Flora and fauna : Mistle thrush
Flora and fauna : Mistles I’ve been trying to come up with some Christmassy flora and fauna facts: in the past I’ve done holly and covered ivy. Then the thought came to me that we don’t get much mistletoe growing round these parts. By coincidence we’ve currently got a couple of mistle thrushes which have been hanging about and presumably roosting in a large holly tree in the garden. A pair nested in there a few Springs ago and reared...
Flora and fauna : Jaywalking
Flora and fauna : Jaywalking We were visited by a pair of these beauties the other day, collecting peanuts (they can hold up to a dozen in their gullet at one time) to store in hidey holes. You’re most likely to see them in the autumn when they’re busy collecting their favourite food, acorns, and burying them for winter use…Jays are responsible for many of our oak trees because they miss collecting the odd one or...
Flora and fauna – four for a penny
Familiar to everyone the wren is still a favourite of mine…(does anyone else remember them on farthings?) We’re lucky enough to have a pair nesting in a quiet corner of the garden again this year; they’ve spruced up a nest which was built two years ago, but was left unused last year. Normally the male wren builds six or seven nests, then the female checks them all out, chooses one and prepares it for her eggs. They lay half a dozen or...
Flora and fauna – Ouzels
In my book there are wild creatures, and there are WILD creatures. The former include bluetits, rabbits, robins, blackbirds and so on…the sort we see every day, but the latter, they are the ones that haven’t seen much of humankind. They spend most of their lives in wild, sometimes desolate places and scarper at the slightest disturbance. Fieldfares and redwings, our winter-visiting thrushes, curlews, wheatears and other birds of the...
Having our Peewits about us
Anyone walking up behind Whimberry Wood lately will probably have seen the large flock of lapwings which have been wintering there. These wonderfully aerobatic birds, members of the plover family, are evocative of our area preferring to nest on damp meadows where they forage for food (worms and insects), nest, and bring up their young. Their numbers have declined lots over the last thirty years due to land drainage and a dearth of...