Heading down through fields towards oak, ash and hazel copses along the Afon Artro, past impenetrable ramparts of gorse, I heard a familiar, delicate song. “A prolonged trill, low and aërial” is how WH Hudson, the most scrupulously observant of all avian writers, describes it. I scarcely needed to look around before an eccentrically scattering quiver of exquisite small birds hurled past me to settle momentarily and search for insects among bare, dark-budded twigs of the ash trees. A moment later, and as though at a signal, the acrobatic throng swirled high like leaves on an eddying wind and was gone.
Long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus). “Bum-barrels” as John Clare knew them. I’m never sure whether that term applied to the birds themselves or more properly to the artistic masterpieces that are their nests. They are utterly endearing little creatures. Along with the goldcrest, they rank by weight as the tiniest of British birds (though that disproportionate tail gives a slightly false impression of their real size, as does the fluffiness of their pastel-tinged plumage). Their relationship to other tits is not close (larks, warblers and swallows also belong to the same large family). But their behaviour – the communal groups, the incessant activity – is distinctly tit-like.
Those fist-sized, barrel-shaped nests are marvellous creations. It speaks volumes for Clare’s attentiveness to the natural world that he was well acquainted with them. Occasionally you see them high in the fork of a tree, but more often they’re concealed well within the densest thickets of gorse or blackthorn. They are constructed from moss, wool and feathers, decorated with scales of lichen, and bound together with gossamer.
To see one with eight or 10 gaping maws clamouring for food at the entrance is one of the most pleasing and intimate sights in nature, and one of the hardest to locate. You need to study their comings and goings in May or June, then find a good angle to train your glass on the thicket to which they’re bound. Keep well away and watch as the whole family group assists in the feeding. All this as outcome of that sweet music in the cold of early spring.
