Great Crested Newt
September 08 2021: Mail from Ian Bushell to the Water Team at water@wiltshirewildlife.org
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Cold snap!
We seem to be in for a cold snap. Time to winterproof your bird table with fatballs, high protein treats and a regular supply of ice-free water. Let’s look after our wildlife!
Shrieking in the woods
There are all sorts of things that shriek in our dark winter woods: the Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) is just one of them.
Jay (Garrulus glandarius) audio by Bodo Sonnenburg ( CC -BY-SA) xeno-canto.org
King Alfred’s cakes
Daldinia concentrica: known as King Alfred’s cakes or coal fungus grows on the park’s trees, in this case on a dead ash tree.
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Wolf Moon
The first full moon of the year is called the Wolf Moon, apparently after the howling of hungry wolves in midwinter. The name seems to be common to both old European and North American cultures, perhaps an indication of how shared fears of the cold and the dark have shaped otherwise disparate human societies.
This year’s Wolf Moon will be tonight at just past a quarter to midnight and, if the misty weather we have been promised by the Met Office permits, should be spectacular as the temperature falls toward zero.
Nature Prescriptions
by David Feather
In a recent piece, I suggested that a walk in the park might be better than pills for dealing with depression.
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Have the blackbirds started singing yet?
Young males will begin to sing this early in order to establish and defend the territory they hope hold for the rest of their lives. Older and more experienced birds will wait until February or March.
Redwing
Every year redwings are among the park’s winter visitors; we are their winter migration’s destination.
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While we’re on the subject of foxes…
Continue readingThrow the pills away
by David Feather
Those of us who use the Park appreciate the benefits it has for our mental health. More and more evidence is coming to light to emphasise how important these places are for the health of the community. They are miles better than dispensing pills.
Continue reading “Throw the pills away”Fox
Did you hear the foxes last night? January is the middle of their mating season when they are a lot noisier than at other times of year.
Continue reading “Fox”The last of 2021
by Ian Bushell
We met on Wednesday morning, the 29th of December, in the car park but those third helpings of turkey and plum duff had depleted our numbers sadly. No Joan or Patrick, Simon, David, or Trish.
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Winter badgers
Badgers don’t hibernate, even in January, but they sleep a lot. The dominant female is pregnant, awaiting the birth of two or three cubs in February, and the rest of the clan are living off their fat reserves. They will leave the sett to visit the latrines but in particularly bad weather will dig latrines in distant and otherwise unused tunnels inside the sett.
Like the rest of us, they are waiting for the spring.
Now that the festivities are well and truly over, here are a few indigestion remedies you might find in the park.
Continue readingInspiration
by David Feather
We, the Friends of Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve think we are doing well with our tree planting etc, but just read this article about an environmentalist in India. It is inspiring.
Continue reading “Inspiration”On the twelfth day of Christmas
The park’s twelve drummers drumming are great spotted woodpeckers. They begin drumming at the end of winter as part of a courtship ritual in which the male marks out his territory and advertises his presence. He drums his beak against hollow wood 10 to 20 times in just 2 seconds, and the females replies briefly as she enters his territory.
Here is a video:
Video recorded in March 2019 by George Ewart
On the eleventh day…
…eleven pipers piping
Honey bees make a sound that apiarists call piping.
Continue reading “On the eleventh day…”Ten lords a-leaping
On this, the tenth day of Christmas, here are the extraordinary flowers of lords-and-ladies, the wild arum (Arum maculatum), photographed in the reserve in April.
Pictures taken in the park by Suzanne Humphries
On the ninth day
We can’t find nine ladies dancing. Come spring, we will have daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze, as per Wordsworth, but feel that the link is tenuous. We will also have ladies’ smocks flowering in the meadows but we used them up yesterday by calling them eight milkmaids.
Continue reading “On the ninth day”Eight maids a-milking
Milkmaids is one of the many common names of Cardamine pratensis, a spring-flowering plant that loves our damp meadows and stream edges. In Wiltshire we know it more often as lady’s smock or, because it flowers when the cuckoo returns to Britain, as cuckoo flower.
Continue reading “Eight maids a-milking”Seven swans a-swimming.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven swans a-swimming.
Mute swans (Cygnus olor) come to the park to graze, not to swim or raise chicks. They break their long journey to some faraway lake or river, to rest and eat in the park’s green fields. We are a swan service station.
Six geese a-laying…
…or not.
There are no geese anywhere on our species lists but we can offer you six species of corvid instead.
[1] Crow [2] Jay [3] Rook [4] Jackdaw [5] Magpie [6] Raven
Goldfinches of course.
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me five goldfinches. . .
Pictures taken in the reserve by DKG.
Four calling birds
Not calling birds, according to the experts, but colly birds. Colly is an old word for soot or coal dust and a colly bird is a blackbird. We have tuneful blackbirds by the dozen in the park.
Audio by Beatrix Saadi-Varchmin (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) xeno-canto.org
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 