Nature Diary: January and February, 2024

New Year blooms, inebriated robins, weaving crocosmia leaves, and wonky-eyed deer

Dear Friend,

I have changed my vision for this Substack offering again. The Outside In is now a nature diary with attention, curiosity, and wonder at its heart, documenting the natural history of my own personal world. I started keeping this diary in January and it only occurred to me this month that it could be shareable. So this time, on this intercalary leap year day, you’re getting a double issue to cover both January and February. From here, you’ll get an issue on the last day of every month for that month. I’m going to try and do a lot better on the photos in the future too now that I know I’m doing this.

One more thing: last issue, I announced the opening of Jill Margo Herbarium, my online shop selling fine art giclée prints of my pressed flower compositions and herbarium specimens. I was absolutely blown away by the responses I received and was thrilled to fill orders for 27 prints before the holidays, so I wanted to say THANK YOU. Your words and purchases mean so much to me. The shop is open again and a new collection will be coming this summer.

Alright, onward! Thanks for being here.

x Jill

P.S. I’d love to know what you think of this new format if you have a moment to comment or reply.

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JANUARY

JANUARY 1

Today we went for a garden walk for the first time since getting home from our bleak trip to the mainland. The witch hazel is blooming—little fireworks of yellow with streaks of red that look like they were drawn by a child. The giant snowdrops have come up early, presumably because of the mild weather. The dark pink camellia and one of the light pink rhododendrons are trying to bloom early too. My ruddy brown pot of burgundy and pink pansies on the porch is in full flower. In the pressing garden at the back near my studio, there’s a rogue orange snapdragon and a single blue bachelor’s button. The squirrels are extra fluffy and delightfully chubby. A. brought his stick bucket with him and filled it with kindling for the fire and I picked a small bouquet of white camellia and winter jasmine.

JANUARY 9

Holy gale! The wind rattled our bedroom windows in their sashes all night and we woke less rested than we would’ve liked and surprised that we still had power.

JANUARY 12

Today it is -11C, which is a new record. On the same day last year, it was 21 degrees warmer. The freezing temperature meant that A. had to switch out the hummingbird feeder every 50 minutes or so to keep the hummies in “go juice”. At least three rely on the feeder, though they’re as territorial as always, which is why a friend calls them “the Siamese fighting fish of the sky”. One of the three—the female—tried to guard the feeder from a branch on the pineapple broom tree but she could only fight off one of the males at once, which would leave an opening for the other male to have a drink. And so it went until it seemed they were all getting a drink in turn, but with a lot of fuss in between.

There was so much more bird action than that though. The robins came! They were attracted to the firethorn that has been trained to climb the front of our porch and its abundance of orange-red berries. At first, the robins looked serene and beautiful like they’d been sent from central casting to model for next year’s Christmas card but then things got… intense. Scads of them began to gorge on the berries, swallowing them whole and frozen. We could see the berry-sized lumps in their throats for a split second before they went all the way down. Two of the robins got into a fight and feathers were, literally, flying! One robin had feathers from the other robin in its beak! The birds continued to feast on the berries and some of them staggered along the porch in a daze, while two or three of them flew into the kitchen picture window from where we were watching them and temporarily stunned themselves. It was like they were drunk.

JANUARY 13

I now know that yesterday’s robins were under the influence. I looked it up and learned that the birds don’t even touch the berries until they’ve been through a few cycles of freezing and thawing. These cycles cause a biochemical change in the berries so that with each thawing they begin to ferment and produce alcohol, making them not only more palatable, but also turning them into edible party drugs. Some sources dispute this, however, and say that hydrogen cyanide, a mild neurotoxin, is found in the berries and that’s what alters the birds’ behaviour. Either way, the presumably hungover robins returned today for the finale of their bacchanal, so we pulled up a couple of chairs to watch.

Unfortunately, I now also know that some people call robins “turd birds”. This isn’t because their scientific name is Turdus migratorius but because their gorging leads to prolific pooping. We watched the spectacle, open-mouthed (us, not them), as they ate and ate and ate and pooped and pooped and pooped. Berries in, big, berry-coloured turds out—sometimes almost simultaneously. It didn’t take long for the robins to strip the firethorn clean of its berries and then the frenzy was over. The porch was a mess, and the robins woozily flew off, worse for wear, along with the firethorn, which somehow had the same vibe as an empty bar after a long night.

JANUARY 14

Today I got it in my head that I’d like to add moss to the container that the paperwhites on the dining table are in for a bit of interest. But, of course, when I got outside, I could hear the ground crunch under my feet and realized it was too frozen. I still tried to pull a piece of moss up from the grass, but it was icy and wouldn’t budge and my fingertips quickly went numb with cold. I had failed, but I still felt more robust for having tried. On the bright side, the deep freeze meant that A. was able to sweep frozen robin turds off the porch and we could stop thinking about and saying the word “turds”.

JANUARY 17

What falls in the winter but never gets hurt? Snow.

