Our weekly bird-food bill during this cold snap is probably around €15. Grains, apples, raisins, cheese, balls and blocks of fat stuffed with creepy-crawlies (where do they get the raw materials from?). Special muesli for birds. We even had a pot of worms in the fridge for a while – yes, they were alive but no, they weren’t moving about very much.
All this virtue has its rewards of course, in the form of a garden full of birds. Nothing very exotic – it’s the pigeons and the collared doves which rule the roost, starlings, blackbirds, chaffinches, sparrows, magpies, tits both great and blue, a robin and the ubiquitous green parakeets which have so successfully colonised Brussels.
They are all welcome at the banquet except one – the heron, with whom we’re at war over the proprietorship of our pond and its fishy contents.
It’s very rare indeed that we see anything outside this community of ‘common or garden’ birds. Very occasionally a wren comes to visit, and last summer a red kite perched on the edge of the pond. Just once I saw a pair of yellow wagtails. So it was quite exciting to find we have been adopted by a pair of fieldfares, at least for the duration of the current snow. I knew what they were because of a BBC report on how this winter they were appearing more regularly in gardens; the fieldfare was described as a ‘large, aggressive thrush, stealing food from the blackbirds’ which fitted them exactly.
As a bonus, the vet was visiting at the time, administering the cat’s annual jab. He didn’t know what these birds were, and was most impressed when we got out the birdie-book and said ‘there, you see, that’s the one!’ Even looked up for him the name in French – litorne.
A further fall of snow overnight means they’ll stick around a while longer. Don’t worry, the blackbirds won’t starve. There’s plenty of grain, apples, raisins, cheese etc to go round – we can always buy more.
All this virtue has its rewards of course, in the form of a garden full of birds. Nothing very exotic – it’s the pigeons and the collared doves which rule the roost, starlings, blackbirds, chaffinches, sparrows, magpies, tits both great and blue, a robin and the ubiquitous green parakeets which have so successfully colonised Brussels.
They are all welcome at the banquet except one – the heron, with whom we’re at war over the proprietorship of our pond and its fishy contents.
It’s very rare indeed that we see anything outside this community of ‘common or garden’ birds. Very occasionally a wren comes to visit, and last summer a red kite perched on the edge of the pond. Just once I saw a pair of yellow wagtails. So it was quite exciting to find we have been adopted by a pair of fieldfares, at least for the duration of the current snow. I knew what they were because of a BBC report on how this winter they were appearing more regularly in gardens; the fieldfare was described as a ‘large, aggressive thrush, stealing food from the blackbirds’ which fitted them exactly.
As a bonus, the vet was visiting at the time, administering the cat’s annual jab. He didn’t know what these birds were, and was most impressed when we got out the birdie-book and said ‘there, you see, that’s the one!’ Even looked up for him the name in French – litorne.
A further fall of snow overnight means they’ll stick around a while longer. Don’t worry, the blackbirds won’t starve. There’s plenty of grain, apples, raisins, cheese etc to go round – we can always buy more.
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