Take a leaf out of the little Dunlin’s book

Horses in their winter jackets look somewhat doleful as they stand casting long shadows in the sloping fields above the sea.

They have grazed their fill and now they are just standing about aimlessly, like statues, their breath smoky in the cold air.

It seems that animals have an ability to switch off, to just ‘be there’, as if they were another bush or tree, alone in a field or with companions, unmoved by the wind blowing through them, or rain-blown wind slicking their sodden flanks as the night comes down.

Their stoicism seems otherworldly — it is certainly not of our world, this resignation. We would seek the shelter of a hedge. While cattle and horses sometimes do this — to cluster under trees in rough weather, or in summer heat — I have often observed a solitary pony or bullock standing exposed in mid-field, too uncaring or too witless to seek shelter, with icy rain driving into it, head-on. Does it not feel the sleet, does it not suffer under its blows?

I notice that our ‘domestic’ heron will perch on our second floor balcony, the full blast of an east wind ruffling its feathers, and face into it, while it could easily retreat to a favourite roost on some upturned garden furniture stored beneath the same balcony, a spot which it often frequents on milder days.

With darkness falling, and a sharp wind blowing, it stands on the balcony rail on one leg. Occasionally, it turns its head to peer at us enjoying the light and warmth beyond the kitchen window. It swaps the leg on which it stands at intervals, but only when a particularly fierce gust shakes it does it stand on both.

How tough wild creatures are!

Divil-a-bit does the driving rain seem to bother the little coal tits and blue tits at the peanut feeder, nor the long-tail tits that weigh no more than an ounce and are mere balls of down. But then, migrating dunlin, hardly bigger than fat robins, have been radar-tracked flying at altitudes of 7km above the earth where air temperatures are 20 degrees below zero. Perhaps the tireless beating of their tiny wings keeps them warm.

Migrating bar-headed geese fly over the Himalayas; their haemoglobin has to store oxygen better than that of other birds because the air, at those altitudes, is too thin to sustain life in most other creatures, including us. Everest climbers, including Hilary and Tensing in 1953, carried oxygen until Messner and Habeler reached the summit unaided in 1978, blessed with lung-capacities sufficiently large to see them through.

The adaptation of animals, including humans, to specific climates is evidence of the workings of natural selection. Eskimos (who now reject the erstwhile politically-correct term Inuit) can put on and carry blubber which wonderfully insulates them against the cold. The blubber is, of course, accumulated from their diet, rich in fats and oils; but they can move agilely in spite of carrying fat that would impede a southern European and put such pressure on the heart and arteries that it would threaten survival.

Meanwhile, where the eye of heaven stares down year round with never a blink, and temperatures are amongst the highest on this planet, the people of the Horn of Africa, Ethiopians and Eritreans, are tall and bean-pole thin, presenting less surface area to the relentless sun. And their skin is dark, a further protection.

Despite our complaints, we are, of course, blessed with the climate with which nature, through the primeval shift of tectonic plates has endowed our fair isle. We shall never desiccate in the sun, and only rarely and by mischance shall we ever freeze. Floods may assail us; the greatest threat to our wellbeing and property is water, sorely in short supply elsewhere in the world.

Personally, although my people, so far as I know have been Irish and nothing but Irish as far back as we know, I have never quite become inured to rain. I don’t mind a shower, but I deeply dislike those days when not alone the clouds, but the very light in which we move, is grey, and a dreeping damp pervades everything.

Such weather dampens the spirits; however, it would be a helluva lot worse to be roasted or frozen. We have a great deal to be thankful for.