Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer
Do you need an aga to make decent jam? Since my recent acquisition of a very simple guide to making preserves, my kitchen has become akin to Willy Wonka’s factory. Giant copper-bottomed pans, strange metal funnels, a wooden spoon that I protect vehemently; it is to be used for jam-making and jam-making alone. But even with all this equipment, I still can’t get my jam to set. I think my little electric cooker just doesn’t get hot enough.
I will persevere however, not just because an hour or two in the kitchen is strangely calming (when and how did I reach the point that this could be the case!) but because the stage before cooking starts is definitely the best bit. It’s the bit where you go out and hunter-gather.
Earlier in the season, before the leaves started falling from the trees, I found some bushes dripping with berries. Opalescent whitecurrants, red currants dangling like garnet necklaces and some strange yellow raspberries. This was the abundance of nature in full force and I gathered until the sky turned smoky with night and the mosquitoes hovered over me.
It is autumn that I like the best however. Haws, sloes, rosehips and crab apples fill the lanes with their bounty and character; each fruit has its own peculiarities. Sloes with their dusky blue bloom, rosehips with their itching powder seeds and bullaces; well, I’m yet to identify a bullace. My cupboards are packed with Kilner jars soaking and oozing different hedgerow cocktails, all full of great promise come Christmas.
So, aren’t the birds lucky! With fruits as fecund and plump as these filling our countryside what opportunity they have to gorge and be greedy. The winter thrushes would certainly agree, stripping bushes eagerly to load up with the carbohydrate laden berries. But perhaps it’s not really about luck but more about survival. These birds need to fill up now, whilst there is plenty about, to help them through the icy winter.
So when the trees and bushes start to lose their early autumn colour, the rosehips no longer dangle tantalisingly on the end of whippy branches and the hawthorn bushes are no longer quite so fruitful, take a step for nature. Fill up your bird feeders, throw out your windfall apples and keep the birds going through winter because, think about it; when the ground is solid with frost, the insects have gone to ground and there isn’t a Kilner jar full of sloes in sight, how do are birds survive?
To find out about what you can do to help see the birds through winter go to www.rspb.org.uk/feedthebirds where there numerous tips and hints to help you out. Otherwise phone our Wildlife Enquiries team on 01767 693690.
Photo credit: Adam Murray
Article in Eastern Daily Press on Saturday 15 October 2011