I think that there’s a lot to like about January. The days are already noticeably getting longer and the brand new year, full of promise, is just beginning. Snowdrops are such elegant harbingers of spring and are now poking their heads up through the soil, guaranteed to lift one’s spirits on a dull winter’s day.

It is also the month when we pay our first visit of the year to Elmley Nature Reserve on the Isle of Sheppey. We were there with our son Jonty and daughter-in-law Ellie this week, staying for the first time in the two new cabins overlooking the marsh:

We have been regularly visiting this 3,300 acre marshland which was once farmed but is now a nature reserve of international importance. Large flocks of waders and wildfowl spend the winter there and the short-eared owls and marsh harrier roost are big attractions at this time of year.

Unfortunately a strong and bitter northerly wind got up soon after we arrived, but at least it was dry.

There is a table of interesting nature finds in the cow byre. Some teeny weeny nests here..

…and some grass snake skins:

There are about seven pairs of barn owls that are resident at Elmley and between them in 2024 they raised 40 owlets. However, 2025 was presumably a bad vole year and not a single barn owl chick successfully fledged on the reserve. Towards dusk we went on a guided nature tour where we saw some of Elmley’s barn owls:

A veritable herd of coots was grazing the grasses:

Several thousand lapwing are overwintering on the reserve and they have already started displaying. But courtship was definitely not on the mind of this lapwing below, as it stoically stood with its back to the wind:

A sweet little house sparrow:

It was an exceptional berry year in 2025 and the hawthorn trees on the reserve were still red with uneaten haws even now in the middle of January:

In the previous two winters, twenty to thirty short-eared owls have roosted on the ground in a scrubby area by the car park. Some of these were owls that had fledged in the Arctic where there is no darkness at all in the summer and the birds are therefore accustomed to being out in the daylight. They were delighting visitors by appearing during the afternoon.

This year, however, very few short-eared owls have arrived into the UK to spend the winter and it is thought that there are only a maximum of seven owls in the field by the car park. As well as that, they don’t seem to be Arctic-fledged birds and are generally not appearing until it is dark.

As we finished our dusk tour, it was very nearly dark and we did see two short-eared owls fly out over our heads and away.

Over the course of the day we had actually built up a reasonable tally of bird species, but the views of them weren’t terribly good in poor light and strong winds.

The next morning the weather had improved significantly and we even managed an al fresco breakfast whilst watching three marsh harriers scour the marshes.

Dave and I had to leave soon after breakfast but Jonty and Ellie stayed on and walked down to the hides. When they returned to the car park, the nature guide showed them a short-eared owl that was sitting on a grass tussock by the car park and a barn owl that was flying over, so they were very pleased with that.

Elmley doesn’t really have enough trees for tawny owls. The meadows don’t have many trees either but there has been a lot of tawny activity here this week, with owls on the perches most nights:

There has also been a most unwelcome visitor:

One afternoon we were very surprised to see an adult slow worm lying out in the open on the path:

Cold blooded slow worms need to hibernate over the winter because there is not enough heat to warm their blood. This animal was alive but extremely torpid and we suppose it had been plucked out from its hibernation by a corvid. It had also just lost the end of its tail which is probably how it escaped its predator’s clutches.

Our daughter Lizzie and her partner Sheff have just returned from two weeks in Japan.

This is a forest of mōsō bamboo, Phyllostachys edulis, in Arashiyama. This giant timber bamboo is native to China and Taiwan but is now widely found in Japan. It can reach heights of up to 28m and grows as much as 119 cm in twenty-four hours. Bamboo torture and execution was reportedly used in Japan in the Second World War where a bamboo shoot from a fast-growing species such as this grows through the body of a victim who was tied over it. Such claims lack reliable evidence however.

This information board was showing what fish were to be found in a lake that they visited:

I don’t know what any of these species are but there do seem to be rather a lot of them.

And finally for this brief foray into Japanese nature-related things, Lizzie became obsessed with Hokkaido milk whilst she was there. The Hokkaido climate and lush pastures are ideal for dairy farming and the area produces over 60% of the country’s milk, which is rich and creamy and with a slightly higher fat content than is normal:

She enjoyed it so much and is sad to discover that this milk is not available in the UK.

They seem to have had a marvellous time in Japan but now they are home and they too can start spotting things to be positive about in a British January.