February is an exciting month in the British wildlife calendar. More lovely spring flowers are appearing daily, invertebrates are finally starting to emerge and the amphibian breeding season gets underway. The soft churring of male frogs from the meadow ponds is now one of my favourite sounds.

But frog numbers are really down in the meadows this year. It was certainly a very dry spring last year, which was not good news for tadpole survival, but common frogs live an average of 5-7 years in the wild and should be able to cope with the occasional unsuccessful year. Herons have not been an issue recently and there is no obvious sign of disease, so we don’t know what the problem is and it’s all very perplexing.

This time lapse photo taken by a trail camera in 2018 gives some indication of quite how many frogs used to gather in the wild pond:

Then, in 2019, there was a massacre when every single frog in the pond was picked off by a heron, but since then numbers had gradually been recovering. This year, however, only a handful of males have turned up and so far there are only two clumps of spawn, indicating that just two females have arrived.

Although I have been observing and worrying about frogs in the meadows for the last decade, I am relatively new to watching the toads in the Queen Mother’s pond at Walmer Castle. So I am unable to say if the forty-two toads that we saw there one night this week is an increase in numbers or a decline, but I do know, however, that I absolutely love to see them:

We visited the pond again in the daylight a couple of days later and found that strings of spawn were being laid:

Back in the meadows, invertebrates are now starting to appear. This is an oak gall wasp that was on the windscreen of the car:

The large and ponderous western conifer seed bug, Leptoglossus occidentalis, is native to North America but was introduced to Europe in 1999 and has since spread rapidly. We often see them here:

And the first butterfly was seen in the meadows on 24th February. This peacock will have spent the winter as an adult, probably tucked away in a tree:

The 2026 ringing season has got underway when John spent a morning this week in the wood. He ringed thirty-eight birds, most of which were blue tits and great tits. He did however, catch both a male and a female great spotted woodpecker:

There were some outstanding jobs resulting from our maintenance tour of the dormice boxes and large raptor bird boxes last week.

Dave has made a new floor for this barn owl box to replace the previous one that was rotting:

Eight of the dormice boxes needed replacing because of squirrel damage, like this one below:

I had ordered new boxes that have now arrived and gone up in the wood. The monthly dormouse monitoring tours will start in April

We also needed to locate and clean out the twenty-eight small bird boxes. It was a bit of a challenge to remember where they all were:

We found bird nests in nineteen of them. This bird box below had had a very busy year. There is a wedge of decaying blue tit nest at the very bottom of the box, and above that is a black layer of a tree bumblebee nest. Once the bees had departed by midsummer, a dormouse moved in and made its nest at the top

Back in June we had noticed the tree bumblebees in the box but they didn’t stay very long:

But it was this triple-holed bird box that delivered the biggest surprise:

There wasn’t a dormouse nest in the box, but we did however find an active dormouse:

If temperatures are mild, then dormice do sometimes wake up during the winter and will go back into hibernation again if it gets colder. This uses up precious energy reserves though and ideally they need to forage to top their levels up while they are awake. Luckily there are lots of hazel catkins around now to eat, so this little one should be alright.

On two gloriously warm and sunny February days this week we completed our winter’s coppicing work:

We feel quite pleased with what we have an achieved this year:

As if to underline the fact that winter is over and it is time to stop working in the wood before the birds start to breed, our new clearing was alive with lime-green brimstone butterflies. There were so many of them flying through, some stopping briefly to nectar up on the the few primroses that are already starting to flower:

Brimstone butterflies hibernate as adults in dense evergreen vegetation such as ivy and holly. Once they awaken, they particularly like to feed on primroses and pretty soon now the woodland floor will be awash with these.

After those two warm sunny days, I ran the moth trap in the meadows to see if they had made a difference to the number of moths around. They surely had because I caught seven different species including this oak beauty which I think might be one of the most attractive moths I’ve ever come across :

The oak beauty is apparently a common moth found primarily in mature oak woodland but I had never seen one before or even noticed it in the field guides. So it was an exciting surprise and what a wonderful launch of the 2026 mothing season.

