Rainbows vault over fields, red kites wheel in the wind, and flotillas of nimbostratus clouds speed across the January sky, draping dark curtains of sleet across Wharfedale as they go. It is the sort of volatile weather you could describe as Turneresque, but the cliche at least has some local relevance, as not far away from here, at Farnley, JMW Turner witnessed similar conditions and was inspired to paint Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, depicting a bruise-black stormcloud arching above the Carthaginian army like a malevolent wraith.
It might be a day of huge skies and big views, but like most of the country, I have spent the last few months fielding a sequence of illnesses, and have often been forced to go at a slower pace. Perhaps because of this, I seem to have found myself noticing smaller things more, the glimpses of vitality in the winter landscape.
Today I am admiring the gleaming orange of a cluster of velvet shank mushrooms, growing from the dark bark of a dying beech, when a flicker of movement in the branches alerts me to a flock of chaffinches. These are not often thought of as a migrant bird, but when seen like this in open countryside (often alongside brambling) they are likely overwintering visitors from Scandinavia. They are unassuming visitors, not as noisy or noticeable as a gang of fieldfares or waxwings, but over these grim months I have found them to be a welcome source of living texture on otherwise leaden days.
These flocks are largely comprised of females – their male breeding partners mostly stay in Scandinavia (their Latin name, Fringilla coelebs, implies – not quite accurately – that they are “bachelor” birds). But I am reminded of a favourite fact about the males: in experiments, birds isolated almost since birth do not develop the complex song (with detectable regional dialects) that they otherwise learn from imitating elder male birds. In other words, chaffinch “language” is transmitted culturally rather than biologically; young birds sing the songs their elders sang.
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