Birdsong

A symphony of birdsong has been following me through woodland, heath, allotments and gardens over the past two weeks. Is it my imagination or are the birds calling louder and more determinedly this spring, after a long hard winter? I'm certainly recognising more of their calls after persevering with CDs of British birdsong - picking out the laughter of the green woodpecker, the lyrical song of the blackbird and the repetitive plea of the great tit.

Heathland was never my favourite habitat but I'm being forced to revise my feelings about it as I work on a low wetland heath into the spring. The site is alive with tiny lizards waking up from hibernation. I almost stumbled over a tiny woodmouse peeping out of its hole in a heap of dead bracken and we eyeballed each other for a second before it scuttled away.

As I raked up dead bracken last week I felt as if I were sitting in the middle of an avian orchestra, with green woodpeckers playing the melody, greater spotted woodpeckers drumming the percussion, and a curlew trilling its solo performance from the sky.

I've just started reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - long overdue in my natural history education - and I guess I have her (and her many followers) to thank for saving birds and so many other creatures from the deadly potion of DDT.

Much to my surprise and joy, I have just landed my first part-time job in countryside management and will be helping to look after an ancient common and newer country park near my home. Water voles are thought to be in residence on one of the sites - how I'd love to see one.

Houses for dormouses

We spent yesterday morning putting up dormouse boxes in hazel coppice on a corner of wet heathland. Some 15 to 20 years ago a dormouse was found nesting in a bat box there, and since the habitat is good for dormice, we're hoping to find evidence that they are still around.

The hazel coppice stools were wearing their early spring jewellery - dripping with yellow catkins and sprouting tiny dark red flowers along their stems. Undoubtedly, the first herald of spring. For the first time this month, birds were singing constantly in the wood and we heard a buzzard call as it flew overhead.

We spotted bubbles of dark brown jelly fungus growing on a tree and I took a small piece home to identify with the help of my Roger Phillips fungi bible. After doing a spore print overnight and examining it closely again in daylight, I settled on Witches' Butter. What a wonderful name for a fungus covered in tiny warts. Not edible! We also picked up a freshwater mussel shell, possibly dropped by a mink, and I'm hoping to work out the species with a bit of online research.

Woodland is indisputably my favourite habitat - so rich in biodiversity. I hope some dormice find the nest boxes. I wonder what they make of them - a handy wooden box, with an entry hole pointed away from the prevailing winds, tucked into a favourite food tree, and connected to the canopy by trailing honeysuckle.

naming things

I love learning old English words for things in nature.

'Beam' is the saxon word for tree, as in 'hornbeam', 'whitebeam', also used to describe supporting timbers in buildings.

The best names are those which describe a use or characteristic - such as 'razor strop' for the bracket fungus which grows on birch trees. People once used it, when hard and dry, to sharpen knives and other cutting blades.

The 'penny bun' fungus looks exactly like it's name, but the description does capture the gourmet properties of this highly sought mushroom. And 'King Alfred's cakes' which grow on dead wood are like burnt lumps of charcoal. They make great firelighters too when they're dry.

Let me know your favourites...

small furry animals

Sometimes conservation work seems to involve more disruption and disturbance than anything else: felling trees, clearing and burning scrub...

The other day we moved a pile of new logs up on the North Downs to find a tiny shrew and four field voles living underneath. They scattered in all directions, frantically searching for cover - mainly in the holes just dug for wooden bollards. Eventually we gently persuaded them to disperse a little further afield. Thankfully there were no young under the log pile. At lunch time we spotted a kestrel hovering low over the scrub - hunting homeless voles, no doubt. It moved on after ten minutes without finding prey. Guilty feelings lingered all day.

The cedar logs were cut from a nearby plantation to make bollards, the aim being to stop 4x4 drivers out on a jolly from tearing up the grassland where wildflowers and wild mammals thrive. Inadvertently we had created a temporary habitat pile and welcome home for small mammals battling wintry conditions. Then we evicted them without warning, probably while they were sleeping. The site offers lots of alternative housing, though none quite as cosy, safe from predators or convenient. I loved watching them, but wish we hadn't disturbed them.