We have managed an unprecedented number of coppicing sessions in the wood this winter and, most unusually, are pleased with what we have achieved.

Coppicing looks drastic but is vital for woodland health. It creates a mosaic of diverse habitats, from open sunny glades in the first few years after cutting, to dense scrub as the new growth matures. This is good for biodiversity, as well as prolonging the life of the hazel and, by keeping the tree in a high growth rate, is really effective at capturing carbon. Definitely a win-win, but there’s no doubt that it’s jolly hard work for our ageing bodies, even with the assistance of the battery chain saw.

We have been creating dead hedges with the cut hazel. These provide shelter and protected corridors within the wood:

Log piles, made with the beefier bits of wood, will soon start to decay and be ideal for beetle larvae:

One member of the coppicing team just has a supervisory role from the back of the car:

There is not long to go now before work must finish on 1st March for the beginning of the bird breeding season. In some ways this will be a relief because it’s an excuse to stop coppicing, but we hope to have achieved a bit more by then if the weather allows.

We have also done a tour around the wood to clean and maintain the dormouse boxes and raptor boxes before the start of spring.

All of the raptor boxes had nests in them and I presume that these would mostly have been squirrels, although intriguingly there was much variation in the look of the nests. We must pay more attention to what’s going on in these large bird boxes this year:

Before the beginning of March we will also need to try to locate and then clean out all of the many smaller bird boxes that are dotted around the wood – there is still a lot to do and time is fast running out.

And where is this squirrel taking those leaves? I do hope it is not to one of the newly cleaned out raptor boxes:

There is work to be done in the meadows as well as we start the annual war against the Alexanders. These thuggish plants grow far too strongly in this coastal location and, given half a chance, would take over and swamp all other vegetation. For many springs now I have spent hours digging them up and ensuring that no seed is set, but I’m still not confident that it is a battle that we are winning:

This is what can happen if you let your guard down:

Whilst I was out Alexandering, I found a vole nest that had presumably been built within a large grass tussock. A fox has now located it and dug it out:

We were in Devon last week and the frog breeding season was in full swing. Every year this starts in the milder west of the country and moves slowly eastwards, as demonstrated by the latest spawn survey that the Freshwater and Habitats Trust published on 17th February:

Although we have seen some male frogs starting to hang out in our ponds here in the meadows, the party has not yet properly got underway and there is no spawn. It won’t be long now though.

We often come across things that have been picked up from the seashore by birds, who then drop them down onto the meadows. Dave has recently found a crab shell and part of a lobster claw:

We are building up a bit of a collection from the meadows:

Mermaid’s purses, the leathery egg cases of sharks, skates and rays, are one of these marine treasures that we discover most frequently in the meadows. These pouches are usually anchored to the sea floor, protecting the egg and then subsequently the developing embryo for up to a year. However, they can get washed up onto beaches particularly after a storm, and are then taken by the birds.

The trail cameras caught a crow with a mermaid’s purse:

It pecked right into the centre of the pouch to get at the egg or embryo:

Recent rough weather must have dislodged many of these eggs sacs from the seabed because they have been turning up in the meadows, all broken open by corvids to get at the protein within:

The Shark Trust website has information on how to ID and report the mermaid’s purses that you might find on the seashore:

I rehydrated the three different types of mermaids purse in our collection of seashore items found in the meadows:

I’m pleased that I’ve finally put some effort into finding out a bit more about these mermaids purses and will now appreciate them so much more when I come across them.

