Wildlife Blog by Ron Allen 15 January 2024
Get ready for Garden Bird Watch, what a start to the year and what have we naturalists been up to.
January in Stroud so far, has seen widespread snow; heavy rain flooding into properties along the A272 Winchester Road and deep flooding across the road at Red House corner at the junction with Ridge Common Lane. Continuing bitter easterly and northerly winds have kept the ground and ponds frozen and bringing a strong frost; and, just last night, devastating vandalism to parked cars on the Winchester Road.
First, the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2024 between 26 and 28 January. I have a request to provide some information on the Big Garden Bird Watch and so here goes.
Make sure your birdfeeders are filled a week or so before to attract the birds and then find a good window and a comfortable seat and a cuppa and with a pencil and paper make a note of the highest number of each bird species you see in an hour. Extra seats for the children and grandchildren if you can prise them away from their computer games. You can download a guide to birds you might see and record on the RSPB website. Finally, log in to the RSBP website and submit your results. More details on: https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch
1 Male house sparrow with chestnut-coloured wings, grey cheek patch and a grey cap.
2 Female house sparrow with less bright brown colours and an eye stripe.
3 Blue tit with blue cap, black eye stripe, blue wings, and yellowish underside.
4 Starling with glossy black-purple feathers, bright white speckles and a long very sharp beak.
5 Robin, unmistakeable, usually seen fighting off rivals.
6 Goldfinches, usually in small flocks (charms).
Here are some of the winter birds we have seen in our garden.
Last year, house sparrow led the top ten list (images 1 male and 2 female), followed by blue tit (image 3), starling (image 4), wood pigeon, blackbird, robin (image 5), goldfinch (image 6), great tit (image 7), magpie and long-tailed tit (image 8). With luck, other species that you may see include dunnock (image 9), nuthatch (image 10), greenfinch, chaffinch, collared dove, Jackdaw, and great spotted woodpecker (image 11). Confusion can be had with dunnock and house sparrow. Dunnocks are generally grey, skulk about at ground level, and have red legs and a long thin beak good for insects and spiders. House sparrows are brown (grey caps to the head in the male) with short strong seed crushing beaks and spend much of the time off the ground in hedges. Great tits have large white cheek patches and blue tits are smaller with blueish wings and blue head caps.
7 Great tit. This is a male with bright white cheeks set in a black head with a black stripe descending down a yellowish chest. Females are similar but less striking.
8 Long-tailed tits are usually seen in family groups.
9 Dunnock, sparrow-like but look for the red legs and long thin beak and usually on the ground.
10 Nuthatch, usually seen feeding upside-down.
11 Male great spotted woodpecker. Females lack the red patch at the back of the head, and juveniles have a red cap.
12 Ragwort flowering on the village green.
What has been happening so far this month.
The first weekend in January started with the annual winter wildflower flowering survey run by the Botanical Society of the British Isle (BSBI). I took a walk around the village green and adjacent footpaths and noted a single flowering ragwort (image 12) on the village green, several herb Robert plants in flower on the footpath into Steep, a single common daisy (image 13) in our front garden and several red campion (image 14) in our back garden. A few surviving ox-eye daisies were flowering on the A272/A3 bypass roundabout. Hazel bushes already have their bright yellow pollen laden catkins (image 15). Of the non-natives, there is a nice flowering clump of the fragrant pinkish-mauve flowered winter heliotrope (a garden escape) on the village green and also on the Winchester Road near the junction with Ridge Common Lane (image 16). In our garden, the pink flower clusters of Viburnam x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ are in full bloom.
13 Common daisy, never seems to stop flowering.
14 Red campion flowering this winter in our garden.
15 Hazels have been displaying their bright yellow pollen-filled catkins since early January.
16 Winter heliotrope in flower on the village green, a garden escape.
17 Frog in our pond.
18 Chestnut moths seem to be out however cold and snowy it is. This moth has snow settled on its head.
In our pond (when not frozen), we had a single frog (image 17) and by torchlight see that palmate newts are active, also caddis-fly larvae crawling around carrying their protective cases made of nibbled plant fragments.
This year, we have the first nationwide January Moth Challenge and moth enthusiasts are out looking for moths and running their moth traps even in really cold conditions. So far, our garden has produced four macro-moths: winter moth, chestnut moth (in the snow image 18)), and individuals of mottled umber (image 19) and pale brindled beauty (image 20); also, three micro-moths, Agonopterix heracliana (image 21) and the tiny 5mm long Acrolepia autumnitella (image 22) both of which flew out of firewood brought in from the cold. Also, out of the firewood came this many-plumed moth with its divided feather like wing scales. Six moth species in total. Also, in the house have been several wasps, presumably also attempting to hibernate in the firewood.
Only halfway through January and I look forward to seeing what else the month brings.
Happy new year to you all.
19 Mottled umber moth, one of the few moths out in mid-winter.
20 Pale brindled beauty, another mid-winter flying moth.
21 Agonopterix heracliana, common brindled brown micro-moth, that flew out of the firewood.
22 Acrolepia autumnalis, speckled bittersweet micro-moth, also out of the firewood and whose larvae feed on bittersweet. Hardly 5mm long.
