Suddenly, out of the margins of a thorn thicket that surrounds the common, a flock of long-tailed tits, 20- or 30-strong, erupts into darting, swirling flight, borne along on a soft and eager susurrus of liquid call-notes. I love th ese little birds, so tiny, so vulnerable, so active, so tribally cooperative in their nesting and breeding, so charming in their twirling round the small branches of the copse.
In terms of size, without those long tail feathers this tiny bird might well rank as our smallest avian species, but the tail, which it folds over its head in the nest, gives a misleading impression of one of our absolute featherweights. It is truly minute.
The Northamptonshire peasant poet John Clare is as perfectly observant as ever in providing an exquisite vignette of their fidgety presence in his poem Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter:
“And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove, / Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain / And hang on little twigs and start again.”
One of the great nature poems in English. The metre here mirrors so precisely the ceaseless activity of these miniature acrobats. What it cannot capture is the nature of their communal existence. Long-tailed tits are the perfect paradigm of a mutually helpful society. They operate in cold months as tribal groups, mutually sustaining, roosting close together to maintain body warmth.
When it comes to nest-building, that too is a social activity, and the results are elaborate and perfectly beautiful. Woven into the dome-shaped oval structure are sage-green lichens, down and feathers, hanks of sheep’s wool, dry flakes of grey lichen from the trunks of oak trees, green mosses. The whole intricate structure is securely positioned into a fork of branches within the densest thickets of thorn. To find one is an unlikely delight. Watch for the birds and their direction of travel – if you’re lucky and careful, you might find one. And if you do, leave it at that, lest the next generation of these exquisite birds is rendered homeless and condemned to repeat the long constructional labour of its parents.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
