Just sitting, watching birds in a quiet Swiss garden can be a soothing holiday experience. The birds are new, in some cases, to the Irish visitors. Like a flash come two greater spotted woodpeckers, black, white and red. Hurrying, stabbing away at the usual birdfeeder, then off on very fast wings. Never seen one before. Gobble and go. Then tits by the score. Great tits mostly, but not recognisable by the same tits at home. More grey all over, though the mistress of the house says they colour up later in the year.
There is a jay, the one and only. He or she sits well away from everyone, on the tallest tree, watchful and uneasy, maybe at the newcomers. Now and then there is a reddish-blue streak and it swoops on the bird table, where peanuts or monkey nuts, still in their shells, are laid out, and off without ceremony. Two nuts in each shell. He drops the shell when he has eaten the content. Then there are the more usual birds, even sparrows, and a nuthatch, which is new to the visitors. Blackbirds draw worms from the lawn like anglers landing a fish. The woodpeckers, of course, are the great treat for the Irish visitors, but there is one other surprise.
It is a red squirrel, which is not so much red as dark brown. Not as aggressive as the greys to which the visitors are accustomed at home, but dainty, eye-catching and deft. For the tubular birdfeeder is not hanging, but is slotted onto the top of a four-foot cane. This it negotiates quite easily and nibbles, getting little enough from between the wired structure, but preferring it to the open table. It may be that the dark colour is due to its youth, but it is basically red, as is to be seen in red patches on his underbelly. The autumn may tell its tale. He runs off with great dignity, the tail not at all as luxuriant as that of the greys back home. The grey squirrel raiders in Ireland are aggressive, hurling themselves from the shading bushes at the several feeding devices, causing them to sway and bang against each other, but still unable to scatter the nuts within.
And back in Meath, the finches seem to be in the ascendant - green, mostly if not exclusively - and the coal tits, though still around, are likely feeding their young on the local insect life and caterpillars, and reserving the nuts for their own sustenance. It's all a lot of work keeping them supplied, but it beats television as a spectacle in the daylight hours.