February 2021- Wildlife Diary

February 2021 continued to be mostly mild, and I continued to not go far afield in lockdown. The flock of siskins on my patch must have been at least 30 birds, who would silently arrive like drifting leaves in the wind to feed on the alder cones, then move on as quickly as they had come. One weekend morning I was delighted to find a perfect set of badger footprints in the mud by the entrance to my patch, proving to me for the first time. Mid-month I had my final proper sighting of Splash (same disclaimer as before- I don't actually know it's the same otter, but I like to think it is!)- as I approached a shallower area of the river I saw a long shape partly submerged in the water, still as a floating log. Then when I went closer it suddenly flipped its tail and dived into the water, revealing itself to be my otter, who by this point was apparently getting better at hiding from humans. I think it swam around a bit under the water, I could see bubbles rising from its fur, but it remained hidden from then on and that was the last time I've properly seen an otter to date. It's a good thing really, much as I would love to see an otter again it's really best if they remain nocternal for their own safety!

 

From my notes I think the waters were pretty high throughout the month, it may have been a wetter winter than 2021-22, though I suppose there's time for that yet this winter. The lovely, smart goosander pair who visited my stretch of river that winter were seen several times in February and were always a joy to see, and I'm sad that they have not returned this winter. (I may have gotten summer goosanders instead, but we'll get to that!)

Early breeding signs continued, with the song thrushes singing their hearts out (which is normal for them to do in late winter), and over at the crop fields the corn buntings were singing their jangling songs from their favourite perches on the telegraph wires. I feel so lucky to have them locally as they have declined so much across the country, but I think there is a very healthy population on Salisbury Plain that spreads to the surrounding area. A pair of herring gulls in smart breeding plumage took to hanging around on a particular roof on the industrial estate and could sometimes be seen seeing off other gull intruders, which made me hopeful for a breeding attempt. (As far as I know they didn't that year, but maybe one day.) Finally to my amusement the young grey heron (born 2020) was seen one day squatting in the adult heron's favourite fishing/hiding from youngsters spot! I'm sure the adult was very annoyed that its spot had been discovered, though by this point it was probably thinking of leaving for the breeding site, which is not on my patch or anywhere near it as far as I know. 

Winter is always a good time to catch birds that come out in dusk at the end of an afternoon walk. That said, the site's barn owls are certainly not a sure thing or even a super likely thing, you still have to be lucky. I have spent far more time standing around looking at an empty field than I have watching the owl hunting, let's put it that way! But I did get lucky once in February, when I noticed a pale shape in the trees in the gathering darkness. It was a barn owl preening its feathers, making sure it was in top condition for a night's hunting, and seemed in no hurry to get moving. I think since then I've only had glimpses of barn owls that got swallowed up in the dark. Here's hoping that I get lucky with the owls again soon.

In February 2021 I started a project that took over my life a bit for the rest of the year. I had a notebook with a lovely design on the front and unlined pages, so decided to do something special with it and start a drawing project. The project was going to be sketching flowers, from life and in the field (well mostly but we'll get to that), using drawing pens and pencils. The in the field aspect meant no fussing about little details but just focusing on the important things- flower shape, leaf shape, flower structure. The idea was that in going through the book in order you would see the change of the seasons in the species I drew. I had some rules which despite being completely pointless seemed important to me, I'm sure a few readers can relate to that! The rules were: 1. No blossoming bushes (too big and annoying); 2. Drawing the same species twice is allowed if I wasn't happy with the first one; and 3. I'm allowed to ignore any flowers that seemed like they would either be really boring, or a pain to draw, or both (this was mostly white flowers with a tonne of complicated bits like hogweed and fennel). A few flowers were starting to come out at the end of February, so I started the project off that month with: groundsel (which helpfully grew right out of my doorstep!), daisy, lesser celandine, red dead nettle and common field speedwell.

I've put a few of these drawings online but also keep being held back by the usual things: bothered that probably they wouldn't get much attention on instagram (nothing I do does), and then the fact that I had so many that scanning and cropping them would take ages, even if I didn't edit them properly. Plus there's the fact that a lot of the individual pictures don't really look that good alone, and were really meant to be seen alongside all the rest when you flip through the book. I'll probably continue just keeping the finished book as an object, safe in my bookshelf (turns out the paper was not waterproof At All and the media I used in it are all water based, so an accidental splash could mess any of the drawings up...!), and show it to anyone who shows interest. And maybe one day I'll finally scan it, who knows, but for now I'm a very shy artist with little to no social media presence and not enough drive or skills to maintain one.

