Kaleidoscope of colour at the table

FIRE in the briars as bright as fires in the gorse in late summer.

December light strikes the hedge, silver on the ivy, gold on the briars, a feast for the eyes as brilliant as a treasure trove. The frosted grass winks and shines on the white field beyond and birds crowd the bird table for breakfast. In fact, they will have breakfasted long before I wake, but it is a pleasure to watch them while I eat mine.

On these chill days, the peanut feeders are a-flutter with activity. I’ve hung two on a pole of laurel with many thin branches, one a wire mesh cylinder, the other of plastic mesh. I cut the pole in the local jungle and secured it to a balcony post. The branches provide many perches where diners may queue until a space is vacated on the feeders. They are so close to the windows that they are the next best thing to being indoors. An infant grandchild will be visiting this week and I expect he will be intrigued by these fluttering, busy creatures dancing in the air or hanging upside down, the sun catching their colours in the morning light.

The goldfinches, with their red masks and dark eyes, have gold bars in their wings as bright as the dying brambles with the sun behind them. About 10 attend at one time. They sometimes quarrel, holding out their wings and hissing at one another or flying aloft in an airborne skirmish. But the quarrels don’t last long: a minute later, the antagonists are feeding alongside one another and an array of greenfinches, great tits, coal tits, blue tits and chaffinches; we have yet to see a siskin or blackcap this year. Last March, we had a long-tailed tit visit the feeder, a rare occurrence as these little birds, balls of pink-white down with tails one-and-a-half times their length, generally forage in trees over a wide area, travelling in troops, always on the move.

On the balcony beneath the feeder, a robin hops and ducks, picking up scraps of peanuts. A hedge sparrow, dark brown with black markings, appears now and then, as does a blackbird for which I put out windfall apples, half-rotten and very sweet.

Seventy percent of a blackbird’s diet is fruit and I watch it stab and gulp down the white apple-flesh voraciously — but always on the lookout. And no wonder. I saw a sparrow hawk perched in a tree across the stream the other day, bold as brass or so it seemed once one had spotted it.

I have made sure a sparrow hawk will not have a direct flight-path to the bird table. Some high-speed weaving will be required to take the diners by surprise. But high-speed weaving through forest branches is the sparrow hawk’s specialty, and it must eat too. There have been no casualties as yet this year, except for a blue tit that ran into a window at the other side of the house, far from the bird table. My wife found it, absolutely undamaged and perfect, on the flat of its back, feet pointing to the sky.

On the estuary at low tide, dunlin are scattered like confetti, distant white dots on the mud. Then they rise and take off, flashing in the sunlight, fast and low, like a bird-storm shot from a cannon. In the shallows, godwits stand on long legs and preen their brown feathers with long, pink beaks. The water reflects them like mirrors. Little egrets stalk the channels the tide has furrowed in the mud. They fly with a ponderous grace, their yellow feet trailing behind them. In 10 years, they have become a locally common bird. In the clear air, we watched fin whales spouting off the Seven Heads in west Cork, their white pillars of spume rising out of the glittering sea. We could see the sun on their backs as they briefly surfaced. Up to 22m long, they are the second-largest creature on earth. Among them were dolphins, minke and humpback whales, the latter migrating from polar seas to winter off west Africa. This year, humpback numbers exceed all expectations.