Month: December 2017

From Green to White

/ nrowberry / 17 Comments

What a difference a day makes. Since my Evergreen blog post our Malvern landscape has been transformed into a frosty white wonderland. It snowed all day on Sunday – the most snow we’ve had in years here and temperatures have barely got above zero. For the first day we couldn’t even see the Malvern Hills – the snow and fog completely blanketed them. But yesterday it cleared and our view was once again returned.

Our mistletoe, that was making me feel so festive, is now even more Christmassy with a frosting of snow.

I may not have been able to get to work, nor get the car out to go to the shops (chocolate supplies are getting dangerously low and I may have to start eating some wrapped Xmas presents!), but it has provided some great photo ops in the garden. I have spent a lot of the last few days freezing my proverbial off, sitting in the garden watching the birds. The bird feeders have needed constant topping up and the water baths have had to be defrosted regularly, but I have been rewarded with lots of bird activity.

As always I had the trail cam out in the garden. Although I didn’t get any particularly interesting footage during the day, that may have been because things were landing on it rather than in front of it!

Similarly my camouflage netting, that I hide behind to photograph the birds, got the same lack of respect from this blue tit.

Most of our regular birds came out during my snowy vigil. Starlings, sparrows and blue tits were all abundant and didn’t seem bothered by me lurking behind my camouflage.

The wren was as elusive as always and the coal and great tits only came out when I went in. The blackbirds and jackdaws made the most of the food, but I struggled to get a decent photo of black birds against a white background. There were some surprises though – the benefit of sitting outside just watching meant that I saw birds I haven’t seen for a while in the garden. So it was great to see this thrush jostling for food amongst the sparrows on the bird table.

Even better a rare glimpse of a chaffinch – we hardly ever get these in the garden, so I was delighted to get even this distant shot of him.

Of course the one bird I really wanted to get decent photos of in the snow was the robin. Fortunately we have two resident robins and one in particular is pretty brave and comes close up to me (not yet managed the holy grail of getting him to eat out of my hand yet, but I’m working on it). I took loads of photos of him – here are a few of my favourites. I think next year’s Christmas cards may be sorted!

While chasing the robin round with the camera, I noticed something larger in the bush right next to me – a redwing. We haven’t seen any of these in the garden for a few years, so I snapped away quickly before he flew off.

And then it got even better! I was keeping an eye out in case the redwing returned and spotted a group of birds in next door’s tree. Unfortunately the tree was at the far side of their garden so I crept as close to our fence as I could get, peered over and discovered it was a small mixed flock of redwings and fieldfares.

They may not have actually been in our garden, but I’m counting them as I’m sure they must have passed through it at some point!

The final star of the show yesterday, although also not technically in the garden, was this magnificent Red Kite, drifting high above. I thought at first it was just the usual buzzard; it was only when I downloaded the photos I could see it was a kite. The perfect finale to my snowy birdwatching day.

Winter Evergreens

/ nrowberry / 6 Comments

I started to feel properly Christmassy this week and that was even before the winter wonderland of snow arrived this morning. Amongst the (many) weeds in our garden we have some lovely evergreen plants, right out of a Christmas carol – holly, ivy and mistletoe too. None have been planted deliberately, they’ve all just arrived. Feed the birds and they deposit berries around the garden, which grow and attract more birds, which deposit more berries – a birdy/evergreen circle.

The ivy must surely be one of the most useful plants in our garden. Not only do the leaves provide cover for a host of insects, the flowers provide a much needed late nectar source (particularly for my favourite Ivy Bees) and the berries provide food in winter for the birds. We are doing our best to encourage the ivy to grow over as much of the fence as possible.

Our holly “tree” is little more than a small bush, but since we didn’t plant it at all, we can’t complain. We first spotted it a few years ago when it was literally a tiny seedling with just 3 leaves on it – presumably a helpful bird had either dropped a berry, or deposited it some other way in the front garden. This was our magnificent tree back in 2013, less than a foot tall. Four years later and it is the same height as me (so approximately 5 times the size).

We first noticed mistletoe growing on our apple tree a few years ago. We now have several clumps, although no sign of any berries yet – don’t know if this is because our mistletoe is not mature enough or we’ve just got male specimens?

Mistletoe may have the romantic connotations of kissing traditions at Christmas, but the actual name may have slightly less glamorous origins. Some websites suggest the name derives from two old words – mistle meaning dung (from the way in which birds may deposit it) and ta meaning twig or stick. So it’s really just a dung twig – not so tempting to kiss under it now!

Given the meagre clumps of mistletoe in the garden, we won’t be harvesting any for festive decorations any time soon. Fortunately my Dad has a garden full of the stuff, I just need to clamber up to get a bunch. Dad has always wanted to go the Tenbury Mistletoe Auctions, so last week we finally got around to going. What an amazing thing it was, no wonder people come from all over the country to see and bid on these winter evergreens.

First up was a whole shed filled with holly wreaths – presumably intended for shops rather than individuals as they were in multiple counts per lot. The auctioneer whizzed along the rows of them, with people bidding for dozens at a time.

The main attraction for most though was the mistletoe – row upon row of berry laden bundles. It really was a very impressive sight.

Once again the auctioneer made short work of the lots – each bundle going in a matter of seconds. No sooner had each one been auctioned than it was carted off and the crowd moved on. The Tenbury Mistletoe sales usually make the local news and here is this year’s report – for those with eagle eyes, yours truly appears at about the 5 second mark – dumpy little woman right behind the auctioneer!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hereford-worcester-42240007/tenbury-mistletoe-auction-draws-crowds-in-bumper-year

We probably won’t put our Christmas tree up for another week, but in the meantime it’s nice to have this midwinter greenery around the garden.