April - stoatally unexpected

This month’s two What’s That Bird? videos follow.

Please remember that to see the videos you will need to go to www.liddells.co.uk and click on ‘Blog’.

A left over from last month - a hare and a buzzard seem to contemplate each other across the path divide.

4th April

After several false starts with one of the trail cameras, videos show that the digging on the Crag has indeed been done by badgers as Clare and John suspected. Here is one in action:

5th April - 7th April

Other creatures seem curious about the activity on the Crag. The first two caught on camera are a rabbit and a fox.

While visiting a local wood John met the Land Manager who offered John 10 Aspens to plant on Liddells. He had also recently replaced a gate so John offered to give a good home to the old one. Perfect timing for the new fence on the Hayfield.

John does realise that the gate will need to be differently positioned to be fully effective.

10th - 12th April

Clare heard the first of this season’s Willow Warblers singing; the Wild Cherry is in blossom; Peacock and Orange Tip butterflies were flying around; Ruth visited in preparation for another year’s bird ringing. Spring is springing.

Two days later John took a photo of a Horse Chestnut unsticking its buds.

The Crag camera shows that there are at least two different badgers involved in the activity there. One has a light patch on its left rump. You can see that quite clearly as it crouches to mark/urinate.

14th April

The Camera in the Top Strip show the old buck in the early morning. Later the same day another mature buck with a well developed set of antlers comes through the same space. You can see how this buck, while about the same height, is nothing like as powerful an animal. Its neck shows signs of winter coat loss.

The excavations on the Crag continue to evoke interest. This time from a Red-legged Partridge.

15th April

The camera captures the tip of a stoat’s tail as the animal goes into the hole. The sighting is barely a second long so not included here. The camera did not record the stoat emerging - it may have come out further along the Crag or been too quick for the camera.

16th April

Also not included here, a pair of rabbits spent 9 minutes seemingly plucking up courage to enter the hole under the stones, then doing so, coming out and going in again. Their final decision was to leave. Probably wise.

17th April

John and Clare planted the ten Aspens; five in the Pit Wood where they can talk to Juno’s tree and five in the Top Strip where they can start a new conversation. Clare noticed an abundance of Wood Sorrel in the Scrub and a much increased patch of Wood Anemones on the Meadow. As she was carrying planting equipment at the time, she decided to return later to take photographs.

A hare adds to the Expressions of Interest on the Crag. Or perhaps it’s listening to the Willow Warbler.

19th April

Clare returned to photograph the Wood Anemones and was disconcerted to say the least, when she discovered every single flower had been eaten. There could be many culprits although Wood anemones contain toxins that can cause digestive upset, irritation, and even poisoning in animals if ingested. Pheasants will eat the flowers. Hmmm. The discovery probably accounts for how the flowers appeared as a ‘surprise’ last year. They have possibly been there all along but eaten before they have been noticed. Memo - move trail camera next Spring.

Clare spent some time clearing Hawthorn brash from the Meadow into the North-east strip, and decided a new brash pile was needed there. She chose to cover a tree stump which has been a bit of a trip hazard, however out of curiosity had a look under the thick covering of moss over the stump. Her curiosity was rewarded.

An insect identification app suggested these were Violet Ground Beetles, however as the colour seemed so distinctly blue/turquoise, Clare decided to send a photograph to the Royal Entomological Society’s Identification service for confirmation. Professor Jim Hardie replied, ‘The texture of the wing case indicates that this is a violet ground beetle, Carabus violaceus, rather than C. problematicus or the blue ground beetle. C. intricatus, which, as you say, would be far away from its reported range. The colouration on the edges of the wing cases and pronotum is variable between specimens and lighting condition plus camera angle.’

Good to have the problematicus resolved. There may be a case later for saying, ‘You are turning violet, Violet.’

Clare also had a quick look in the nest boxes in the North-east strip and found moss in one, a Coal Tit sitting in another and nothing in the third.

20th April

Prompted by Clare’s nest box discoveries, Clare and John decided to have their own Easter Egg hunt - they set about investigating all the nest boxes on Liddells. Initially dismayed by how few boxes were in use, they then realised that they were checking the boxes about three weeks earlier than in previous years. Today they found 9 boxes in use - 4 with moss, 3 with formed nests and 2 with eggs. One of the latter was the box Clare had inspected the day before. Today there was no bird present which suggests Clare had inadvertently interrupted a bird while it was in the process of laying eggs. She and John will conduct another survey in a few weeks’ time.

Clare also noticed more spring flowers in bloom. It was once thought that you could use Lesser Celandine to predict the weather as they close their petals before raindrops. The leaves are high in vitamin C and have been used to prevent scurvy. In Pharmacpoeia: A Dungeness Notebook, Derek Jarman refers to the celandine as the ‘messenger of the swallow,’ presumably because the flower arrives shortly before the bird. He quotes a herbal remedy which uses the plant: ‘Take gallingall, cloves, cubibs, ginger, mellilote, cardomania, maces, nutmegs, one dram. Of the juice of salandine, 8 drams. Mingle all these made in powder with the said juice and a pint of aquavit, and three pints of white wine. Put it into a stillitory of glass and the next day still it with an easy fire. This water is an excellent virtue against consumption or any other disease that proceeds from rheume, choler, or fleagme.’ (‘cubibs’ might be cubeb pepper berries; mellilot is Sweet Clover, now naturalised as a fodder crop. Galangal paste is now available in supermarkets should you wish to try the recipe.)

