A Black Beak But Beautiful Mid Winter

Cold and barren it may be but colourful traditions around the Solstice – expertly adopted by the Christian Church – make this a time of hope and glory, says Sir Johnny Scott

“O DIRTY December, for Christmas remember” (Thomas Tusser, 1524-80). Of all the months, December is my favourite. I love the bleak beauty of gaunt, leafless trees, the barren, lifeless landscape and ancient, musty smell of decay. December is the glorious colours of a cock pheasant glinting in thin winter sunshine as it rockets out of cover, the music and pageantry of hounds in full cry and the eerie sound of a multitude of geese rising from their shore roost in a lapis lazuli dawn. We should expect a hard frost with the full moon at the beginning of the month and an influx of little plump waxwings from Northern Europe and Scandinavia. A “waxwing warning” presages a band of freezing weather, when an “irruption” of these noisy birds with red tips to their wings and distinctive crests arrive, stripping the last autumn berries. The ghostly sound of tawny owls calling to each other is synonymous with freezing, moonlit nights, Shakespeare’s: “Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu whit; Tu who.” These sounds are the contact calls of a male and female as the cock bird begins his courtship feeding, bringing food for the larger hen to build her up for early breeding.