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| Wood Ants' nest © Richard Coomber |
On
a bright, but chilly, morning a baker’s dozen of us set out from the Bolderwood
car park for a walk looking for winter thrushes. We walked down the hill past
the deer sanctuary, no deer, but we did see a song thrush, Blackbirds and lots
of Robins! There was a Collared Dove on one of the trees and a pair of Stock
Doves in another. We had brief views of Chaffinch and Blue Tit, and a Buzzard
flapped lazily over the sanctuary. We passed two Southern Wood Ants’ nests,
both soggy and seemingly devoid of life, but the queen and her court will be
right down in the dry, and warm, centre of the nest. We cut across on a muddy
green track to the next path going up through the Holly grove.
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| Redwing © Chris Robinson |
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| Fieldfare © Chris Robinson |
Then
we kept seeing movement in the trees and on the ground and it soon became
apparent (from the soft chuntering) that these were the Redwings and Fieldfares
we had been hoping to see. I like to think that they ‘talk’ to each other, and
we could hear this quite clearly. We got excellent views of both species as
they foraged for the abundant Holly berries, (it is a very good year for most
fruit). As we stood listening and watching a herd of Fallow Deer made a distant
appearance, but it soon became apparent that there were hundreds of the
thrushes! We watched in awe as the sheer number of birds criss-crossed the sky,
going from tree to tree. Roosts this year in the area have been estimated at
several hundred, and we must have seen a fair percentage of these.
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| Holly flowers in December! © Richard Coomber |
In
the Holly grove Brian spotted a Holly in flower! In December! This prompted a
long discussion on holly, was it monoecious or dioecious? I got them back to
front, as ever, and Pam got it right, as ever. Holly is dioecious (it has male
and female plants) not monoecious (having both sexes on
the one plant). So, this was a male tree, with the small, white flowers each
with four anthers. Also on the tree we saw that Blue Tits had been extracting
the leaf miners. Blue tits have a special technique for this, leaving a very distinctive,
neat ‘v’ shaped mark on the surface. The mine was probably that of Holly Leaf-miner
Phytomyza ilicis.
(Diptera: Agromyzidae)
We
continued up the hill back to the car park, all the time being surrounded by
the thrushes flying around communicating with each other.
A
short but eventful walk which makes one marvel at the birds who have come from
Scandinavia and central Europe to share our winter with us. CR
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| Common Funnel © Chris Robinson |
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Pony damage to Beech tree © Richard Coomber
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