Home   News   Article

Signs of spring with lots of animal activity


By Ray Collier

Easier access to your trusted, local news. Subscribe to a digital package and support local news publishing.



Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!
Mandarin ducks and wood pigeons share a feeding table.
Mandarin ducks and wood pigeons share a feeding table.

JUST after the early snows of March left there were two days when everything seemed to happen as far as wildlife is concerned.

It started one evening when I was lucky enough to see my first badger of the year feeding on peanuts I had put out only close to the house.

It was a small animal but perhaps this was a reflection of the fact that it was the end of the winter when it would have relied largely on its fat reserves. They do come out in winter but rarely venture far.

I was mesmerised as I watched the badger looking at me with its characteristing black and white face. Despite the fact that it was about 10 o’clock in the evening I could see it quite clearly by moonlight.

The next morning I was thrilled to hear the mournful and drawn-out call of a curlew below the house, and by its behaviour it was obviously keen on setting up its territory and welcoming any others.

I wondered whether the curlew had just gone to the firths along the coast for the winter or west to Ireland or somewhere else.

It is one of the few waders left breeding in this part of the strath, along with oystercatchers, although the latter have gone down in numbers.

We have been in the strath for 28 years and in the early years there were common snipe, redshank and lapwings nesting, but they have long gone.

Quite why the curlew numbers have not decreased is a mystery as, like the other waders, they are ground-nesting birds and face various predators, from foxes to hooded crows.

The mistle thrush was singing away on the same day around lunchtime and its full song came from the top of the ash tree growing just outside my study.

The weather was not good, with very strong winds and rain. But to this bird it did not seem to matter and it was easy to understand where one of its many pseudonyms – "stormcock" comes from.

It seemed to match the climate around it on that day. Parts of the song seem almost like a screech – hence its Gaelic name of Sgraicheag-ghlas, which means grey screecher.

Mistle thrushes are early breeding birds and the singer may have been a male singing to its mate, with both getting ready for nest-building.

That evening I was sat, almost with anticipation, waiting for the time to look through the end window at the badger again.

But what I saw was perhaps more unexpected. It was yet another moonlit night and there, under the fruit trees, only about eight feet away, was a roe deer tucking into apples I had put out at dusk.

It seemed almost nonchalant as it reached down for the apples on the ground, and I resolved to put the apples out every night from then on. I had seen badgers and roe deer feeding only a few feet apart once before but that didn’t occur on this occasion.

At 8am the next morning, there on the pond in the paddock below my study were 14 mandarin ducks. Half were superb looking males in their full breeding plumage, and a pair were right under a larch tree, standing beneath a nestbox designed for them. Later that day some were on the bird table a few metres from the kitchen window and I rushed upstairs grabbing the camera as I went. The photograph is taken from the bedroom window, looking through the glass, and shows both male and female mandarins and two woodpigeons all eating mixed grain.

I had photographed them before on the table but never from the higher vantage point. I was also trying out a new Canon extender 1.4 on a telephoto lens.

The problem is that you lose the auto-focus facility, but I was quite pleased at the results.

To cap all this, blackbirds have started showing interest in the small conifer outside the kitchen window. Last year they bred there and the nest was only about two feet off the ground.

This is the area where my five dachshunds exercise about four times a day and they run right past the nest.

Last year not only did the blackbirds bring off a brood but also raised a second brood in the same nest.


Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More