Birds singing in the sycamore trees
Birds returned to the peanut feeders soon after I filled them, first, the goldfinches, then the coal tits, great tits and blue tits, then chaffinches in pairs, then the troop of long-tailed tits I had hoped would nest in the garden and stay with us for next year. A small party of siskins arrived, hanging upside down on the feeders as usual, the black caps of the cocks resplendent against their lemon-yellow breasts.
The birds in our garden are as numerous, colourful and diverse as those seen in Jamaican and Cuban gardens on our recent travels.
However, we do not have the turkey vultures, with 27-inch wingspans, soaring overhead.
I thought the peanut-feeder community might have deserted us with good reason. Suddenly, in mid-winter when they most needed us we were gone, and their food supply with us.
However, it seems our garden grub-stop was implanted in their tiny minds and they continued to visit it on their daily circuit.
There, they found the feeders empty and forlorn until one March morning, hey presto, they were packed with peanuts again, and first come, first served.
It didn’t take long for the twitter to go around, and the circus was back, vying for a place at the table. Visits are noticeably briefer, however. Clearly, with the rising temperatures and the trees in bud, there are alternative food sources, tasty grubs and tender leaves. Do birds taste what they eat? Have they delicate palates?
Do they favour the sweet over the bitter, the tart over the bland?
The facts are these. Bird taste buds are at the base of the tongue and are similar to those of mammals but fewer in number. Pigeons have 50-60 (and they like salty food), starlings 200 and parrots 300-400, as opposed to 3,000 in man and 17,000 on the tongue of a rabbit.
Thus, it seems clear that nature’s epicures are the bouncy bunnies we see hopping about in our local field, jumping and humping enthusiastically at the coming of spring.
They sometimes invade our front garden, if you could call it that, and munch on the baby dandelions and thistles that appear everyday. We have no cabbage patch to defend, so they can invade, and welcome.
Every weed in the world is sprouting, and greening over areas that were never supposed to be green.
In these lovely March days, we have lunch on the balcony outside. In the sheltered corner, it is almost as warm as it was in Cuba. Birds are singing in the trees, the robins’ and thrushes’ mellifluous song, and the great tits’ strident “tea-cher, tea-cher, tea-cher” call.
The sun glances on the fresh leaves of holly and ivy, coins of shining silver in the dark green. Everything is budding.
Solitary celandines bloom beneath a bush, daffodils sway in a whisper of breeze, a bumble-bee bumbles past, buzzing sonorously.
We think, what a day to be alive, what a place to be alive in! And all the better for the fresh look we take at it after being away, and the new season we return to.
Remembering the many good people we met in Cuba, we put together small parcels of English-study books to send them but are unsure if they will get through censorship. I wouldn’t like to live as Cubans live, subject to state controls on travel, free association and even internet access.
However, given the exemplary free healthcare and education, and guaranteed basic rations and housing for all citizens, I feel a month is not enough to judge the plus and minus of the system.
When we passed through New York on our way home, old friends told me that across America the number of homeless people on the streets is increasing. Factories are closing, banks are foreclosing, homes are repossessed and the poor are on the pavement with nothing but soup kitchens for sustenance, no free medical care and no decent education for their children — there never was.
We are, indeed, in a global hiatus. While the fruits of unbridled capitalism have gone rotten on the branch, absolute socialism would not allow one to even climb the tree.
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