SKYLARKSUE'S REFLECTIONS OF NATURE

SKYLARK SUE’S REFLECTIONS OF NATURE  

January 2013

‘January brings the snow

Makes our feet and fingers glow’

So runs the verse by Sara Coleridge. Although we had experienced snow on the 14^th here in my corner of Essex, it had melted by the next day. However, on the 20^th the snow suddenly fell with a vengeance. At first, it tried to bamboozle us into thinking it was just a harmless dusting as the flakes were so tiny, but after a while those tiny flakes began to settle. It wasn’t long before the ground was covered, and eventually the snowflakes were large. In all we had around 4 inches, and as it had been bitterly cold for much of the month, this lot of snow froze over and didn’t clear till the 27^th.  It looked beautiful, so long as you didn’t need to go out, because as it froze it produced sheet ice making ungritted roads and pavements hazardous.

One of the best things about the onset of snow is that you tend to see a lot more birds than normal around your feeder, and I’ve noticed that species that tend to squabble are so busy eating that they become quite tolerant. No doubt, too, they are conserving energy – in the bitter cold they need all the food that they can get, and even a minor dispute burns valuable calories. It’s really important to keep the feeders topped up, not only with seed but with ‘warming’ foods such as fat and nuts. And of course, water is vital – even in icy weather birds need to drink and bathe. Luckily, we have a couple of small fountains in the garden, which kept going for most of the time, even when the weather was really cold, and when they did start to freeze a kettle of warm water soon had them working again. Despite the cold and the snow, the cheerful song of the robin has been ringing out each morning and evening, and of course, the whiteness set off its red breast to perfection. No wonder they are the chosen birds for all those cards at Christmas, especially as they are not so nervy as many birds so will happily ‘pose’ for photos!

It’s interesting to look at the prints made by numerous birds and other creatures in the snow. We had squirrel tracks, and some interesting feather marks where a bird’s wing must have touched the snow as it landed. There are two squirrels that regularly visit the garden, one much larger than the other. They seem to have come to an uneasy truce and will tolerate each other as long as they don’t get too near. One has a penchant for sitting on the fence and plucking rosehips which it eats daintily, holding the stem like a lollipop. The other prefers to feed on the nuts and seed in one of the bird trays. Sometimes it wedges itself into our lantern feeder, and I worry it will get stuck, though it has been fine so far! I enjoyed watching a tiny, large-eyed wood mouse scuttling around in the snow at the base of the feeder, feasting on the dropped seed and I wondered where it was sheltering. Obviously it had found somewhere to keep warm, maybe under the shed. Many of our bird visitors are messy eaters, scattering seed over a wide area, but worst of all are the wood pigeons. Sometimes we have four down at once, and they completely take over the feeders, often sitting in the wire trays till they tilt and the seed pours on to the ground. Incidentally, have you noticed the sheer numbers of wood pigeons around now? Recently, on just a short trip around the town there seemed to be three or four of the birds in almost every tree. This is the time of year when the bare trees reveal their secrets – all those nests, normally hidden away. It’s surprising how many there are and how they vary, from tiny little creations to huge straggly clusters of sticks. There are squirrel dreys, too.

Although it’s only January, I have already experienced one wildlife red letter day this year. It happened on the 28^th of the month when I saw my very first waxwings. I had seen many films and photos of them, but nothing prepared me for the thrill of seeing them ‘in the feather’ as it were. Eleven of them were clustered in a tree not far from a local supermarket – apparently waxwings often visit supermarkets because of the abundant berry-bearing bushes that tend to be planted around the car parks – and as I watched, they flew down into a nearby hedge and began to take rosehips. What beautiful birds they are with their sleek pink-beige plumage, gold and white wing markings, black masks and throats, tail feathers that look as though they have been dipped into a pot of yellow paint, distinctive punkish crest and, of course, the red feather shafts on the wings resembling sealing wax, hence the birds’ name. Their jangling song is magical.

Returning to the beginning of the month, I was amazed to discover that there were a few primroses already in bloom in the grass at the front of the house. The snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils are all pushing up their shoots and the white hellebore (Christmas rose) is in bloom. The winter jasmine has been delighting us for weeks. On the 13^th of January a trip to (a very muddy) Hatfield Forest gave sightings in or around the lake to, amongst other things, Canada geese, greylag geese, cormorant, mallards, moorhens, black-headed gulls, a pied wagtail and six grebes. Normally I only see a pair of grebes on the lake, so this was unusual, especially when a couple of them began to perform their bobbing dance – it seemed rather early in the year to think of nesting, but it was quite a sunny day. The gulls were still in their winter plumage, so instead of the dark heads they just had a tiny spot on each side. I always wonder why they are called black-headed when their heads are actually a rich chocolate brown.

We had plenty of heavy rain early in the month, so the forest was exceedingly muddy, even along the main path by the lake and unfortunately I couldn’t risk taking the slippery narrow mud track which runs along the smaller stretch of water, normally one of my most favourite parts of the forest. Let’s hope that we will get some dry spells this year to make it easily passable again. Hatfield Forest is a place I return to time and again. It’s an ancient hunting forest, and many of the trees are very old, with twisty limbs and gnarled trunks. Owned by the Natural Trust, it’s a perfect place for a walk, and is a favourite place with dog owners. Depending on the time of year, there are many types of wildlife to enjoy. My sightings include fallow and muntjac deer, squirrels, rabbits, kingfishers, nuthatches, marsh tits, woodpeckers and jays, while in the summer it’s perfect for dragonfly watching.

It’s good to look up to the skies this time of year – in the evening they are often glowing soft pink, and sometimes there is quite a dramatic sunset. There are also rainbows about if the pale wintry sun happens to shine as the rain lessens. I always think of January as a special month, the time of new beginnings. Next month will see the drifts of snowdrops, as well as yellow aconites – harbingers of spring.

'You’d be so lean, that blast of January
Would blow you through and through.  Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day.'
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 4