Very hard times for birds, too. And still, perhaps because of the weather, much bathing in the little pool which is said to keep them clean and thus warm. One evening a descent of a dozen or so long-tailed tits. Never before so many. And blackbirds have been their own noisy selves, five or six at a time, chasing away other potential bathers, even other blackbirds. Another member of the family observed, of the activities of a couple of the same blackbirds, that it looked as if courting were about to begin, with much searching in corners where they have been known to nest. Scoffed at, of course. In weather like this? And yet, in the publication BBC Wildlife for December, you read in a panel, "Out this Month", the fact that crossbills already have chicks in the nest. We will come back to them. And it is confirmed that other birds are preparing for the breeding season. Herons are building nests and rooks are displaying (i.e., showing off in courtship). It is noted that conifer and alder cones are opening and attract seed-eating birds such as siskins, redpolls and crossbills. As to the latter, which most of us in this country have surely not seen, David Cabot in his Collins Guide to Irish Birds tells that, in fact, there is possibly a resident population of 1,000 pairs and rapidly expanding. Crossbills live only in coniferous forests and, as they depend on the seeds in the pine cones, that forest would need to be long-established.
They have, in fact, crossed bills which are said to help the process of opening the cones. To Cabot, they resemble small parrots, with their short tails and bulky heads. Males are pinkish-crimson with brown wings, and females have a yellowish-olive rump and underparts, but there are many colour variants in both sexes. Sometimes, when pine crops become exhausted in parts of the Continent, we might get large flocks of up to 500 birds landing here. And many have stayed behind to add to our population. Never knew we had them at any time. And in at least one small group of maturing pines of the pinus pinea species, the birds wouldn't stand a chance against a rampaging family or colony of grey squirrels, which can even gnaw through metal to get at nuts that should be going to small birds like coal tits and so on. But you can't expect a squirrel to have consideration for other creatures.