Christmas birds

Doesn’t seem 5 minutes I was writing about robins last December! I cant believe just how quick the ‘festive season’ has arrived this year – it hardly seems a year ago we were getting ready for Christmas. I suppose if you were to think of birds that remind you of Christmas the robin would be first or second depending on how hungry you were at the time.

I love some of the folklore associated with the Robin.

There are tales stretching back to Norse mythology where the robin is the protector from storms and lightning. And in Celtic folklore the robin is known as the Oak King of Summer.

The phrase, 'When robins appear, loved ones are near', alludes to the belief that the robin is a messenger. When robins are seen, some people take comfort that loved ones are at peace, and many believe that their lost loved ones are visiting them.

On to the next ‘Christmas Bird’. It’s quite recently that the turkey become an English tradition and I would lay the blame for it being the now accepted Christmas Dinner squarely on Mr. Dickens shoulders who did so much to invent what we now think of as a ‘traditional’ Christmas. The sit-down feast includes roast turkey, brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, parsnips, cranberry sauce, rich nutty stuffing, tiny sausages wrapped in bacon and lashings of hot gravy. For pudding there's always a rich, fruity pudding, which you douse, in flaming brandy – said to ward off evil spirits. It has always been traditional to eat well at Christmas. Royal and noble households ate swans, peacocks and boars' heads.

Did you know how the bird got its name though, Turkey – they are native to America not Turkey! In the 1500s, Spanish traders brought some that had been domesticated by indigenous Americans to Europe and Asia. The bird reportedly got its common name because it reached European tables through shipping routes that passed through Turkey.

I know the bird is also associated with the American festival of ‘Thanksgiving’ and we Brits believe that the turkey originated in an event commonly referred to in the USA as the “first Thanksgiving. It’s interesting to see how the turkey got embedded in the American traditions as well as ours!!

I always believed it went back to when the Pilgrim Fathers who in 1621 were starving in their colony in Massachusetts and the Wampanoag people turned up with turkey, potatoes etc. In reality there no indication that turkey was served. For meat, the Wampanoag brought deer, and the Pilgrims provided wild “fowl.” Strictly speaking, that “fowl” could have been turkeys, which were native to the area, but historians think it was probably ducks or geese.

I suppose if a quiz asked for three birds associated with Christmas my choice of bird three would be the obvious Partridge (as in ‘and a partridge in a pear tree’). Thanks to changes in farming practises and also land use changes our native Grey Partridge is getting quite a rare sight in the countryside and is now - Classified in the UK as Red under the Birds of Conservation Concern 5: the Red List for Birds (2021).