I’m still cold and a bit grumpy outside, but despite the grey gloom, my garden’s wild inhabitants are already gearing up to make the most of a new year. The frogs have survived another winter (phew) and returned to lay a small mountain of spawn in my pond and the courting mallards are back with their ritual head bobbing and, to my ears, monotonous quacks, which of course must be music to theirs.
A big increase in bird song is really noticeable now, as is a lot of frantic zipping around the garden, particularly by the blackbirds which seem to be a bit argumentative from my human point of view, as do the goldfinches, squabbling with the greenfinches and each other over the sunflower hearts in the feeder until the magpies fly in and everyone else makes a sharp exit.
Like all their corvid family, quick to learn, they’ve worked out how one of them can cling on to the feeder and dislodge the seed so that their other corvid relatives waiting patiently below get a good feed. Then as quickly as they arrived they’re off again and a blue tit might get a look in before a sudden explosion of birds and feathers and I catch a glimpse of dark wings as the terror of all small birds zooms through the branches of the apple tree.
There’s an uneasy quiet for a while as we all draw breath and recover, me from excitement, they from fear as the sparrow hawk shoots off like an arrow to aim for more luck elsewhere, but he/she knows this garden is a prime spot for a take away and calls by most days.
That’s how nature works, unkind as it might seem to us who can buy our food wrapped tastefully with no indication of any bloody origin. It’s called a trophic cascade by ecologists. The top predator preys on what he/she can catch keeping everyone else on their toes. The smaller birds in my garden will then feed on all sorts of invertebrates as well as the seeds I mess up the system by giving them, and help my roses thrive by feeding their babies on the aphids which would otherwise suck the sap from their juicy fresh stems.
I grow roses in my garden for the aphids, blue tits and sparrow hawk. Their beauty and scent are just the icing on the cake.