17th - 20th April

John and Clare had few sightings of Great Spotted Woodpeckers this year. They realised that both remaining peanut feeders had cages, making it impossible for the Woodpeckers to feed there. So, knowing the risk of attracting Grey Squirrels, they set up an uncaged peanut feeder to the east of the hide. Of course the squirrels found it very quickly, but so did Great Spotted Woodpeckers (one was captured in the first video recorded), Jays, Chaffinches, Tree Sparrows, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, a Dunnock (usually ground feeders however they have started to use the hanging feeders by the hide) and a Greenfinch. Well worth the squirrel risk. Here are videos of a single Jay showing how easily it extracts a peanut, a pair of Jays with Blackbird nearby (the Jays have made several visits), a Great Spotted Woodpecker, a Greenfinch and Tree Sparrows (notice the identifying black spot on the cheek). (NB the dates on the videos reflect Clare’s and John’s failure (again) to reset after putting new batteries in. 1st February = 17th April.)

Last of this group, a young buck makes a meal of the tender new Hawthorn leaves. You can see that unlike the two older bucks seen in the Top Strip, he is still fully in velvet although the scruffiness of his neck suggests he is begining to lose his winter coat.

21st April

John watched hares boxing on the Meadow yesterday so positioned one of the cameras with the hope of capturing the activity. The camera recorded quite a lot of pheasants but no boxing. The video below of four hares is rather lovely though.

22nd April

Clare completed a butterfly transect today. A disappointing result with only 2 Speckled Woods, 1 Peacock and 1 Orange Tip in view. Tim says this is often the case on Liddells in April. It was only 12° and a bit breezy so those factors will have affected the numbers around too.

More spring flowering growth in evidence - Common Dog’s Violet, Field Wood-rush, Adder’s Tongue Fern and Yellow Rattle pushing up leaves. A single Honesty plant has appeared on the north boundary - maybe more will follow; the more honesty the better. Derek Jarman again, this time on Violets - his grandmother said ‘they corrupted the air … [and] were the flower of death.’ He discovered that the Violet is the ‘third in the trinity of symbolic flowers, flower of purity, ‘Whose virtue neither the heat of the sun melted away, /Neither the rain has washed and driven away.’ He includes another reference to the Violet - ‘Nothing behind the best for smelling sweetly, a thousand more will provoke your content.’ Sweet smelling flowers are often associated with death - their pungency would have helped masked the smell of a corpse.

Clare also found evidence of more excavation below the spoil heaps near the hives. More badgers….?

20th - 27th April - synchronously this period falls in with National Mammals Week (21st - 27th April)

Clare collected the camera discs with a view to getting this Blog post ready to publish. The Crag camera videos were surprising. As anticipated there was more evidence of badgers in the area and marking the territory in front of the excavations. (When she collected the disc, Clare changed the camera angle to capture activity on the right hand side of the digging. This may show something other than badgers going past and partly entering the hole under the rock.)

You may recall the mention of a stoat’s tail appearing in a clip on 15th April. On 20th, more than a tail appears.

TrogTrogBlog Chris, who has seen the clip, suggests from the animal’s size, build and proportions, that it is a female. He pointed out that the legs are white so it is still in partial ermine. The stoat’s scientific name is Mustela erminea. ‘Some stoats turn completely or partially white in winter, particularly in northern parts of the UK where snow is more common, but the black tip on the tail always remains. The white fur is known as 'ermine' and helps the stoat blend in with snowy surroundings when hunting.’ woodlandtrust.org. No doubt the same is true of members of the House of Lords.

‘Stoats are solitary for most of the year, only coming together to breed. A litter of around 6 to 12 young, known as kits, are born in spring. The female will care for the young until they are self-sufficient at around 12 weeks. Female stoats can become pregnant just a few weeks after birth. However, a process known as delayed implantation means the young will not be born until the female has matured around nine to 10 months later.’ woodlandtrust.org

Later on 20th there is another clip of a stoat, and Clare and John both think this one is smaller than the first.

Then two stoats appear in the same clip.

Between 20th and 27th there were nearly 30 videos of stoat activity and many more when the camera could well have been triggered by a stoat but the animal has moved too fast for it to be recorded. Rabbits kept appearing and investigating the excavations, which added a bit of jeopardy. Clare was fully expecting a stoat to shoot out of the hole and attack one at any point. Stoats bite rabbits at the base of the skull to kill them. The rabbits seem to have survived so far.

Early evening on 20th and a stoat emerges, runs off and shortly there is a sound that could be a stoat’s call.

Early on 21st a stoat emerges and briefly rubs the side of its face on the ground. Clare was reminded of otters doing something similar in Chris’ TrogTrogBlog footage. Both species are Mustelids so they might share behavioural characteristics.

Two hours later a stoat comes out and stretches before moving on. Maybe it had been having a lie-in.

29th April

Ruth had her first ringing session of the year and netted 33 birds. She said ‘about half of the warblers were ringed last year so definitely returners. A linnet and 4 garden warblers (3 new).’ A good start.

John started mowing the paths for the first time this year.

Clare went up to collect the camera discs for the last time this month (nothing exciting or new on any of them), and decided to note how many different plant species were in flower. She counted 30.

They are, in walking order, Gorse, Common Dog’s Violet, Wood Sorrel, Bluebell (English), Greater Stitchwort, False Oxlip, Creeping Comfrey, Perennial Cornflower, Wild Cherry, Dandelion, Lesser Celandine, Ramsons aka Wild Garlic, Cow Parsley, Primrose, Cowslip, Bugle, Tormentil, Pear, Plum, Daisy, Narcissus, Snake’s Head Fritillary, Adder’s Tongue Fern, Honesty, Common Field-rush, Soft Rush, Ribwort Plantain, Sticky Mouse-ear, Hairy Bittercress, Cuckoo Flower.

Here is a selection of those:

What’s that Bird?

Answers: 1 - Song Thrush; 2 - Fieldfare

NB for those of you mystified by the quotation, ‘You are turning violet, Violet!’ the line comes from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.