Wild Hares and Hummingbirds Read Online Free Page A

walk down the lane that runs behind our house, towards the little hamlet of Perry, to realise that for birds which cannot seek refuge in the village gardens life is still very tough. I see signs of desperation everywhere I look. A gaggle of moorhens pick their way across a small patch of snow, marginally less deep than the rest of the field. The rhyne below, where they would normally find their food, is frozen solid.
    Further along, a small, slender bird is fluttering weakly across the ice: hunched, grey, with a sliver of lemon-yellow peeking out from beneath its long tail. It is a grey wagtail, hardly recognisable as the graceful creature I am used to seeing. Feeding mainly on tiny insects, often picked from the surface of the water, the grey wagtail is perhaps the most vulnerable bird in the parish to ice and snow. I don’t imagine this bird will survive more than another night or two.
    Even large waterbirds face the same fate. On the marshes a few miles south of here, bitterns and water rails are forsaking their reclusive habits and coming out into the open, desperate to find something – anything – to eat. As I drive the children back from school, along the ice rink that used to be the road, we pass a hunched, forlorn creature, perched pathetically on a wooden gate: the local heron. He looks as if he has given up all hope, and with all the surrounding waterways covered with ice, perhaps he is right.
    Not every creature suffers from the harsh weather. The buzzards sit and wait, occasionally flapping across the countryside in search of something dead or dying. Foxes, too, are out in force. There are plenty of opportunities for both predators and scavengers here in this frozen landscape.
    And once the snow and ice have finally melted, what are the prospects for Britain’s birds? Come the spring, it is likely that vulnerable species such as the wren, long-tailed tit, goldcrest, kingfisher and grey heron will be here in much lower numbers than usual.
    But if we take the longer view, we realise that this winter is part of a pattern of extreme weather events, a pattern these birds have evolved to cope with. Small birds only live a year or two, producing large broods of young to compensate for their brief lifespan. So in three or four years’ time, when this winter is but a distant memory, their numbers will probably be more or less back to normal.
    There may even be benefits from a return to what the newspapers are calling a ‘proper’ winter. Diseases and parasites are killed off by a long cold spell; while hibernating creatures such as hedgehogs will stay fast asleep, rather than emerging too early as they do in mild winters. And this spring is likely to be ‘on time’ compared with recent years, when unseasonably warm weather has encouraged birds to lay their eggs as early as January, only to be hit by freezing weather in February or March, which cuts off their food supply and kills their chicks.

    E VENTUALLY, OF COURSE , the cold spell does come to an end, and the snow retreats as rapidly as it arrived. The first weekend after the thaw, the landscape is back to its normal winter state: soggy mush. The rhynes are full to the brim, the layer of ice now replaced with a thin film of duckweed, punctured only by the occasional discarded drinks can.
    The birds are back, too. A song thrush, the first I have heard this year, sings his famously repetitive tune in the tall trees by the village stores. Blackbirds feed beneath the hedgerows, while jackdaws, rooks and crows grub up worms in the muddy fields, just as they did before the snow came.
    As I cycle along River Road, towards the southern boundary of the parish, I hear a familiar high-pitched note . There is a movement in the corner of my vision, and I spy a grey wagtail as it flies away, the telltale lemon patch beneath its tail reflecting the morning sun. Despite my fears this individual, at least, has managed to survive.
    I hide my bicycle behind a convenient hedge,