Looking forward to
January

Big Garden Birdwatch 2012
January 28-29th



For 30 years now, the RSPB have been asking supporters to count birds in gardens. Last time 610,000 people sent in records of over 10 million birds!

All you do is choose an hour, either day, list the birds you see (the highest number of each bird species landed at once in your garden, or local park), and let the RSPB know. Send in the results, even if you didn't see anything very interesting, or even nothing at all - all data is important!

Check out likely garden birds here. Pre-register, to upload your results on the net, here. You can download a recording sheet here. The RSPB runs Big Birdwatch events across the country - our nearest is in Golden Acre , from January 21st to 29th.

Your results will help the RSPB create a 'snapshot' picture of bird numbers in each region. We've lost more than half our house sparrows, and three-quarters of our starlings, and Big Birdwatch results have certainly helped highlight these dramatic declines. They are also the first step to help aid a species recovery.

Wildlife in
January

Short days, cold weather - but still there can be a lot to see.

• Bird flocks on reservoirs - Goldeneye at Lindley Wood, for example
• Trees are gaunt without leaves but hazel catkins can be found
• Butterflies on warmer days!
• The earliest flowers, such as Winter heliotrope - introduced but welcome
• Stoats in ermine - in the upland
  
  More here

Feather forecast



Later in the year they may be just another black and white bird but this time of year we can hardly miss lapwings - their flocks are huge. Traditional winter sites at this time of year in this area include Chelker Reservoir and the fields in front of Denton Hall - in both these places Lapwing flocks numbering several hundred may be seen. In the latter case these may be mixed with Curlew which may also be several hundred strong.

Lapwing movements revealed by ringing movements are complex. British Lapwing are partial migrants with many remaining close to their breeding grounds at traditional sites, such as the above, whilst others migrate with some moving west to Ireland and some south maybe as far as Iberia. Most youngsters return to their natal areas to breed whilst others may move to breed on the continent possibly because they became attached to the ‘wrong’ flock

Plants now



Common chickweed is almost ubiquitous - it can be found in flower any month and in almost any country. It is widespread and common throughout Britain, where we see it as a weed - which is of course our name for robust and successful wild plants.

The fresh leaves have been used as a poultice and, less successfully perhaps, against rabies, but its main use was, of course, to feed birds.

Nature Notes
by Society members
featured in Wharfedale Newspapers

Woods in winter

On a drizzly day in mid-winter, it’s wonderfully reviving to take a walk in the woods. On just such a day last week I wandered through Strid Woods where the remnants of the Twelve Days of Christmas display - a full-size Friesian cow with eight expectant pails and stools, four swans in the river, two capsized and a-swimming upside down - could not distract from the natural beauty all around. I love winter trees - you can see their individual shapes and appreciate the tracery of branches against a grey-washed sky. And those trunks! When I was a child I determinedly painted tree-trunks a good solid brown. Why did nobody suggest I went outside and actually looked at the subtle mixes of grey, buff, even pink, and the streaks of lichen in a dozen shades of green.

The woodland floor was a patchwork of orange leaves and brilliant emerald mosses. The precipitous becks tumbling down to the river were in spate and had scoured clean their biscuit-coloured stones till they gleamed. I reflected on how well adapted the myriad of invertebrates living among these stones must be to their unstable environment. Glancing down towards the river, peaty-dark with white wavelets, I spotted the dumpy form of a dipper, its brown plumage and white breast perfectly designed to conceal its presence. It was bobbing off a stone into the torrent to forage for the invertebrates hidden in the shifting world of the riverbed.

Everywhere was quiet until, as I rounded a bend, all was changed. The air was alive with soft contact calls, small birds flitted in the tree-tops or zipped about from tree to tree. What’s more, the ground seemed to be moving, so many birds were foraging through the leaf-litter. I’d caught up with one of the large mixed flocks of small birds that find it safer and more efficient to keep together at this time of year, and they’d obviously struck a lucky patch. There were great, blue and coal tits and, among them, a couple of nuthatches, slate-blue backs and apricot breasts bright against the tree trunks they scaled so nimbly. Best of all, I picked out a brambling fossicking on the ground, my first this winter. Later, among another, smaller flock, was a treecreeper, the other agile climber, always starting at the bottom of each tree and spiraling upwards like a tiny mouse.

More Nature Notes articles here .