It might be winter but we’re nearly there?

I was sat on the top of Alex Tor, I had Napoleon with me, Roy having accepted another offer to go shooting. It was just on dusk and the wind was out of the north and making my ears tingle. The flock of Golden Plover, about 50 in number, have been here all winter and were circling the tor. As I sat on one of the granite boulders, contemplating the winter view, they flew within 20 feet of me, actually a little below me, so close I could hear the “whoosh” of their wings.

It is January, the strangest Christmas and New Year virtually any of us have seen is over and the bleak month of January seems to stretch before us. Cold, forbidding and seemingly endless.

However, things are on the turn even though the signs are infinitesimal at present. Far away, in South Africa, our swallows and martins are swooping through the warm African skies, enjoying their holiday but with half an eye urning to the long flight home – back to the very same barn or nesting site they have always used – better navigation than Geraldine but let’s gloss over that.

The journey will take them six or seven weeks, covering about 200 miles a day, up through Africa, crossing the forbidden Sahara desert to Morocco then over to Spain and France and onto their homeland. Most actually come into Cornwall and Devon first before rapidly heading north at maybe 30 miles a day. They will leave South Africa by mid February, just a few weeks away now, and the first ones will arrive here by late March – not too long now!

Elsewhere, the first snowdrops and crocus are pushing the first shoots up, the harbingers of spring.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” I said to my mate Ant Snooze, his substantial bulk beginning to disappear in the gathering gloom. “Relax, this is fine”, he said, seemingly impervious to a chilly wind in body warmer whilst I snuggled into my warmest coat.

We were standing next to the infant River Camel with the bulk of Roughtor looming over us, near the monument to Charlotte Dymond, who was murdered on the moor in 1844. We were adjacent to pine woods planted up to the old Davidstow airfield.

Nowadays, the air is filled, in winter, not with propeller engines, but thousands and thousands of starlings. They roost in the pine woods, a noisy, jostling and bickering bunch keeping warm in the presence of their mates.

Before they settle down for the night the starlings put on an aerial display that would rival any aerobatic pilot. The murmuration occurs for half an hour before dark as they twist and turn in formation into the most spectacular display. We have many more starlings in the UK in autumn and winter as birds from the continent come to spend the winter in our balmy climate.

It’s thought the murmuration is a way of protecting themselves from predators like sparrowhawks – the twisting and turning is confusing and if you’re the bird in the centre, there’s safety – unlike your mates on the outside, I’m alright Jack.

In the depths of January, this year things can‘t get much worse – dark, cold and the pubs are shut. At least I can watch the birds currently eating me out of house and home on the feeders in the garden – great, long tailed, coal and blue tits (quiet in the back row), greedy starlings, nuthatch, greater spotted woodpecker, robin and wren – lovely.

It makes you wonder who the joker was who made January a 31 day month, straight after December. It’s all the fault of the moon and a bloke called Julius Caesar, who holidayed in these parts 2000 years ago. Our calendar is the Gregorian calendar but it actually stems from a Greek calendar, which only had 10 months in it. The problem is the moon orbits the earth, annoyingly, every 29.5 days so it’s not easy to match to the 365.25 days the earth takes the orbit the sun.

Anyway, after the Roman calendar, based on the Greek calendar (are you keeping up?) was established in 738 BC, it was readdressed by a small council of Romans in 452 BC and February moved to the second month – couldn’t they just had made it the first one?

Anyway, although we are stuck with January, it is the last month where we don’t have birds breeding. The majestic heron (unless you have a koi pond) is one of the first, starting to repair last year’s nest high in the trees in February and laying eggs soon after.

When Geraldine and I lived in Mongolia it was noticeable that one of the main national festivals occurs in February, in the first three days of the lunar month (there’s the moon again), called Tsagaan Tsar, or White Moon – as it’s -30 degrees at that time! But it’s a great break and looks forward to spring – and everyone gets wasted on vodka.

It reminds me of the time I was in a restaurant in Mongolia and my assistant was discussing menu options with the waiter. It was getting heated so I asked what was wrong and she said, indignantly, “they’ve run out of sheep’s heads”. “Damn”, I said, “I’ll have a toastie”.