- Woodland Birds
It has been nearly five years now since we took over at the wood and every year more of its secrets are revealed to us. It was only when no rain fell in February that we noticed the large amount of birds muck that was accumulating on the bramble understorey in the silver birch area. We staged a stakeout and witnessed hundreds of crows coming in to roost at dusk:
In January we dug a new pond in the marjoram glade:
The new pond was very quickly adopted by the winter birdlife…
…including this heron, a new species for the wood:
As well as redwing and fieldfare, the winter wood also shelters a large number of woodcock, escaping the harsh conditions in Finland and Russia:
Our son, who is an engineer, designed and built us a structure to get a camera close enough to the tawny owl box to have its sensors triggered:
The new camera immediately started to get great shots of the owls who were frequently using the box in the early part of the year:
Although we did also see a stock dove checking out the box, another new species for the wood. These birds usually nest in cavities in rotten trees but will use a nest box if they get the chance:
Squirrels were also frequently seen around the box:
But the owls had been photographed at the box so often that John and John, the bird ringers, came to open up the box in early May to see if there were any owlets inside that could be ringed:
With its underdeveloped tail feathers, I believe that this is a tawny owl chick that successfully fledged this year somewhere in the wood
The buzzard is another bird of prey that lives in the wood:
One sunny afternoon in April, a trail camera took a photo of this young rabbit:
Twenty seconds later a second photo was taken as a buzzard flew down onto it:
Other bird photos from the wood this year:
2. Plants and Invertebrates
We paid more attention to the mechanics of tree and plant flowering in the wood this year. In February, the hazel trees are in flower and it is good that we now thoroughly understand hazel nut production because it’s important for dormice. Every hazel tree has both male and female flowers – the catkins are male and release pollen to be wafted around amongst the trees before they get their leaves. The female flowers are the little red buds, usually found at the top of the catkins, and these can only be fertilised by pollen from other hazel trees. Once pollinated, the female flower goes on to develop into a cluster of hazel nuts.
There are a large number of primroses that come into flower in April:
We were fascinated to discover that some primrose plants have pin-eyed flowers and some have thrumb-eyed ones and this is a device to encourage cross pollination.
In April, we found a new and extensive area of the Town Hall Clock plant, Adoxa moschatellina, which was very pleasing. This plant spreads most successfully by putting out long underground stolons and, although we had never noticed it growing here before, it is quite close to the one patch that we had previously known about.
And in May the wood comes alive with bugle which is tremendously popular with pollinators, such as this hairy-footed flower bee:
I was in this bugle clearing when I noticed some bees that I didn’t recognise, flying low and flitting around, never stopping long enough to have their picture taken. Then I realised that some of them were using small twigs as broom sticks. They were Osmia bicolour – the two-coloured mining bee. The female makes her nest in empty snail shells and then disguises the shell with the twigs that she flies in with, all then bound together with her saliva. To sit and watch them on that May morning was completely magical, although the best photograph of the stick-carrying I got is on the right below – the bee was flying with the stick that she has now landed on top of before she scurried down into the undergrowth with it:
In July the marjoram glade comes into its own, drawing in many different woodland butterflies:
This year peacocks were very prominent:
And there were loads of mint moths, perfectly matched to the colour of the marjoram:
As the summer progressed, the new pond developed blanket weed unfortunately, but it did host a population of pond skaters and here is an adult and some babies feeding on a cricket that has drowned:
I also found this glow worm larva struggling in the water but was able to rescue it before it was too late:
In August I saw this black clouded longhorn beetle…
And the thistles that grow to a height of more than two metres in the clearings had lots of these cuckoo bees visiting them:
As autumn arrived, we showed Dan Tuson, the East Kent farm conservation advisor for Natural England, around the wood. He suggested that we sow our woodland clearings with native pollinator-friendly plants to support the work that he is doing in the surrounding fields.
We have sown some seed in several different clearings and are now looking forward to seeing if this makes a difference next year.
3. Mammals of the Wood
Back in 2022 we managed to get a trail camera on a fox den which resulted in some lovely photos of the vixen and her cubs. But that hole was not used by foxes again this year unfortunately, and neither were any of the other burrows I speculatively trained a camera on:
But, even though I didn’t manage to find any of the dens, there were several families of fox cubs born in the wood this year:
We had a very successful year of dormouse monitoring:
However, as in the previous year, the dormice seemed to prefer the heavy ‘woodcrete’ bird boxes to the wooden dormouse boxes:
A trail camera also caught a bat at a bird box:
We found a pygmy shrew living in an old dormouse nest in October:
We didn’t see a polecat in the wood this year but a weasel visited one of the ponds in September:
As I have been pulling these photos together, now in the dead of winter, it has been so bolstering to remember how wonderful the wood is in the spring and summer. I can’t wait to do it all again in 2024 and see what other woodland secrets there are to be revealed.
