It takes quite a major event to push ‘The Virus’ off the front pages and demote it to second or third topic of conversation, but the recent snow, no longer customary in winter, has done a pretty good job of doing just that. Initially looking rather grim and forbidding in the deep gloom, the landscape was sparklingly transformed with the return to long-awaited sunny weather. Eight nights of hard frosts were followed by days when the temperature hovered around freezing, but my own calculation is that wildlife won’t have suffered too badly. For a start, the depth of snow would have been far greater, had it not been melting as fast as it fell before dawn on 7th February. The early snowfall in particular was quite wet, so much of it slid off the branches fairly quickly, revealing bare twigs for tit flocks to continue foraging amongst. For ground-feeding birds the situation was less clear-cut - snow smothered all low vegetation, yet wasn’t deep enough to prevent blackbirds from flinging it to one side as they delved down to the leaf litter, and throughout the wood there were many brown patches where they had been hard at work, an endeavour that will also have assisted the local robins. A long walk through the wood on 12th revealed at least 50 busy blackbirds, often in two or threes, but once in a loose aggregation of eleven. Robins were also conspicuously spaced along our walk, but one robin that we found on the path failed to move on our approach. Shaking gently, with its eyes closed, it appeared to be far gone, and made no objection when we eased it into a fur-lined glove and took it home. Unfortunately, it was dead by the time we removed it from the glove, but I like to think that at least its last moments were more comfortable than they might otherwise have been. Three wrens also chirped briefly as we walked round, so some have survived; these birds are very vulnerable to prolonged cold, as insects are much harder to come by at ground level, and the birds’ small size means that they lose heat rapidly. Compared to ‘the good old days’, this was a very short cold snap, and it seems likely that bird populations won’t have been affected too drastically, but we shall soon know, as birdsong rings out once more in the coming weeks.
Vandalism takes many forms, and can come from an unexpected quarter, as when one of the reserve’s metal signs was badly gnawed by a squirrel! In one corner up to an inch width of metal had vanished, deep grooves on the surviving edge revealing the culprit, and leaving the retaining screw stranded on a tiny island of metal. The fairly light alloy was no match for the sharp chiselling incisors of a rodent, but why do it, when there’s no nutritive value in the metal shards? I don’t know how long the sign had been like that, but if it was attacked last spring or summer, at a time when the males are highly aggressive towards other squirrels, it could be a sort of displacement activity, or was it simply a way of sharpening those fearsome teeth?
The RSPB Canterbury group’s Zoom talk at 7.30pm on 9th March should be of interest to many. Entitled “Rewilding Britain – are we ready for large mammals?”, it promises to be a fascinating and extremely topical review of where this somewhat contentious programme is heading. If you would like to hear Anne Riddell’s talk, please email michaelwalter434@gmail.com, and I will send you the Zoom link a day or two beforehand. We do ask for a small donation to help cover our costs.
Michael Walter
michaelwalter434@gmail.com
01227 462491
Metal sign heavily gnawed by a squirrel
Trees completely covered in snow on first day of snowfall
Heather snow-mounds
Flowering gorse
The stream didn’t ice over