November birds

Fruits in November: apples still on the tree, attracting the birds

The writer Thomas Hood’s poetic verdict on this month was “No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds – November!”.  Perhaps that was true of London in his day, but surely he was being a little hard.  Fruit may be limited to late apples, but plenty of them; and, if thinking botanically rather than culinarily, there are a good number of shrubs and trees that have fruit (berries) well into early winter.  Flowers admittedly can be in short supply at this time of year, especially in Hood’s lifetime (early 19^th century) before so many winter-flowering shrubs had been introduced from China and elsewhere, and leaves are mostly limited to evergreens and other wintergreen plants (though I suspect that Hood wasn’t a gardener and that his knowledge of plants wasn’t the best).  The lack of birds, though, seems surprising.  One assumes that London sparrows were just as plentiful as in other months; Hood was an invalid for much of his life and maybe didn’t get out much to notice the birdlife of the city.

Cotoneaster berries, popular with the birds

November is actually the month when the birds return to our garden after their moult, and certainly there’s been no shortage of birds here.  They’re generally shy from mid-September to mid-October or whenever the weather starts to turn colder; once they have moulted, and set about finding a territory for the winter, they reappear in search of food and shelter, and of course the migrants from the colder parts of Europe turn up too.  When we went on holiday there were relatively few visitors to our garden, mostly sparrows and woodpigeons, with the odd robin and dunnock, and a couple of blackbirds skulking around the cotoneasters in search of berries.  By the time we returned in early November the garden was alive with birdlife, and I’ve counted over 20 species since then.

In our absence, of course, the bird feeders were empty, so it wasn’t our seeds, peanuts and fatballs that brought them in (although I suppose it’s possible that some of our regulars were hanging around in the hope that we’d come back and put more out).  The garden has matured into quite a good habitat for birds, with plenty of shelter, untidy corners for foraging in, berries and seedheads to eat and a pond for bathing; most of it not put there primarily for the birds, but partly with them in mind, and they’re welcome to make use of it all.  

We seem to have a very healthy population of blue and great tits at the moment; they obviously bred very well this year, and there are always a few scouring the bark of the trees for insects, as well as hanging around the bird feeders.  (Sadly, one great tit was found dead outside the back door this morning; he has been buried under the big cotoneaster by the drive entrance.)  The coal tit and a long-tailed tit have also been about, as has a wren, and a goldcrest put in a brief appearance one day (I suspect that they’re around quite a lot, but being small and not distinctively coloured they’re easy to mistake for bluetits at a distance).  There are lots of sparrows and at least three dunnocks, in an uneasy relationship with one another (they’re not social with their own kind, though they hang out with sparrows), and of course at least two robins (another uneasy relationship).  We’ve had a male chaffinch, and there’s a substantial flock of goldfinches that appears from time to time; and the starlings have discovered that the fatball container is being replenished.  The blackbird population has increased, possibly because of winter migrants; a song thrush has come for a bath, and the early cold weather in Scandinavia has brought in the usual large numbers of fieldfares and redwings, the latter, with some help from the blackbirds, already stripping the holly tree of its berries.  Two greater spotted woodpeckers (male and female) have been visiting the peanut feeder, and the green woodpecker has been at the windfall apples, which are also attracting three magpies (until we chase them off).  Add to all of that the woodpigeons, collared doves (which have reappeared after an absence of a few months) and the pheasants, and we have quite a variety of avian visitors.

Other flying visitors have been about too: late one afternoon, as it was starting to get dark, there were three bats fly-catching outside the dining room window.  I had thought they would be hibernating by now, but it was a relatively mild day and they had obviously been tempted outside.  Normally we see bats when it’s already fairly dark, and all you can make out are the shapes, but there was enough light this time to see them quite clearly.

In his poem, Hood also described November as ‘No sun’, and while that’s not been totally true of this month, sunshine has certainly been at a premium.  It has been a grey, murky or downright wet few weeks.  In the past couple of days the weather has perked up, turning sunny and clear but colder, with frosts the last two nights, and it’s set to continue this way for a few days.  The greenhouse has been bubble-wrapped (re-using last year’s wrap), but I’m holding off switching on the heater; the temperature hasn’t dropped below 2.7C this autumn so far, which is just enough for overwintering the plants (houseplants having been moved indoors).  The colder weather is making it all the more important to keep the birds' needs in mind!

Dealing with the debris

Leaving the garden for any length of time is always a little nerve-racking.  Even in October and early November, when the weather is unlikely to be very extreme and there are few pressing jobs to be done in the garden, and even knowing that a kind neighbour is keeping an eye (and some watering) on things, there is always the concern that you might return to something unexpected.  While away on holiday we read online reports of heavy rain and the odd gale at home, and some chilly nights, so we weren’t surprised to return to rather a wet garden and cold-blackened dahlias, but there was nothing that was unusual for early November.  Piles of dead leaves on the drive and veg patch, and lying less thickly on the lawn (I would guess that the leaves from the big ash tree were blown away by the gale), were waiting to be dealt with.  The courgette plants were, as expected, only fit for the compost heap, and the summer bean plants were over (though I managed to salvage a few ‘Blauhilde’ pods for eating and some Borlotti pods for drying); the late-sown pea plants were still bright green but the pods were in poor condition.  All of these, plus the sweet peas, which were not completely dead but had collapsed into a heap, and the remains of the other dead (or nearly dead) annuals have been pulled up and added to the compost.

Gardening is often a regularly repeating cycle: 2019 sweet peas pulled up, more sweet peas sown for overwintering, to provide colour and scent in 2020.  I will put them in the same pots on the terrace, since they did so well there this year.

The late-sown veg seeds have not been a success; although some had germinated nicely, they have now disappeared (slugs, probably, although the pigeons and pheasants may have had a hand, or a beak, in it), with the exception of the parsley.  The various brassicas that I had planted out and covered with fine mesh netting have also gone, and again I suspect slugs; the netting would have kept birds off.  Ah well, an opportunity to clear those beds and mulch them heavily, in my new no-dig style.  Unexpectedly, however, the antirrhinums still have flowering stems to offer for cutting, and the little ‘Pink Sunday’ salvia, about which I had been so unkind, is standing up to the weather very well.  There were even a couple of Nerine bowdenii stems for a vase; they’re protected by a big, self-sown Euphorbia characias (which is casting far too much shade for them, but they don’t seem to mind too much).

Antirrhinums and Salvia 'Pink Sunday'

Mahonia 'Winter Sun'

With so many fallen leaves about and plants such as dahlias in need of being dug up/cut back, the garden has a sorry look about it at the moment.  However there are small patches of colour and other interest.  The pot of red dwarf chrysanthemums on the patio was in full flower on our return, and is only just going over now; the Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ is doing what it says on the tin; and there are berries galore, mostly on the cotoneasters but also on the Viburnum tinus and the Euonymus europaeus (spindle).  And if you look closely, the leaves of Cyclamen coum are out, ready for the delicate flowers later in the winter.

Euonymus europaeus 'Red Sentinel'

Cyclamen coum

Winter feels like it has come early.  There was no autumnal warm spell this year; temperatures have been on the low side, with much chill and a few frosts, and one day we awoke to an unexpected light covering of snow.

There is plenty of wildlife about.  The squirrel has been visiting, and one late afternoon D spotted a big fox tucking into one of the windfall apples.  I wonder if he was responsible for the pile of pigeon feathers on the lawn?