One night recently was forecast to be relatively mild and calm, so I ran the moth trap to see if I could catch any winter-flying moths. The next morning the trap was disappointingly empty, but I did find a pale brindled beauty that had been drawn in by the light and roosted up on the wall behind:

The trail cameras are mostly fogged up with condensation at the moment after all the rain but I do have a few images to show this time. Here is a ringed magpie who has unfortunately found a hibernating slow worm:

Here is the ringed bird again, this time with a mouse:

And a photo taken whilst we were away shows that these birds are already starting to build this year’s nest:

I have also been seeing blackbirds with sloes on this gate. The sloes are usually left on the blackthorn until later in the winter, since freezing converts their starches to sugars making them more palatable:

The ringed kestrel, the doyenne of the meadows, has also been around along with her mate:

It is messy work digging up worms from the wet winter soil:

If there are going to be badger cubs this year, then they will have been born by now and are tucked away underground. They won’t be allowed up above ground until April, although some years we get lucky and see them being carried around between the various tunnels before then:

There is still so much darkness available in February that it is unusual to see a badger above ground in the daylight:

I never tire of watching the badgers going about their daily business. A bit of mutual grooming here:

And some scent marking to reinforce family bonds:

We have been tasked with getting some reasonable photographs of the birdlife at Walmer Castle that can be laminated and shown on the wildlife walks if needed. We visited the castle this week but only managed a photo of jays and a blackbird:

We shall keep on trying.

A show of cyclamen under a tree in the castle grounds is a particularly cheering sight:

We are now looking forward to the rain stopping, so that we can get out and fully appreciate the spring as it starts to arrive.

Dartmoor is the largest and wildest open moorland in Southern England, famous for its rugged landscape of granite tors. It is a very special place and one to which we keep returning, each time getting to know it and love it a little bit more. We had never been on the moor in the depths of February before, though, as we were last week.

We were staying for a week at Sanders, a Devonshire longhouse that was built around 1500 and has been saved by the Landmark Trust who bought it in 1976. The Trust buys imperilled, historically-interesting buildings and sympathetically restores them to retain as many of their significant features as possible, whilst also converting them into holiday accommodation. The rental income then goes towards funding the ongoing maintenance of the two hundred buildings that are now under their care.

Sanders îs part of the ancient hamlet of Lettaford, situated in a sheltered hollow on the north east side of the moor and still only consisting of three farmhouses and their attendant buildings grouped around a green. There is also a converted chapel, which is a Landmark as well and in which we stayed a couple of years ago.

We were amused to see that the weather forecast was predicting rain for every hour of every day for the week of our stay. This unfortunately did prove to be mostly accurate, particularly in the first half of the week. In fact Dartmoor has been experiencing exceptionally high rainfall recently with an almost unbelievable 4.76 metres having fallen at White Barrow in 2026 so far. But there were some parts of our week that were dry and we were anyway well equipped for adverse weather – we ended up having a wonderful time exploring the wild and deserted moor in wintertime.

All the mosses and lichens of Dartmoor look at their very best in wet conditions and I only wish that we knew a bit more about them:

Fungus thrives in the mild, wet climate as well:

One day we did a circular walk starting from the Meldon reservoir in the northwest of the moor. After all that rain., the water was dramatically overtopping the dam:

As we climbed into the hills beyond the reservoir, it was not actually raining but there was a strong, cold wind blowing. We came upon a group of really lovely Dartmoor ponies, backed into a gorse bush for shelter. They all looked very similar with their beautiful blonde manes, tubby torsos and short legs and I presume that they were a family group:

As we approached the summit of Black Tor, we were excited to find some clumps of frogspawn:

But this was just the start. As we continued to climb, there were many hundreds of balls of spawn all over the wet flanks of the tor and we stopped remarking on them after a while.

There must be a huge population of frogs living on this exposed, high altitude hillside.

There was a satisfying amount of horizontally-weathered granite at the top of Black Tor:

It was at the summit of Black tor that we got the first view of our main objective of the day – Black-a-Tor copse, tucked away below the tor and beside the West Okement river:

There are three fragments of high-altitude, ancient oak woodland remaining on Dartmoor. Wistman’s Wood near Two Bridges is the best known and most accessible and I have visited it several times in the past, including going on a field trip there in 1979, back when I was a botany student at Exeter University. But I had never before been to either of the other two woods: Black-a-Tor Copse and Piles Copse.

