The Quiet Before Christmas

~ judyheiser

December has been galloping along but now we find ourselves in a short lull before we plunge headlong into Christmas. Things are mostly in place for the big day and there’s time to report on what has been going on in the meadows and the wood this December.

A visit to nearby Walmer Castle grounds to see their impressive Christmas lights
An opportunity to admire the bark of the many lovely trees there, such as this yew

Now that the dormice are definitely hibernating, it’s high time to get going on the winter clearing and coppicing work planned for the wood this winter – but things have been busy and we are yet to start.

The silver birch area of the wood always looks lovely in the winter
There was a cold snap at the beginning of December and snow lay on the ground for a while which is unusual for East Kent

But we have kicked off proceedings by doing a tour of the various bird boxes to clear out any old nest material:

There are two of these boxes up in the wood which are sold as tawny owl boxes but they do seem very small – certainly our tawnies have never been tempted. This year we had squirrels nesting in one and great tits in the other. With such a large entrance hole, I very much doubt that those great tit chicks got through to fledging
This is the roomier tawny box which did have nesting tawnies in it last year
This box was found to be completely empty and all ready for the owls to nest in again next year should they choose…
…and I’m pleased to say that they are indeed regularly visiting. Looks promising but it’s early days
I have only ever seen a kestrel in the wood once and this kestrel nest box feels very optimistic. It has been used by squirrels every year
The squirrel nest being ejected down into the photographer’s face
I’m a sucker for unusual nest boxes and this one with three holes is meant to allow a lot of light into the box, enabling the birds to build their nest right at the back where it is safer. Whilst not being completely convinced by this, it was irrelevant anyway this year since the box contained a lovely little dormouse nest
The dormouse nest with its tightly woven core of stripped honeysuckle bark that was in the three-holed box. I cleared this nest out since all dormice will be hibernating down at ground level now
New this year were two treecreeper nest boxes which we put two metres up on trees with rough bark as instructed
Both treecreeper boxes had similar-looking nests in them – maybe wrens? That’s my best guess although one of the boxes now had a pygmy shrew living in it that popped out as I opened the lid. I left that nest undisturbed
Although I didn’t get a photo of the pygmy shrew in the treecreeper box, we did find this one in a dormouse box back in October. They are tiny little things with a body length of about 4cm and a tail of 3cm

There seems to be a bottomless demand for small nest boxes in the wood – every box I looked in had a nest of some sort in it. We need to get some more up this winter.

Some other photos from the wood this December:

A beautiful fox caught in a beam of low winter sunlight this week. What a glorious tail
Unlike dormice, wood mice and yellow-necked mice don’t hibernate through the winter
A small group of over-wintering fieldfare are visiting the ponds at dusk every night
And squabbling redwing as well. There are also woodcock in the wood this winter because we are putting them up as we walk around, but I am yet to see one on the cameras
Thankfully pheasant numbers in the wood have been gradually declining now that they are no longer bring released for shooting. I grudgingly have to admit that they are impressive birds
A sparrowhawk showing how very brown he is
And this one also has white headlights on the back of his head

The hedgerows in the meadows were laden with a bumper crop of hawthorn berries this autumn and I wanted to see how much of a food larder still remains for the animals trying to survive out there.

Unusually some hawthorn berries are still available – the birds find these berries delicious and they are normally all gone by December
There are lots of ivy berries still. The cliff-line hedgerow contains so much mature ivy that the supply of these berries lasts all winter
I have never seen anything eating rose hips, although apparently blackbirds and winter thrushes do. Certainly these berries also hang around for a long time here
The berries of the UK’s native iris, Iris foetidissima, are eaten by birds once they have been bletted by the frosts, and so are another food source that bridges the hunger gap in late winter when everything else is gone. I also find caches of these berries hidden away under things and so presume they are valued by small rodents as well
The berries on the female yew in the garden are very popular and are fast disappearing. Whenever I go near the tree an angry blackbird erupts from it
Photo from November 2020
November 2020
We planted a selection of new fruit trees in November 2022 including these two crab apples. All the other orchard fruit has long gone but these two trees are still holding on to their tiny, sour apples
And it does look like the birds are prepared to give them a go

The widower fox continues to look very moth-eaten but I am hoping that he will soon get a fresh growth of fur. Heartbreakingly, he has started to come up towards the house at dusk to await the nightly peanuts in exactly the same spot as his mate used to sit:

He also likes to sit up on the hay pile and survey his kingdom
I am pleased to see that he is part of the fox community here. Actually he has probably fathered a lot of them

Corvids are a very prominent part of the winter wildlife in the meadows:

Crow with holm oak acorn
The resident pair of magpies were both ringed in the meadows this year

Along with the stock doves and the woodpigeon, these two feral pigeons have been arriving at the feeding cages for the last few weeks. It’s the first time that feral pigeons have discovered this food source and I don’t really mind, but hope that they don’t tell their friends:

I recently came across this photo from 2007. Back then I was a foster mother for a wildlife hospital in the Thames Valley, hand-feeding litters of rabbits and hedgehogs in my home until they were weaned and could be returned to the hospital and prepared for release back into the wild:

We so rarely see hedgehogs here in our East Kent meadows, and have never seen one in the wood, that it was a delightful surprise to see a photo of these babies again. I do remember that they had voracious appetites and I was very quickly able to wean them and successfully move them on to the next stage of their lives.

At this time of year, the low winter sun creates long shadows across the meadows even in the middle of the day:

Today is the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. From here we head, inch by inch, towards spring. Here’s quite a bit of winter to go yet, but it’s good to know that we are on our way..

All that now remains is for me to wish you a very Happy Christmas and I do hope you will continue with me into 2024 to see what the new wildlife year brings.

6 thoughts on “The Quiet Before Christmas”

  3. It’s great that all your boxes are in such demand, though it’s funny when there’s someone in one that you wouldn’t expect. Glad the Widower fox isn’t totally alone, he’s so sweet.
    Happy Christmas to you both and all the gorgeous wildlife too! X

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