JANUARY 20

The snow is now gone. It’s always amazed me how the weight of snow can just disappear into the thirsty earth. Also, it is now warm enough that A. could empty watering cans full of water on the porch to remove the last traces of mess left by the inebriated robins.

JANUARY 28

The morning was foggy and mizzling, creating a very gothic effect in this neighbourhood of grand old houses and bare oak trees. I did not go outside. After staring out the windows though, I wanted to put on one of those white cotton Victorian nightgowns so I could faint onto a couch by the fire in a fitting outfit. I then imagined being revived by a cup of tea, or wee bit of brandy, administered by my beloved, before discussing how a trip to the seaside might do me good.

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FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY 1

Since the weather turned glorious today and it’s Imbolc—the old Celtic celebration that marks the midpoint between winter and spring—I went out to the garden to look for plant material to make a St. Brigid’s Cross. The crosses, which are meant to bless one’s house and home each year on this day, are usually crafted from rushes or straw. In absence of both, I was looking for something else that would work. I found crocuses that had pushed themselves up from the earth, but no grasses that I could weave a cross with, so I was about to give up when I came upon the winter-browned and battered crocosmia plant slumped over in the back garden. The leaves are said to be “sword-like” in shape and are on average three to four feet long. Feeling very resourceful, I produced my secateurs from my pocket and cut a bunch, which I then took to our picnic table. I brushed the acorn debris from the table and sat down and happily got to work in the afternoon sun, trimming and folding the leaves in half and then weaving the cross from left to right. Once I had created a layered square in the centre with four arms radiating out, I tied each end with the slender tips that I’d cut from some of the crocosmia foliage. Earlier, I’d also cut some pink winter heath and so I pulled those sprigs from my pocket and tucked them into the cross to make it a little prettier for when A. hung it above our front door.

FEBRUARY 2

Today from the bathroom window I could see a nuthatch hanging upside down from the suet feeder that hangs in the star magnolia tree. They were so still that I thought they might be dead which put me on edge because A.’s brother died on the Winter Solstice and we’ve had enough death. I went and got A. and we went into my studio so we could have a closer look. We got closer and closer to the window and then, finally, the little tweeter stirred. “I guess they were just having a kip,” A. said. Relief.

FEBRUARY 8

Today’s garden walk was for “our mental health”. A. collected sticks for kindling again. This time I told him to save some for George Michael who is the five-month-old King Charles Spaniel who now lives in the house with his lovely humans and one not-so-happy-about-it cat. One stick we came upon was too big for George Michael but looked chewed on so A. left it and we went away singing “Careless Whisper” changing the lyrics to “I’m never gonna dance again/Guilty paws have got no rhythm.” Once inside, I pressed the common snowdrops I had picked and plan on featuring in the 2025 calendar I will be creating.

FEBRUARY 12

Today when we went to get in the car, A. noticed a dead bird by the house where no one but us would likely notice it. I asked him what kind of bird it was and he said, “a medium-sized one, but its hard to tell which kind because it’s head has been removed.” It was still there when we got home, but we decided to ignore it and the gruesomeness of nature and inevitableness of death for the time being.

FEBRUARY 13

The beheaded bird carcass is gone, leaving us to wonder what creature made off with it. Slinky, the sleek black cat from next door who was probably the one to kill it in the first place? Our resident owl who we sometimes hear making a kill in the night? Or, less likely, one of the raccoons, deer, or even (perish the thought) our beloved squirrels? Either way, A. was glad he didn’t have to get the shovel and deal with it.

FEBRUARY 16

The deer were in the back garden today—three does having a peaceful graze, right under my studio window. I wondered if any of them are pregnant since black-tailed deer mate in the fall and give birth in the spring after just over seven-ish months of gestation. I also wondered if Milky Eye—the big buck with the wonky eye—fathered any of the fawns-to-be and if the eye was possibly a genetic thing and what the darling little fawns would look like with spooky eyes. But then I got a hold of my runaway imagination. 

FEBRUARY 21

Today is A.’s sixtieth birthday (!). My parents bought him a Carhartt shacket to wear in the garden. It’s made of “oak brown” canvas and is lined with buffalo plaid fleece. A. looks quite sweet in it and his flat cap, so when we went for our walk, I spent more time looking at him with love-eyes than the garden. But I did still notice that at least three daffodils have bloomed and others are in bud.

FEBRUARY 23

Today when we got in from our outing, I asked A. to get the secateurs so he could cut some flowering cornelian cherry branches for me. There are two rangy trees in the front garden adding such cheer to the landscape right now with the profusion of tiny bright yellow flowers on their naked branches. And now there is also a bit of cheer on our dining table—five proud branches in a tall white pitcher. Never mind that the pollen is making me sneeze.

FEBRUARY 25

So. Fecking. Cold. Not like the cold they get further east, but still cold. It was pouring this morning and then, when we got in from our outing today, I was so emotionally offended and chilled from the bitter wind that I sat in my armchair and hid under a queen-sized quilt—head and all, like a ghost—and whimpered miserably. I am ready for spring.