Black-a-Tor Copse is the largest of the three fragments at 29 acres, and sits 380 metres above sea level. The pedunculate oaks have grown through large granite boulders to create a woodland which is nationally important for rare lichens and mosses. The horsehair lichen, Bryoria smithii, only grows in Britain here and at Wistman’s Wood.

We didn’t see any horsehair lichen or any of the other rare lichens, but then we didn’t really know what we were looking for. There was a lot of beard lichen though:

The wood reaches down to the river:

You are requested to keep to the path that runs through the wood to keep damage of this fragile ecosystem to a minimum:

Natural England’s website also says that twenty species of breeding bird have been recorded at the wood. We would like to return to Black-a-Tor copse when the trees are in leaf, the birds are nesting and we know a bit more about the lichens that we might expect to see there.

On another day we walked in the Teign valley which is one of the few remaining places where our British native daffodil still grows wild. In two or three weeks there will be a wonderful display along the banks of the river, but we were a bit too early this time. We did manage to find one or two that were just coming out though:

On a visit in March 2020, the valley was filled with flowering native daffodils:

We did a circular walk starting at a pub in the middle of nowhere, the Fingle Bridge Inn:

Even though it has rained so much on Dartmoor this January, the river levels this winter have apparently only reached the lower terrace of the pub. Last winter some tables were washed away on the upper terrace from behind the fence.

Fingle Bridge is a 17th century granite packhorse bridge that crosses the Teign at the pub:

There is a photo on the wall of the pub that shows the river in a much less forgiving mood:

Looking down into the Teign valley from the grounds of Castle Drogo:

There was an opportunity to photograph some more Dartmoor ponies on this walk, although these ones had more sensible hairstyles:

We went off the moor one day to the village of Buckland Monachorum just to the west. The Garden House has a wonderful garden that we had visited before, but now in February it was holding its annual snowdrop festival.

Nearly 400 snowdrop varieties grow in the garden and I now have two new favourites: Treasure Island and Fieldgate Primrose Legacy

How wonderful to have so many snowdrops that you can afford to pick them and put them in a vase:

Lionel and Katharine Fortescue bought the house and ten acres of grounds in the summer of 1945 and spent the next forty years transforming it into an absolutely glorious garden. They set up a trust which has continued to care for the garden after their deaths in the 1980s

We went to this garden in June about ten years ago and were amazed at the beauty of the flower meadow there. But even in February the garden was well worth a visit:

We might have been off the moor but the lichens were flourishing here as well:

And the frogs were churring away and laying spawn in one of the many ponds in the garden:

There was a yellow warning for rain on the Monday of our week on Dartmoor and we decided to walk to find an old clapper bridge near Two Bridges before the weather got too bad:

There are still around two hundred clapper bridges on Dartmoor. These ancient, stone-slab structures were built to allow packhorses, farmers and miners to cross Dartmoor’s rivers and streams. Over the course the week we also saw the 13th century clapper bridge over the East Dart at Postbridge…

… and another clapper bridge over the East Dart just as it joins the West Dart at Dartsmeet:

Having successfully found the Two Bridges clapper bridge, the rain still wasn’t too heavy so we went to St Raphael’s Chapel at Huccaby which is famous locally for its snowdrop display in February:

We then went to one of our favourite pubs for lunch – the Warren House Inn, which stands isolated and remote in the middle of the moor. It has no mains services of any sort and was built in 1845 to service the local tin mining industry which has now all gone.

After lunch it was raining very hard but we popped into Chagford on the way back and were considerably cheered to see the crocus display in the church graveyard there:

We were actually in the West Country for a very particular reason. Our daughter now lives in Perranporth in Cornwall with her family and she has just had a baby daughter whom we were very keen to meet. We travelled off the moor to Cornwall at the beginning of the week and then again at the end to make the acquaintance of our new granddaughter to whom I dedicate this post:

Welcome to the World, baby Isla!