NATURE NOTES
Shut
your
eyes and let your imagination run riot!
Here’s a conversation between plants and animals in my
garden last
August, before the winter snow and ice starts:
Maple
tree:
“I’ve got big, thick bark-covered
branches and the winter cannot touch me, but I do get rid of my
delicate leaves
in the autumn because they cannot survive the frosts.”
Grass: “My leaves are
tougher than yours and
so I’ll keep them, but they just don’t grow in
wintertime.”
Holly:
“I’m
superior to you two, Grass and
Maple. For I don’t waste my hard-earned leaves; they cost me lots
of raw
materials in the summer, but I do cover them with a thick, waxy surface
to keep
out the frost and give them sharp spines to stop animals eating them. On sunny days they can still make a little
food for me.”
Daffodils:
“Don’t
know why you
lot hang about so long, for we know what’s coming.
We’ve gone underground already, having made
enough food to survive the winter extremes and will only emerge next
February
when the frost is past and we can start making food with our new
leaves.”
Swifts
and
swallows: “Oh!
Listen
to those plants! We’re not staying
around for colder weather when food is so scarce, with no flying
insects by
day. The journey south to warmer climes
and plenty of food is well worth the effort, many thousand miles or not. The cuckoo went a month ago for the same
reason. Goodbye – see you next
summer!”
House
sparrows:
“Yes, the
winter does bring its problems, but we can always find some roof to
sleep under
when the cold nights come. Food is no
real problem, for this household puts seeds and nuts out for us each
morning. We just have to keep our wits
about us, for the sparrow hawk visits us when he needs food, and that
will be
one of us if we don’t keep our eyes open.”
Jenny
wrens: “Yes,
swifts
and swallows, it would be nice to leave for warmer climes, but we
don’t have
the wing power to go that far. We can
usually find a few small insects, spiders and small seeds to survive
the few
hard months. Keeping warm at night is a
problem but in this garden we’ve found a bird box on the silver
birch tree and
most nights at least seven of us huddle together in this sheltered
place. We noticed the garden owner
watching us
recently as we came in at dusk – he seemed surprised that so many
of us were
sheltering in this small box. You try
keeping warm on an icy cold night with only a few feathers between you
and
minus seven centigrade. Roll on the
Spring!”