January 2021- Wildlife Diary

January feels like a time of new beginning for humans, but for wildlife it's a time of stasis and survival. In midwinter all the birds on my patch on the river Nadder in Salisbury are in place, with very little passage in or out for the next couple of months until spring is here. The goosanders are on the river, the siskins in the alder cones. The family of swans, 2 parents and 2 full size cygnets, were still being seen regularly grazing and swimming together.

The year began as lockdown was being brought in, first in tiers and then all over. Just before it descended completely I went out to Decoy Pond Wood in the New Forest, remembering that one amazing summer years ago when I saw hawfinches feeding in the leaf litter. But the heathland seemed quiet as the grave in the cold of winter, and the wood was quiet too. It was if the birds knew what was coming and were locking down too. I consoled myself by looking at the fungi growing on the old wood and the weird lichens, like the green and red 'devil's matchstick'. On many of the piles of manure from the New Forest ponies I was happy to see tiny flat, white mushrooms growing, the nail fungus, an uncommon species in the UK due to only growing on horse manure. There's not so much of that about these days but always plenty in the New Forest. Just after that trip full lockdown was confirmed, and that was the last entry in my further afield wildlife notebook for over 3 months.

 

Back home on the patch, my weather notes for January 2021 show a mostly mild winter with only the odd frosty day and a single dusting of snow. (This current winter seems to be shaping up the same way, and it's as scary as ever.)  Some of the birds already seemed amorous, with the dunnocks pursuing each other, great tits singing and stock doves cooing. This may now be the new way of things for winters in the south of England. Meanwhile a heron was still dealing with the products of 2020's breeding season, and was seen pursued by a couple of juveniles who flew after it, yelling their heads off for food despite being long old enough to fish for themselves. The adult heron had to resort to hiding in its 'fishing hole', a secret spot on the river with some tree cover, to hope not to be spotted by harrassing youngsters from above.

There was plenty of rain, and while it was nowhere near as bad as the winter before when the fields became lakes, the rivers rose to cover the paths regularly and the waters were churned and murky. During one of these times the adult heron took to pacing the fields instead, and one lunchtime I watched it stare intently into a bush for a while, then suddenly strike like a snake, grabbing a medium sized vole in its beak, which it proceeded to dunk a couple of times into the floodwaters. This didn't seem to be to drown the vole but instead perhaps to make it go down more easily, as it barely held it in the water for a second before tossing the unfortunate animal alive down its throat! Nature is as ever brutal.

The winter's resident kingfisher was seen having slightly less of a smooth time, as I saw it on one occasion whacking a very large (compared with its body size) fish on a branch, then eventually trying to swallow it. This didn't work and the bird was forced to bring the fish up again, but it continued hitting it determinedly as if killing the fish more would help it go down easier. I sadly don't know whether it swallowed it or had to give up in the end, as my lunch break was ending. And speaking of fish eaters....

In January 2021 I had wonderful views of an otter on 3 different occasions, as it seemed to have taken a liking to my particular stretch of river. More worryingly, it seemed keen on being out in the daytime, which isn't especially safe for an animal that still has a large amount of hatred and stigma against it from anglers. (I've had passers by on that river tell me unprompted about the terrible problem of too many otters, which was weird at the time as I'd never seen one there but now made a little more sense.) Mostly it splashed in the river and caught little fish which it ate on the spot, nothing terribly useful to an angler, though a magpie was seen watching it intently as if hoping for leftovers! It was like a little sea serpent, somersaulting and twirling around in the deep water, its head like a little dog but its tail more like an eel. But the third time I saw it, I accidentally startled it while entering the site, where it was sitting under a tree no more than 10 metres from me. I got such a good view that I could see a fair sized patch of paler fur under its chin, as you can see in my drawing. Because of this (and its splashy behaviour) I decided to name the otter Splash. This was the only sighting where I had a good enough view to see the mark, so I don't actually know for sure that the sightings were all of the same animal. You get kind of a feel for this through an animal or bird's behaviour though (at least that's what I tell myself!).

 

Happy New Year for 2022! I'll hopefully be back soon to write about February 2021, while also taking down notes about January 2022 as it plays out, ready perhaps for another wildlife diary next year.

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