Winter 2010 February
It’s February, but it looks like spring! The sun is shining, bulbs are sending up shoots, fox cubs are out with their parents exploring the hills and woods. Soon the badger cubs will be born, as they are all born at around the same time every year, usually in the second week of February. We won’t see them yet, as, unlike the fox cubs, they will remain in the nursery room of the sett for quite a few weeks.
When we step outside and feel the cold winds, we are reminded that it is still winter. The hours of daylight are short. Frosts lie crisp and heavy, birdbaths, ponds and water troughs are frozen solid. The ground is hard although it softened after our last heavy snow fall for long enough to allow me to plant onion sets and shallots and for wild animals to dig, once more, for precious supplies of worms and grubs. The soil is fragrant, fed with the rich nutrients of autumn’s decay.
Overwintering birds are getting ready to leave us. Soon the Whooper and Bewick’s swans that arrived here from Arctic Russia and Iceland in the autumn will be leaving once more. If you want to see a spectacle, visit WWT Welney in Norfolk, where until mid February, you can sit in the observatory and watch up to 9,000 Whooper and Bewick’s swans, along with mute swans, pochards and other ducks, congregate for their supper at dusk on the flood-lit lakes. Apart from starling roosts, it is one of the most breath-taking sights in nature that I’ve seen.
Although we have been promised more snow, the flurries of birds and the eagerly bursting buds give the countryside a vibrant air. Spring is definitely on the way.
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Text and photos by Geraldine Aldridge
2nd Down at West Hythe were there was activity at the rookery, rooks were there but no sign of nest repair but a sign that spring is on its way.
Nice view of a female blackbird and a great tit and there were immature mute swans on the canal, probably last years young ones.
Also had a good long look at a collard dove, they are very pretty doves.
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15th Went over to the Deer Park we had had very heavy snow, up to eight inches were I live at Hythe the most I could remember. Most of it had gone but it was still a wintry landscape and had the treat of seeing three buzzards circling over the trees and the old pollarded beech trees looked as full of character as usual.
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20th Back at West Hythe and spotted a heron on one of the nests at the colony so they have started nest repairs and I should be seeing more of them here.
All so I could hear great spotted woodpeckers drumming, this there version of a song to attract a mate and define there territory.
Good close view of a robin which isn't difficult here because people feed them, I usually photograph them as there such an attractive bird.
Took a shot of some water splashing out of a large pipe on the canal and later when I looked at it there was a shape of a snail made by the water as you can see here!
More herons around, an adult on the field by the canal and two immature ones on the bank.
On walking back I managed to get fairly close to a great tit and a blue tit and got these shots. Birds in general are getting more visible and there's more song around a feeling of spring in the air!
It was a cold day and there was ice on the canal by the bank which made some very attractive patterns a must to photograph!
Another must to photograph was this ivy on a tree trunk so much lovely detail!
Noticed a pair of wrens in the undergrowth by the path, they really get down low and into the grass in search of food making them difficult to photograph. It's not until they perch on a prominent branch that you can get a chance of a decent shot.
The rooks are now busily repairing there nests at the rookery bringing in twigs and pinching them from neighbors nests.
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