Nature Notes

February has proven to be an extremely wet and windy month with the Swale breaking its banks on three occasions. The large areas of flood land have attracted blackheaded and herring gulls, together with lapwing, golden plover and curlew, all of which will be dispersing to their breeding grounds within the next week or two.…

Winter has been very mild and wet, resulting in large pools of water in fields attracting Little Egrets.

At this time of the year with darkness dominating the day, most birds spend much of their time roosting. Larger birds such as rooks, jackdaws and pigeons will often form huge roosts both for protection and warmth. Many birds have the ability to sleep with one eye open, i.e. shutting down half the brain while…

A number of people have recently seen a hedgehog feeding on the village green (see photo thanks to Jane Snell). Due to the warm late summer many hedgehogs produced young in September, which puts them at risk of gaining insufficient weight to survive the winter. With the warm, wet autumn that we have had there…

The first redwings and fieldfares arrived this week and can be seen feeding on haws and rowan berries. If you have a rowan tree in your garden it may well be ‘guarded’ by a pair of mistle thrushes and they will chase off other birds attempting to feed. As daylight becomes shorter, feeding birds is…

We have all experienced some lovely open summer days recently, which suddenly came to an end the day after the equinox There have been signs of autumn for some time early morning mists, spiders and flies coming into houses to hibernate, tree leaves gradually turning colour, lots of fruits and ripe hedgerow berries Most summer…