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One of the delights in our country villages during spring and summer is bird song, something which we sadly miss in the winter. But there is one bird which does its best to lighten the gloom even during winter storms. It is the Mistle Thrush, incidentally our largest songbird, and often called the Storm Cock, for, as the Rev. C. A. Johns wrote: Nature has taught it to pour forth its melody at a time of the year when the bleak winds of winter roar through the leafless trees. The bird usually sings from the high-up branches of a lofty tree and there stays for minutes on end, out-whistling the wind and heedless of the pelting rain. The song, not continuous like that of the Song Thrush and Blackbird, but broken into passages of a few notes each, has been described by some as being harsh and untuneful, but to many ears it is a challenge to winter's worst and a cheerful promise of more genial weather to come. Towards other birds, particularly smaller ones, it is a savage tyrant, selfish and domineering to the extreme, chasing them away from the berry-bearing trees and bushes (although it has no rivals as a mistletoe berry eater, hence its name) with cursing cries like a fingernail drawn rapidly along the teeth of a comb. Yet when it starts its early nest building, sometimes before February is out, in so conspicuous a fork in a leafless tree does it place the massive structure, that this Thrush itself becomes a victim of more aggressive predators. More often than not (often in Lower Heyford), its young are brutally murdered by magpies while both parents flutter here and there in noisy helplessness. So, here we have a bully and an injudicious, craven parent but a handsomely-spotted songster, full of bravado as he clings to the branch of a swaying tree, redeeming some of his faults and claiming a portion of our affection. S.L. | TOP | |
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THE
STORM COCK