The dawn of a new wildlife year is always an exciting time. We have passed the midway point of winter relatively unscathed as far as cold weather goes and now thoughts suddenly turn to the lengthening days as we head towards spring, mind you there is plenty of cold to be had yet.
My last sighting of a frog in 2017 was on 30th December as I collected some firewood from the store. A sprinkling of rain and a mild night had tempted quite a large female out of her winter hunker down, maybe food was on her mind!
We tend to think of spring in terms of bright sunny days, but for amphibians, it’s the night time temperatures that will dictate how long they are tucked safely away in the winter quarters. A run of five or so nights above five degrees Celsius and it is possible that great crested newts will emerge and start their journey back to natal ponds with breeding on their mind.
Towards the end of the last couple of mild winters I have carried out torch surveys of local ponds, which I must remind anyone thinking of doing this that you must have a licence from Natural England. Even in February on some years I have counted the odd one or two adults in local ponds. It’s a bit of a risky strategy for them to leave their hibernation sites early, but in the event of cold conditions returning they will leave the pond and head back to cover.
Although it has been generally mild we did have the two spells of snow just at the end of the year. The snow only stayed about for a day or so on the last occasion but it was just enough to tempt the fieldfares and redwings away from the surrounding fields where they feed on earth worms. Once the ground started to freeze, many thrushes headed back to Tewin Orchard for the mass of windfall apples and easy pickings under the trees, the ones purposely left from the autumn harvest for just such an occasion.
I did mention the bird ringing that we carry out to monitor the winter visitors in the last article. The 31st December is the annual cut off point for our data to be sent to the British Trust for Ornithology and it was an opportunity to look at the totals caught and ringed there since November.
It is so easy for any of us who watch birds in our garden, back and forth to our bird feeders to assume the same four or five birds are hanging around. Windfall apples are a magnet for many species of birds and mammals and one that we are all very familiar with is the blackbird.
It was quite obvious that there were good numbers of them in the orchard, particularly as the black plumage and bright yellow beak of the male and dark brown of the female stand out very well against the white of the snow. To our amazement as we totalled up the month of captures we realised that we had caught sixty nine individuals, that’s a lot in one place!
We always take wing measurements, which in the visiting continental blackbirds can be around 135 to 140 mm and they are generally larger than our resident blackbirds. We are reasonably confident that around forty percent of those caught where migrants from the colder parts of Europe.
It is known that North Sea hopping blackbirds swell the numbers of our resident population as natural food runs out say in Scandinavia. These, and the other winter visitors like, the redwing and fieldfare are here for the food, none stay to breed, well possibly the odd blackbird, but come March they will be on their way back to Europe to breed on a strong westerly wind.
To give you an idea of how important orchards are, particularly those managed organically, no spaying, minimal mowing and tidying which creates a diverse habitat for bees, butterflies, moths and other invertebrates. These species are near the start of the food chain and are the pollinators and this is just what happens in Tewin Orchard and after a good year for apples it can attracted hundreds of fieldfares.
It may not seem many if you say it quickly, but we ringed thirty nine of this species in the month leading up to Christmas. Given that only sixteen were caught in the whole of Hertfordshire in 2016, these figures certainly say something of how important Tewin Orchard is to wildlife and I haven’t even talked about the badgers!
I spend my working days in the countryside and much of my other time is spent like many other local natural historians and wildlife enthusiasts either walking in the countryside, carrying surveys, writing about it or just enjoying being out in it. Like many of us I enjoy a good wildlife documentary on television and it is a good way to while away a long winter evening. Blue Planet, presented by Sir David Attenborough has been exceptional and for me this man must go down in history as the iconic voice that most rationalizes the highs, but more often than not nowadays, the lows that befalls much of the wildlife on this planet.
I must say that I am not a great fan of all wildlife programmes and TV chefs presenting about wildlife is possibly for me, not a great combination. That said, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall in his latest series, Hugh’s Wild West, ticks all the boxes for me.
The first programme started with a lady who has been ringing and monitoring the Dipper population for over forty years along parts of the River Wye in the West Country. The Dipper is a bird the size of a small thrush, brown with a white bib and is found on rivers and streams where it hunts out aquatic invertebrates under water; basically it uses its wings to propel itself and strong clasping toes to anchor it down as it probes the silt for larvae, in sometimes very fast water.
In the second sequence shown, Hugh was out with cavers and licenced bat workers as they went below ground in the Forest of Dean in Clearwell Caves in search of one our rarest bats and only found in the west of England, the Lesser Horseshoe Bat. I was sixteen, a worrying forty eight years ago when I and ten others of the 2nd Welwyn Garden City Venture Scout unit explored those caves and I saw my first Lesser Horseshoe bat with Ray Wright, the father of the caver showing Hugh around. What a trip down memory lane for me! If you like wildlife and particularly the nitty gritty of wildlife monitoring you can get it on BBC 2 catch-up TV, it’s a must see, particularly if the series continues to follow this format.
Something to remember and get involved with is the RSPBs Big Garden Bird Watch. This year’s national bird survey takes place over the weekend of 27th to 29th January 2018.
This article was first published in Welwyn Hatfeld Times Magazine.
Badger Diaries 