Some years, a bitter February can feel like the depths of winter. This year though, despite a week or so of hard frosts and a spattering of snow, it feels like winter has hardly even been. Perhaps I am forgetting the long nights and the soundless trees already, but so be it! Because today, 16 February, it feels like Spring.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s been plenty things to love about winter - the winter migrants, the dragon-breath-air, the mournful robin and the frozen sheets of ice floating in the reedbed, hung there by the tides - but my favourite things about winter are the signs of spring. The little things that later in the year we begin to take for granted. Those seasonal markers which tell us that change is on the way.
I started my residential placement at Strumpshaw in early December. The trees were bare, the woods quiet. Buckenham marshes was heaving with wintering wildfowl, taking refuge from their cold homes in Iceland, Scandinavia and Western Russia. (Check out www.migrationatlas.org for an interactive map of bird ringing data which illuminates migration patterns, if you’re interested in learning more.) I would say winter is a good time of year to move somewhere, as all the best is yet to come.
Picture of snow drops in woodland. Photo credit: Isabella McAdam
Picture of elf cups fungi, small red cups growing on dead wood. Photo credit: Isabella McAdam
As I settled into my new home, I began to notice patterns and to take note of who was sharing the space with me. A song thrush greets me every morning as I wake, from the woods behind Staithe Cottage, and another sings back from near the rail crossing. By late January there were catkins on the hazel trees, fresh leaves on the honeysuckle, snowdrops blooming by reception and in the woods and blood red elf cups littering mossy logs, like glace cherries dropped by a child. One cold morning in the yard, I noticed the sound of February had come a little early, as the purring of a great spotted woodpecker echoed through the empty trees.
Another interesting sound I heard in January, is the whickering of Chinese Water Deer. Generally, the deer rut takes place in late November and December, but it can be delayed by mild winters, (as we have had). It is a subtle affair, characterised by increased activity in males, chasing each other around, as well as, more chittering and squeaking vocalisations. The water deer whicker is a strange sound, which, when heard for the first time, barely resembles a deer at all, but is decidedly birdlike, a quiet and chirpy purr, thought to be produced by their molars.
Chinese water deer Hydropotes inermis, adult swimming, RSPB Strumpshaw Fen Nature Reserve. Photo credit: Matt Wilkinson (rspb-images.com)
Most rutting activity takes place after dark. When I first heard the noise this year, one evening in January around 5pm, it was coming from near reception. I felt it sounded rather rail-y, a moorhen perhaps, or grouse-like, but I could not place it. Bemused, I left it as mystery. But a few days later, also after dusk, I heard the noise again and stopped in my tracks. This time, following the chitter was the noise of deer crashing through the reeds and it clicked. It is not a noise I would ever have thought mammalian, if it hadn’t been pointed out to me last year. As we’ve moved into February the deer seem to have gone quiet again, but next December see if you can hear it for yourself, as the deer bucks chase each other round the fen at night.
At Buckenham marshes, there are the first signs of the spring migration. In late winter and early spring, migrant winter birds begin to congregate, getting ready for their big migration back north. As such, the numbers of birds at Buckenham have been growing. Lately I have witnessed hundreds of golden plover, alongside the usual spectacles, and a few score of curlew flying overhead.
The festival of Imbolc falls on roughly the 1 February. It celebrates the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox: the beginning of Spring. I don’t often think of February as Spring proper, but today, at least, it can’t be denied that there’s something in the air. This is a liminal time of year, where one feeling slowly moulds into another, and change comes to greet us at the door.
In my sister’s village of Marsden, Yorkshire, earlier this month, an Imbolc celebration pits giant characters depicting Jack Frost and the Green Man against each other in battle. For now, the Green Man seems to be winning the fight, and since Imbolc I have noticed his fingers reaching every corner of the reserve. Fresh leaves are shooting all over the earth - Lords and Ladies, snowdrops, thistles, daisies, dock leaves. I’ve brought my wildflower guide out of winter slumber and dusted off its pages. Red deadnettles are in flower, as are bird’s eye speedwells. The little red flowers have opened on the hazels - these are the female parts that will fruit as tasty hazelnuts - and coltsfoot has sent up its famous ‘son before the father’ along Sandy Wall, the flower that shoots up before its leaves.
What’s more the birds have burst into song. After the drumming woodpecker joined the robin and the song thrush, come early February I was hearing blackbirds and wrens, then blue tits and great tits, and now goldcrests and nuthatches, too. Last week the chaffinches and reed buntings joined the throng, and the woods and fens alike are full of noise again, our own tinkling orchestra. While WeBS counting at Berney marshes, I stopped to soak up the noise of skylarks, pouring away, their song falling down from above like a thread from a spool of yarn.
This month it has also been Valentine’s day. Perhaps not strongly associated with Spring today, but before new birth, and new life, there must be love and courtship. It’s not just humans who have romantic plans in February. The skylarks, for example, bring a certain romance and they are far from the only - or the first - birds I have seen courting this month.
Cutting some fen at Surlingham Church marsh last week, we saw great crested grebes beginning their gorgeous and involved courting rituals, mirroring each other’s movements in a dance fit for the Royal Albert Hall, holding their crests proudly and pristine, preparing to pass each other their Valentine gifts of aquatic plants, plucked from the river bottom. At Cantley, too, the mute swans have been nodding and ducking in delicate unison.
Great crested grebe, adult pair engaged in courtship dance. Photo credit: Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)
Over the water at Wheatfen I saw two singing male goldcrests, vying for the affection of any nearby females. Completely blinded by their focus on each other, they came closer to me than I’ve ever been to a goldcrest. Singing at each other intently, they fell from the limb of their yew and tumbled down towards the ground in a furious pirouette, like the twirling fruit of a sycamore, before singing at each other some more on the floor. Earlier this week, our pair of Cranes were seen flying back and forth across Reception Broad. I heard them, myself, from the yard, bugling to each other high in the air before I left for work. Hopefully they are getting along well and will try again to nest in our reedbed this summer.
Common brimstone, butterfly nectaring on thistle head. Photo credit: Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)
I write this, it is a warm and mild February day on the reserve, with a gentle breeze and blue sky peeking between the clouds. A brimstone butterfly was seen yesterday, in the car park, waking up from its winter hibernation in beds of ivy. Several other reports of brimstones, our earliest spring butterfly, came from across the valley, yesterday. This morning Andrena clarkella, Clark’s mining bee, has been seen emerging from their burrows on Sandy Wall and a buff-tailed bumblebee has just buzzed past my open window.
I do not wish to encourage anyone to will the present away, but it is rewarding, as ever, to take note of the season’s changes, to look back on things we have recently seen, and to look forward to where we will shortly be going. I am very grateful for the marvellous wildlife I have seen so far at Strumpshaw, the otters and my first ever White Fronted Geese, and very excited for all the sightings that are yet to come.
Written by Felix Dawson
Residential Volunteer