She celebrated the arrival of spring by going out and buying a lot of bedding plants. She filled two large pots with pansies in glorious flower and placed them on top of two gate posts.
The gate posts are quite close to the area where I feed wild birds. She looked out of the window to admire her planting and each pot now also had four or five house sparrows which were systematically tearing the flowers to shreds.
"Why are they doing that? What can you do to stop them?"
"Don’t know and don’t know".
This didn’t make her less cross.
I carried out some close observation. The birds were not eating the flowers and they were not flying off with the petals for some obscure purpose, like decorating a new nest. They were just dropping the shreds on the compost in the pot and the ground beneath, like a colourful shower of confetti. And it was only these two pots that seemed to be under attack.
Could it be some strange kind of mating ritual? There were both male and female sparrows present at each pot, but it was hard to work out if the vandalism was confined to one gender. Were the boys picking flowers to give to the girls, or maybe just showing off because they thought the girls would find a skilful pansy-shredder irresistible? I still don’t know and I need to know because she’s still a bit cross.
I’m supposed to understand bird behaviour and my ignorance seems in some way to have made me an accomplice to the crime. So has anyone ever been a victim of a similar outrage and does anyone have any theories about what the sparrows were up to?
Anyway, I think she was a bit premature when she decided that spring had arrived and it was time to start planting. We had a few days of sunny weather which looked good through the window and made sitting in the conservatory quite pleasant. But if you actually ventured outdoors it was still cold.
Then things turned really nasty with wind and rain and sleet and even a bit of snow. And this is Easter? I can remember very hard winters in the past but I don’t think I can remember a longer one.
During the mild interlude I saw a small flock of wood pigeons grazing on the meadow outside my study window. Pigeons have a passion for newly-emerged clover leaves.
I thought this was a sign that growth had started in the meadow but it was a false alarm. The clover may have begun to sprout tentatively but the soil temperature is still too low for the grasses to grow. I’m looking out of the window now and the entire field is a pale yellow-brown when it should be green.
There was one consolation as I stared out of the window at the forlorn meadow. I saw the Easter Bunny. Contrary to what a lot of people think, the Easter Bunny is not a rabbit. It’s a hare.
There is a very ancient tradition associating hares (and eggs) with the vernal equinox and with fertility. The modern Easter Bunny seems to have developed when emigrants from Alsace and northern Germany settled in Pennsylvania and brought their folk traditions with them. The Christian tradition of associating eggs and hares with Easter may also have something to do with the fact that both were banned as food items during Lent.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, April 05, 2010
