Looking back over the winter months (December-February) there has been little in the way of real hard weather, although February produced some snow showers and spectacular frosts, but compared with the rest of the UK we escaped very well. Wintering birds have been low in numbers although towards the end of December both Woodcock (26th) and Common Snipe (28th) were present.

On January 2nd the Newt Pond was cleared, this the first time since November 2005. During the clearance a Water Shrew was seen and towards the end of the day a Barn Owl flew silently past. The Barn Owl has been a regular now around the Commons for almost a year and it is always a pleasure to watch it hunt over the marshes and grasslands.

A Treecreeper – a mouse-like bird – moving up the trunk of a tree from the base in characteristic jerky spiral fashion was noted on Jan 10th. This small bird, pale buff streaked brown above with white under-parts, has a delicate decurved bill with which it probes the crevices of the tree trunks to find spiders, beetles etc. On Jan 14th Tony Pennington reported another unusual visitor, a Kingfisher, which had appeared at the recently cleared pond.

By the end of the month the characteristic ‘drumming’ of the Great Spotted Woodpecker was reverberating through the trees along the southern boundary of the Common. On mild mornings there is also a noticeable increase in the amount of birdsong, both in volume and species with Blackbird, Robin, Song Thrush and Chaffinch leading the way and from most corners of the Common come the familiar metallic sounding ‘teacher teacher’ call of the Great Tit, which is exclaimed loudly from vantage points.

Spring is also shown with flowers such as snowdrops (a particularly attractive double-flowered variety can be seen on the Common), Common Daisy and Red-dead Nettle, which are beginning to show although my main indicator of spring is the return of frogs to the ponds.   

Last year frog’s spawn was noted 23rd February in the Newt Pond. The Dew Pond on the Top Common, north of the A149 also had a few frogs and some spawn on 24th February.  This year, however, I could not find any frogs in the ponds on the morning of 23rd February, however by 4pm the Newt Pond had at least one intrepid male croaking so I expect by the time you read this the ponds will again be full of frogs, toads and spawn.

Francis Farrow – Hon Warden

Double-flowered Snowdrops

Common Frog and spawn