Songbirds and wild boars surviving the winter
Sep 21st, 2008 by Birdy Trish
I was once told that long, long ago songbirds could well have been helped through the freezing winters by wild boar and wild cattle.
The wild boar would look for food on the ground in winter. The ground could well be frozen hard or covered in snow making it hard for songbirds to survive. The boar would hunt for food by ‘digging’ down into the snow,. It would disturb the soil underneath and perhaps kick up the soil - giving many songbirds access to fresh soft soil full of food. Flies are attracted to cattle - so maybe the cattle helped some birds in that way as well.
Who told me this? I can’t remember. Someone from my childhood.
Sometimes in summer when we bring the cows in from thefields the swallows dart over and under the cows, skimming the air for insects.
Now, of course, no wild boar roam, but the robin still follows people in the garden - so maybe that is where robins first learnt that skill and it has been passed down through every robin since!
There haven’t been any wild boar or wild cattle roaming here for perhaps hundreds of years so birds adapt and find other ways to survive. Nowadays they have the help of a food on a wooden bird table or hanging feeder instead of boars and cattle.
But the main thing is they survive the winter
Wild Boar have started to re-colonise parts of England, i know areas in North Devon and the forest of dean have established breeding wild boars.
There are also other pockets of populations springing up across the country so you never know you may actually have wild boar roaming in your area. Below is a useful link
http://www.britishwildboar.org.uk/
Hi Paul, thanks for this information. Very interesting. And thanks for the link. I’ve sent the british wild boar org. an email asking if they have heard of this old link between wild boars and songbirds - so thank you.
I suppose we’ll never know if it is right or not, but wildlife does interact with each so so maybe it is.
We have cows and there are often flies about where cows are. We see swallows flying near the cows sometimes - so if swallows know to fly near cows to get insects it is possible that songbirds knew to follow wild boar about. Bird tables and bird feeders have taken the place of wild boar! But as long as there’s food for our British birds I suppose it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Best. Trisha