Buzzards and Red Kites pairing up and displaying their courtship rituals in the sky, squabbling Dunnocks, male Chiffchaffs calling for a new inamorata, frogspawn clusters, melodic male Blackbirds, fluttering Pipistrelle bats awakening from their winter dozing, flowering Wood Anemones, drumming woodpeckers, queen bees seeking out their new lairs, tree buds beginning to burst and even a Brimstone butterfly. It’s all here.
Spring is upon us, and it feels so damn good.
A familiar sight of spring. Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna) brightening up the floor.
The declining Tree Sparrow is a frequent and welcome sight in the garden.
A pair of garish Bullfinches feasting on young tree buds above the hedgerow.
In my previous diary entry, I shared some footage of a wonderful discovery of Badgers at the bottom of our garden. They are still showing up on a regular basis, thanks to the occasional peanut bribe, space to dig up worms (I am not precious about the lawn!) and constant water source. Here is a little reassurance that the local brock is still going strong.
Just last week though, it was a new discovery at that same Badgers watering hole that had me equally as excited as that day back in early December when I first noticed the pond being used.
It is the beginning of the breeding season for all three of our native newts - Smooth, Palmate and Great Crested. February signals the males to migrate to ponds from their winter woodland hideouts - under logs, rocks or even compost heaps to seek out a mate with a flash of their tail in a typical courtship display.
This is certainly the case for male Palmate newts anyway. I know this, because I saw it for myself just last night.
Backup a little to this time last week. I had ventured outside with a bat detector after noticing some activity at the window. After staring up in awe for a while at the Pipistrelles zooming around our heads, I decided to take a torch out to the pond in the hope that a frog or two might have shown up by now. I didn’t hold much hope, as the pond at this stage still had no vegetation, little life (or so I thought) and bare patches around the margins where it had first been dug out a few months back. I was right, there were no frogs or spawn in the pond, but appearances can often be deceptive. Then, to my utter bemusement I accidentally illuminated a female Smooth/Palmate newt (they are very difficult to distinguish in the water without closer observation) laying on one of the shallow shelves around the pond. She was certainly pregnant.
Absolutely amazed, I continued to look closer with the torch. I began to pick out several male Palmates (a little easier to differentiate and identify thanks to their webbed back feet and extended filament from the tip of their tail) sticking out of the leaf litter and occasionally swimming to the surface for a gulp of air. That very night I rushed to order some native aquatic plants - Brooklime, Spiked Water Milfoil and Water Forget-me-not, a favoured plant of females as they will lay and wrap their eggs on the leaves. I continued to check the pond and last night two Palmates caught my attention. They were clinging to the submerged Milfoil that I had weighted and dropped to the deepest section of the pond, before the male began to swim away whilst fanning his tail in courtship to the female, who followed in tandem.
If this isn’t a way of emphasising just how easy it is to encourage wildlife into your garden, I don’t know what is. To me, at this stage of the year it was a rather bleak, work in progress pool of water. When in actual fact it is now a fully fledged newt breeding habitat. I have since added several more log piles around the pond as well as sheltering habitat within it. I am convinced that the rocky slope at one end of the pond will have played a big part in enticing the newts here initially - ideal hiding and hunting spots outside of the breeding season.
Since beginning to work on the garden I have made log piles of various different tree species around the garden edge to try and create that perfect damp, decaying wood habitat for invertebrates to thrive, and now… amphibians!
A male Palmate with its sooty, webbed back feet, and distinct lack of a crest compared to other species.
A closer look at a Palmate Newt (Lissotriton helveticus).
The Palmate Newt has a preference for shallow ponds on acidic soils.
The importance of deadwood presence in a garden to wildlife is immeasurable.
Living in the Derwent Valley, you are treated to Red Kite flyovers at regular intervals and I am yearning for them to nest in the nearby woodland. I was lucky enough recently to witness a circling pair of Buzzards high above four Red Kites and beneath them still, a hovering female Kestrel on the hunt. Incredible to see, and a visual so representative of the season.
A Red kite soaring the thermals.
Milvus milvus - a darting Red Kite.
It’s definitely that time of year where everyone wants to play forager, and that usually begins with wild garlic. It’s hard to resist to be fair, and I have been making the usual pesto and soups with that springtime evergreen leaf. A nice little addition to my own foraging repertoire this year though, has been the phenomenal flower of a European Larch tree or ‘Larch rose’ as they are sometimes known. I have eaten them raw in the past but their flavour also lends itself to pickling, and as a result has since turned the liquor bright pink! And here you can see why.
Larch roses readily picked.
From now until June I will undoubtedly be keeping an eye fixed on that pond, and who knows maybe next time it will be a Smooth or Great Crested Newt revelation.
The return of Swifts and Swallows is on the horizon, emerging bluebell woodlands and Cuckoos calling are imminent.
And I for one am here for it.
