One of the loveliest of collective nouns is surely the ‘murmuration’ of starlings. The word evokes that gentle, rhythmic beating of wings, rising and falling in waves as the birds in their thousands twist and dive, swooping as one into a dense black cloud that shapeshifts into fire-breathing dragons and leaping porpoises against the dying orange light of a winter sun.
Winter’s myriad avian delights are much underrated, as Britain, particularly the eastern side of the country, enjoys the southerly move of thousands of birds from freezing Arctic, Siberian and Scandinavian climes as they search for more clement temperatures and the bounty of hedgerow, field and beach.
The coiffed, Teddy-boy waxwing, the Latin name of which is, rather wonderfully, Bombycilla garrulus, may be spotted cheerily lighting up anywhere where it can gorge itself on rowan or hawthorn berries and is as at home in a supermarket carpark as on farmland. The speckle-breasted fieldfare and redwing, with its eye-catching patch of blusher under the wing, travel in chattering tandem.
Flocks of visiting waders — knot, dunlin, oystercatcher — lend atmosphere and life to grey beaches. Curlew, lapwing and snipe like it here, too; efforts to supply their preferred habitat are the life’s work of several conservation groups and scientists.
A woodcock exploring 'warmer climes' in Somerset.
The much-monitored migration of the elusive woodcock will have peaked by now; sightings of this beautiful gamebird with its expressive, almond-shaped eyes on the sides of its head are prized — its flight is speedy and jinking and it prefers the nocturnal hours. Woodcock do inhabit suburban woodland, although the confused specimen found outside a nightclub in Shoreditch, east London, last winter, seemed to have mislaid its map.
The pink-footed and greylag geese that bombard the East Anglian shores may lack the balletic wow factor of the swan, but their nightfall return from plundering the barley and sugar-beet fields is one of Nature’s great spectacles. In a movement known whimsically in ornithological circles as ‘whiffling’, the birds side-slip out of the sky like tumbling leaves or skiers negotiating a couloir, even flying feet up, as if adjusting to turbulence; like the starling murmuration, it’s thought to be an instinctive movement to baffle predators — safety in ever-moving numbers.
We associate this time of year with the confident robins that rule the garden, complex mental singing exercises about partridges in pear trees and turtle doves and, particularly, the birds we can eat.
We have the spring and the emergence of flora and fauna to look forward to, but the strivings for survival of wildlife in an unadorned world form some of the most splendid unsung natural displays, right here on our doorsteps.
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You can't sit with us unless you do the Country Life Quiz of the Day, December 8, 2025Do you remember this film? It's in today's quiz.
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When Chelsea was grazing and pasture, not gazing and posture, this house was a Georgian dairy. Now it's a townhouse on SW3's swishest streetWill Hosie takes a look at The Old Dairy, a beautiful old home in SW3 that's seen the entire area grow up around it.
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I was Jeremy Hunt’s main political adviser and helped put together multiple Autumn Statements and Budgets. This is what I think Rachel Reeves’s Budget means for the countrysideAdam Smith, former chief of staff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reflects on what last week's Budget means for the countryside and how we ensure the rural voice is heard loudly inside Budget preparations.
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The Budget: What do we need to fix a broken countryside, and what will we get?With the Autumn Budget looming, countryside and heritage organisations reveal what they are hoping to hear to fix the turmoil — and what they are dreading
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'I’m going to be the first in more than 100 years to sell anything off': How the upcoming budget uncertainty is impacting young farmersChanges to inheritance tax, property relief and Defra budgets will likely change Britian's rural landscape. We ask the next generation of farmers what they think their future will look like.
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An unfenced existence: Philip Larkin's love of the countrysideRichard Barnett pokes at Larkin’s protective carapace of soot-stained gloom and finds a writer with an unillusioned yet tenderly perceptive sense of Nature, in all its beauty and indifference
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Baby, it’s cold outside (even if you have a natural fur coat): How our animals brave the winter chillWhen the temperature drops, how do Britain’s birds, beasts and plants keep the cold at bay? John Lewis-Stempel reveals Nature’s own thermals.
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Retro rubbish: Waste from the 90s unearthed in 97-mile-long beach cleanThe 6,482 volunteers unearthed waste discarded decades ago among the 232,229 pieces of litter recorded during the initiative.
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Dangerous beasts (and where to find them): Britain's animals that are best left aloneJohn Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters.
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Mystery, muse and metaphor: There's more to fog than meets the eyeSmothering, transformative and beautiful, fog’s close-set shroud has inspired titans of literature, cinema and art — and forces the rest of us to look at the world a little closer.
