Wildlife provides interest during lockdown
THIS lockdown hasn’t been nearly as uplifting nature-wise as the first, when spring sunshine brought out the wildlife and inspired people to take an interest in species close to home.
However, there is still plenty to spot and readers have picked up the baton following features in this newspaper and sent in emails detailing their wildlife sightings.
Last Saturday’s nature pages in the Western Morning News focused on frogs, which tend to breed early in the South West. The Westcountry typically gets the first records of frogspawn every year and Ian Fisher wrote in to say he has already seen some alongside the Tarka Trail at Petrockstowe on January 14. He added this week that there was “mountains of it now in the ditches”.
Dave Peake, who lives in Yelverton, emailed following the WMN article on rare willow tits, Britain’s fastest declining resident bird, to say he often saw them at his feeders in the winter back in the 1970s, but by the early 1980s they had disappeared. He believes they reappeared in 2019/20 and is hopeful they will make a permanent return.
Mary Hurren, from Truro, emailed with news of a young hedgehog that she spotted feeding in her garden in the day and trying to drink. Closer inspection revealed it was not at all well. Mary, a member of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society who regularly feeds hedgehogs in her garden, took it to the vets who found it had twine, picked up elsewhere, caught around its neck and the injury had become infected. It was successfully treated and released to fight another day.
More recently she reports up to twelve blackbirds feeding in her garden – an impressive total. Our blackbird numbers are boosted considerably in the winter by birds from the Continent migrating here to escape freezing winter weather.
Meanwhile Jennifer Lang from Gloucestershire was pleased to observe a pied wagtail back at her property, and managed to get a photo. “I do like watching them, they are such active little birds,” she said.
Elizabeth Gabriel also reports a pied wagtail at her Avonwick home, as well as a tame robin and resident pheasant. She writes to say that she also has either marsh or willow tits visiting her feeders, but isn’t certain which. She is far from alone, given how hard they are to tell apart!