Ingham’s W RLD
UP AND down the land florists and card shops are preparing for one of the busiest weeks of the year as Valentine’s Day edges ever closer. But it is not just besotted humans who feel that love is in the air. Our birdlife has a song in its heart because Valentine’s Day is D-Day in nature’s great race to procreate.
So Wednesday will see the start of the British Trust for Ornithology’s 21st National Nest Box Week, a campaign to give our birds a home.
By the sound of the embryonic dawn chorus when I walk my dog, many species are already sending their version of Valentine’s Day cards.
Song thrushes have been singing from the treetops for weeks, along with robins which make music pretty much all year round.
In recent days many tits – great, blue and coal – have joined in, backed by the powerful trill of the wren and the cascading song of the chaffinch.
There are nest boxes for species including tits, robins, tree creepers, starlings, wagtails, flycatchers, swifts, house martins, swallows, wagtails, owls, stock doves, jackdaws and even kingfishers. Tree and house sparrows like a terrace of nest boxes while robins and flycatchers prefer open-fronted designs.
The BTO says no garden is too small for a nest box. I’ve got one attached to the wall of my house and blue tits nest there every year.
The best place to site them is facing north-east. This stops the chicks from frying in direct sunlight and protects them from the worst of the weather which usually blows in from the west. Also place boxes away from bird feeders to avoid disturbance.
If you can afford it, get a box made of woodcrete which lasts for years (try livingwithbirds.com). It also deters woodpeckers and squirrels which can break into wooden boxes and feast on the inmates.
You will not regret the extra cost of a nest box with a camera. Watching your “family” grow from eggs to naked fledglings to boisterous wing-stretching youngsters is like seeing your very own nature documentary.
If the birds shun your nest box, don’t worry. They will almost certainly roost there overnight when winter returns and Valentine’s Day seems a world away.
BIRDS are getting desperate in this prolonged freeze. For the first time yesterday I saw a goldcrest, Europe’s tiniest bird, visiting my sunflower hearts feeder.
Seconds later came another bird that normally shuns feeders: a dunnock. Keep birds supplied with food and make sure they have access to unfrozen water. SUDOKU may save man’s best friend from doggy dementia, Austrian vets claimed this week. They used rewards to train elderly dogs to play games on touchscreen computers.
The hounds rapidly became “avid gamers” and mentally stimulated, reports the ACM Digital Library.
The team is now developing doggy Sudoku for the home, so you can teach your old dog new tricks. FROGS are not all feckless parents. Male white-spotted bush frogs from India are devoted dads, a National University of Singapore team tells Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
The male finds his mate a nest site in reed bamboo and sits on the eggs for 47 days until the tiny froglets emerge. He defends them 24/7 by attacking predators or scaring them away with loud alarm calls. GREEN TIP: Don’t have perches on nest boxes. They can help predators get access. SHARKS could make flights smoother, US researchers tell Royal Society Interface. They replicated the tiny scales on the skin of the world’s fastest shark, the shortfin mako, and put them on a wing. Aerodynamics improved fourfold. Well, sharks have had a 400 million-year head start on plane designers. ANTS could save your life. Another team of US researchers found that some ants produce their own antibiotics to fight bacteria, with the thief ant particularly effective. Author Clint Penick tells Royal Society Open Science that ants could be a future source of new antibiotics to help fight human diseases.