No sun — no moon!
No morn — no noon —
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! —
November!
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), in an 1865 letter to her sister.
God, I hate November. I read a mystery novel recently – SON by Thomas Enger and Johana Gustawsson (coincidentally set in Norway) – in which one of the characters states that it’s the worst month of the year because you’re heading into the darkness: once the winter equinox arrives the days start to lengthen, and then the arrival of spring is just a matter of time, but November has nothing to redeem it. (If you lived in Norway, of course, you’d have even more reason to dread the darkness than we do here in the UK.)
The early C19th poet and satirist Thomas Hood seems to have dreaded November too – and I pretty much agree with his sentiments, except, obviously, in the matter of birds. Today R and I – sick of needing every light in the house on at 11am – took ourselves off to Hillers for lunch, and the forty minutes or so I spent in the hide gave me all the birds I could reasonably have asked for, with the sad exception of the Redpoll and Brambling that my Merlin app thought it could hear in the woodland, but which (if they were there at all) failed to put in an appearance in the clearing.
I’m featuring the very wet and dirty female Great Spotted Woodpecker because I haven’t posted one for a while, and it’s unusual for one to come as close as this to the hide. But I also love the little Coal Tit in my second photo: they’re such pretty little birds, and so shy and reactive, that I’m always very happy when I manage a well-focused shot of one. Either would merit being viewed full-screen, if you have the time.
R: L2, C1, D4.
