Surviving the cold snap on a wing and a prayer

ANOTHER LIFE:INSIDE THAT LITTLE sphere of fluff clinging to the feeder is a body not much bigger than a ping-pong ball, its ratio of heat-leaking skin surface to volume of bird a distinctly dodgy fit for icy weather: in the Arctic you get not blue tits but big snowy owls with bulky anoraks and feathered galoshes. And inside the soft weave of down under a tit's fluffed-up feathers is a tiny heart going bang-bang-bang 500 times a minute to pump some of the warmest blood of any animal: 40 degrees compared with our 37. All that need for energy, that racing metabolism, and still it has to fight for a place at the nuts.

There are probably many more blue tits around than there would be without garden feeders. And before peanuts and fancy seeds there were (at least where I grew up) doorstep milk bottles with tops of foil or cardboard.

The tits spread the word across Europe about the feed of cream inside – all of them had the knowledge within a couple of postwar years.

Even now, new hedgerow birds are learning about the winter largesse of back gardens: woodpeckers, siskins, above all the glorious goldfinches – a dozen of them now at our feeders in the oak trees, battling it out with the sparrows. There are still e-mails asking “What is this wonderful bird?” from readers at a first rapt encounter, and a visit by 40 of them at a garden in Waterford must have seemed magical, indeed. A reader in Wicklow last month reported the success of a small feeder filled with nyjer, the tiny black oilseeds from Africa: within days, up to 18 goldfinches were clinging there. “How,” wondered Robert Myerscough, “did they recognise it in the first place, and how did they get the word out to their mates?”

As the temperature plummeted this week, one’s ecological concerns were softened by ordinary, irrational sympathies. In the battles over oat flakes on our kitchen window sill we welcomed a pair of song thrushes, each with its own rich livery of speckles, and booed the anonymous blackbirds that drove them away. I have been out at first light to refill the box, hoping to give the thrushes a better chance.

Blackbirds are every bit the bullies they’re painted, habitually robbing smaller birds of their food. David Snow, in a classic study of the species, thought them even more ruthless than mistle thrushes or fieldfares, both notoriously domineering. But at feeders it’s the blackcap that seems most aggressive – a mere warbler that often seems able to chase everything else away.

As I write, a near-total absence of both fieldfares and redwings at this corner of the Connacht coast presents a disquieting mystery. These Scandinavian thrushes are regular migrants to Ireland in late autumn and fly west for refuge ahead of extreme winter weather.

In one day last January the bird painter Michael O’Clery reported 20,000 redwings and 5,000-6,000 fieldfares arriving from the sea at Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry. A few days later, the clifftops at Courtmacsherry, Co Cork, were covered with hundreds of the birds “so tired,” as Peter Wolstenholme wrote, “that we were able to pick up the featherweight waifs, which almost expired in our hands”.

Thousands, indeed, did die, especially among the redwings, from Cork up to Mayo and beyond – among them, probably, the dozen I flushed unintentionally one morning from their roost at the heart of an escallonia bush.

Surviving bitter nights is the big challenge for songbirds, which makes their different habits all the more intriguing. Blue tits and great tits, for example, seek individual shelter in crevices and tree holes, tucking beaks and legs into their feathers. (When blue tits have paired early, the male sees his mate to bed, then goes to roost nearby.) The only slightly smaller long-tailed tits, on the other hand, flying in little flocks by day, clump together in a ball at night, tails sticking out, at the heart of a hawthorn bush.

Wrens may hold the record for snuggling down together: 50 in one nest box seems to be the current record. Last February a reader in Co Antrim e-mailed a photograph of wrens packed into a swallow’s nest in a corner of her porch. Once they’re all in, no one uses the front door.

Insect-feeders such as wrens are not drawn to peanuts, but will occasionally take crumbs or suet from the ground, and a Greystones reader last winter reported a treecreeper eating peanut crumbs beneath his feeders. Starlings, too, were coming to feeders for the first time in Co Tipperary, and rooks in Co Wicklow waiting patiently beneath them, for nut crumbs.

A pied wagtail joining our window sill thrushes is different, but scarcely rare and certainly no match for the snipe in people’s gardens last February, jabbing desperately into rose beds in the search for soil invertebrates.

Eye on nature

On November 23rd I was surprised to see waxwings on the hawthorn outside our window. Is this not very early for them?

Gerry McAleer, Murrisk, Co Mayo

The first waxwings arrived in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, from Scandinavia on November 5th, and some had reached the Dublin area by November 8th. It is early for them to have reached the west. Perhaps this year is going to be one of a large irruption.

I noticed hooded crows flying with nesting twigs last week at Portmarnock golf links. Seems very early.

Vincent Sex, Portmarnock, Co Dublin

Male hooded crows guard the territory in which they have their nests year-round and may also keep the nest in repair. An incoming bird may try to build a nest in another’s territory, but it will be evicted.

Our cat and dog’s stainless-steel feeding bowls have been disappearing lately. A search of nearby woods and fields shows no trace. What is responsible?

Conor Quinlan, Mullingar, Co Westmeath

Could be a neighbourhood dog or a fox.

Recently I counted 21 magpies on the wires. They kept up a cacophony for about 10 minutes, then dispersed.

Derek Pullen, Bray, Co Wicklow

Perhaps mobbing a predator.

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo, or e-mail viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address