this cold snap isn’t evidence of a further changing climate but of a return to normal: cold. And they don’t like being cold.
When I can, I tell these people about the Gulf Stream, and how its collapse will trigger longer, colder winters closer to those of Siberia than southern Europe. But the fact that we don’t know when this will happen makes it an empty threat. At least to them. ‘But not in our lifetime,’ they say. ‘Just be present,’ they say. ‘I wish I could,’ I say.
I look at weather maps posted by meteorologists on Twitter. I see that northern Europe is freezing while southern Europe is extremely warm. Is that weather behaving as it should? An invisible line crosses France and Germany; to the north of it are Arctic winds and freezing temperatures, to the south it’s practically summer. I read about subtropical depressions, the North Atlantic Oscillation, a wind named Sirocco. I learn about blocking patterns that mean certain weather conditions remain stuck for weeks on end. Or do I? It’s all so complicated. How do I know what’s ‘climate’ and what’s just plain old ‘weather’? Is any of this normal?
What I do know is that the first frosts should be in November, not December. That they knock plants back, stop them flowering and hasten leaf fall. They ‘stratify’ seeds, a necessary process for some species, without which they wouldn’t germinate in spring. They kill ‘pests’ like slugs and snails, they break up clay soils, they ensure hibernating species remain hibernating. The first frosts signal the beginnings of autumn, not winter. The beginnings of a pause of growth, of death before rebirth. Everything starts to shrink back. In the garden in winter, I watch plants rot into themselves, gradually turning into skeletal stems and seedheads, which new growth supercedes in spring. Yet every year they remain intact for that little bit longer.
If frost puts the earth to sleep, and it doesn’t get that sleep, does it become tired? Does the ground need sleep like other living things? A winter reset? If bumblebees and hedgehogs wake from hibernation they can waste energy in search of food, which puts them at risk of starvation. Does the land work in the same way? Do plants? I think of those still flowering in my garden: the shrub rose, the perennial wallflower, the sowthistle, the cranesbill geraniums and geums. Are they exhausted? Do they need a rest? I’m grateful they’re getting it, whether they need it or not.
