Nature Notes

[ErrolTheDragon]

There's a gardening thread which may overlap with this one but I thought people might like to share nature sightings as the season changes. What we see if we can get out for a walk, plants coming into leaf and bloom, creatures in the garden, birds flying overhead - whatever.

Yesterday along the canal: busy wrens, 3 butterflies (tortoiseshell I think). Lots of Lords and Ladies arrow-shaped leaves. A little bank of primroses, lots of celandines and some wood anemones. Yellow iris leaves starting to shoot up in the edge of the canal.

Brilliant!

We've been seeing quite a lot of wildfowl and waders of various sorts on the rivers and estuaries and also had a couple of trips to the local WWT.

Are we all hunkered down inside?
We got out yesterday, the season has definitely turned now - the mountains in view were snow-clad.
Meanwhile at home I've now got two squirrels arriving for breakfast, contested by the plump wood pigeons.

This thread keeps falling of my watched list!

I had some interesting wildlife sightings over the last few weeks, but my favourite one happened yesterday. I was working from home, looked up from my computer and saw a flock of 15 curlew fly over my garden. I’m more used to seeing sparrows and blue tits here, so it all felt a bit surreal 😂

I lost this thread too. I don't have much to report, I'm peacemaking to bump this back onto threads I'm on

What a lovely thread! It's dark, cold and wet here today. Hoping it dries up a bit and then will get outside.

We are off to a Christmas tree farm tomorrow for a walk to select the tree, it's in a lovely rural spot so hopefully I'll spot some birds

Well I'm off for 10 days looking after my son who has covid so not much nature spotting. The birds in the garden have kept me entertained they actually watch my husband go out with the food need to get out and tidy the gardens up a bit for winter so might spot other nature

So didn't spot nature as such when tidying the back garden but did find what looked like very thin maggots 🤢 any ideas?

While I was tidying the sparrows and starlings sat up the tree waiting for me to move so they could get back to the feeder. It was nice to be outside for a couple of hours

I found some pretty purple snail shells on the beach today 🐌 The ground was covered with them.

The weekend turned out to be good for seeing raptors. I saw a sparrow hawk and a kestrel on Saturday and then on Sunday I caught the briefest glimpse of a peregrine. I’m not actually that much of a fan of birds of prey, but watching a peregrine going about its business is always impressive!

Yesterday in our local nature garden we saw a green woodpecker, a green spotted woodpecker and a red squirrel (not in the UK!).

I saw a heron glide across my garden and land in the stream that runs nearby. I always forget how large their wingspan is

My feeders are heaving with finches today. There’s all the usual customers (goldfinches, chaffinches and a lone female greenfinch), but today they were joined by a small flock of siskins and three bullfinches!

Siskins are my favourite garden bird, so I’m so happy to see them return to the feeders. I love how bright they are and that, unlike some other finches , they never seem to squabble. Just a lovely, bright, gentle natured bird ☺️

Merry Christmas all. We went for a walk on the Taw/Torridge Estuary on Christmas Eve at low tide. There were birds everywhere, lots of gulls, Brent geese, oystercatcher and sandpipers all out foraging.

Today's walk has been around our local RHS garden. It's been so mild down here in the south west that snowdrops, daffodils and crocuses are already flowering

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry I dropped out of sight for a while.
I was thinking of starting a new thread today, so it's a sort of 2022 nature diary.

2022 thread here!

Nature Notes: the 2022 edition http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/thegreatt_outdoors/4441745-nature-notes-the-2022-edition