On the same slope, a family of weasels has been spotted further along the path. I've never seen one in the wild and went searching with high hopes. I didn't see them, but they probably saw or heard me. Perhaps I'll be lucky next time.

feeding the birds

I finally decided it's time to feed the birds, despite the four cats (only one of which has shown any hunting prowess in the past year and that was with mice). The snow's been lying for four days, the ground is frozen and flakes are still fluttering down intermittently.

Using bamboo canes, I managed to rig up a wigwam in the middle of the garden and wedge a plastic tray of seeds and raisins in the top. Any feeding birds should be safe from the cats while they perch on it at least. The RSPB is now predicting a major impact on bird populations and urging people to put out food in their gardens so I hope I've done the right thing.

BBC news online has a few stories about wildlife struggling to cope with the long freeze. Apparently many aquatic animals and birds congregate around power station outlets in rivers to keep warm - including hundreds of manatees in Florida. Fish-eating birds such as bitterns and kingfishers are really struggling as most open water is covered by thick ice. We may see kingfishers turning up in warmer urban areas.

I'm not generally a big fan of zoos, but I was amused to read that meerkats are cuddling up with anteaters in their enclosure at London Zoo and have discovered that they can get closer to the heaters by sleeping on top of them.

Yesterday we came across a homeless man begging in a doorway on the high street. He'd been unable to find a bed in a hostel for the past few nights and was sleeping in a shed on an allotment, burning a calor gas cylinder to keep from freezing - now his gas had run out. After buying him a cup of tea and some biscuits, I decided to call at a church on the way home, thinking someone might be able to help him. While I was talking to the minister, he asked me if the guy standing behind me in the doorway was the rough sleeper in question - my partner! Lol! After the embarrassment died down, the minister promised to go and talk to the real homeless guy and thought he could find him somewhere for a night or two, although our town (not so far from London) has no real provision for rough sleepers.

Snow and more snow. It's a hard and hungry time to be wild unless you're hibernating. If I didn't have four cats I'd be scattering food in the garden for birds and mice. In the meantime, since it's too bleak to go out and watch the wildlife, I'll share a poem I wrote before xmas while recovering from a cold. Hope it strikes a chord...

Wildlife spectaculars

Not the bloody wildebeest migration
Again!
We know the crocodiles lie in wait:
We've seen the bone crushing
Splash of jaws.

Or is it the salmon-hungry
Grizzly bears
Wading through Alaskan torrents?
Butter-fingered paws mauling, gory fish
Flailing with futile energy.

Lemurs I love:
Sinuous sifaka dancing
Sideways;
Miniscule mouse lemurs,
Impossible primates:
Tiny hands, big, searching eyes.

But it's always the ring-tails,
Strutting their stripey charisma.
You'd think Madagascar
Had a plague of them.

Most of all I mind
The meerkats.
I've watched them leave their burrows at sunrise
To bask in the Kalahari desert.
Please don't give them names
Like Zaphod
And cast them in a furry soap opera.

Those clever capuchins in Brazil
Have got themselves a good agent.
Three times at least this year
They've been seen on TV,
Since their tool-using, nut-cracking antics
Were discovered.

Last week I watched a wood mouse
Watching us
From a bank of bronzy beech leaves.
Sleek, twitching, alert,
Apple-pip eyes, nimble hands and ears tracking our voices.
We had disturbed it and it looked at us,
Perplexed.

Nature Sleeps

I'd love to be in Madagascar now, instead of frosty southern England where nature seems to be fast asleep, or hibernating with the bats until spring comes...But maybe the winter sleep is what makes the sunny months so precious: the brief flight of bumblebees, painted ladies, dragonflies hovering over the water. I'll try to use this pause to learn the calls of British birds, so I can pick them out in the woods when breeding season arrives.