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Nature watch: December
Sight a host of birds and animals that rely on the mistletoe berry through winter
A curious plant is mistletoe; a semi-parasitic evergreen that roots itself in the branches of apple trees, oaks and poplars. Revered by our Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors, it has since become synonymous with Christmas, when sprigs are hung up in houses all over the country. Birds love its pearly white berries, especially mistle thrushes (hence the name), and over-wintering blackcaps that spread the plant by cleaning their beaks against a bough and leaving the sticky seeds behind. In so many ways the countryside in December becomes a symphony in white. It is not only the mistletoe berries. In the Scottish Highlands when blizzards sweep across the high tops, the mountain hare and ptarmigan turn white to hide from keen-eyed eagles. And of all the seasonal movements of wildlife during these brief mid-winter days there are few spectacles to surpass the sight of Bewick’s swans pouring out of the dusk like snowflakes. Refugees from Arctic Russia, these ethereal visitors gather by the thousand on the Ouse Washes and elsewhere, together with whooper swans from Iceland. Both species have lemon-yellow bills, but the whooper is larger, with a distinctive roman-nosed profile and a mournful bugling call.
Brian Jackman
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