Williamson's Weekly Notes - January 20

A GRANNY in Lapland wonders what all the fuss is about, "I've got one metre of snow in my garden and the temperature is minus forty-five Celsius."

"How do you get about", I asked. "We have sort of snowmobiles but the roads are properly cleared and we have some snow tyres for cars," she replied.

What she was worried about however was whether we in England were looking after her redwings and fieldfares.

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These birds breed around her home near the Arctic Circle and she looks forward to their return in spring. They nest in colonies and sing wonderfully.

Well, I fear a lot will not be going back.

I have found one or two fieldfares dead in the woods here, as I always have in hard frosts; especially 1984 and '79.

The worst winter for them was, of course, '63 and before that '47.

Although many have gone down into France, Spain and Portugal to find warmer weather but where they will almost certainly be shot.

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But there are currently 40,000 redwings in the New Forest, which should be safe enough with all the soft leaf-mould under the older trees in which they can pick about.

Some redwings have again found food on Chichester Harbour. On my December wader-count, I watched them on the tide-line waiting for the water to drop.

As soon as the first stems of spartina grass had been uncovered they flew out and grabbed winkles clinging there.

Sometimes they had to reach down under the salt water.

Then back they flew to firmer ground and somehow winkled the winkles out of their tough shells.

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The big prize for the fieldfares has been windfall apples that people have saved and put on cleared patches of lawn.

Blackbirds love these as well, and will reward us with song in spring.

Numbers of goldcrest have plummeted in the pine forests around my home, but the species will soon recover as in compensation they do lay large clutches of eggs '“ up to a dozen.

The same applies to blue-tits and wrens.

It is always the smallest birds that suffer having more surface area from which to lose heat per body weight than larger birds.

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This year I heard that 63 wrens have been seen roosting together in old nests to conserve heat '“ but then that this was not all in the exactly same nest.

So the previous record number of 56 wrens all packed together in a straw stack in 1963 still stands.

I once watched over several evenings at dusk a large number of wrens, 23 in total, crowding into the tit box on the wall opposite my kitchen window.

After the cold snap was over there were three dead bodies there '“ suffocated from over-crowding.

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The most exciting scene I have seen so far this cold spell was an eagle owl trying to catch a crow over West Dean Woods.

This may have been an escaped bird currently roosting on Goodwood golf course: or was it one of those that have recently started a breeding niche in Yorkshire?

Their young have tended to disperse south and west.

The crow tried every manoeuvre in the book and I think escaped but the chase went out of sight behind tall beech trees.

Eagle owls will of course kill and eat buzzards, so a crow should be well within its grasp. It is all part of the battle for survival.

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Another bird the Swedish granny hoped to see back in her country in the spring was the woodcock, though not of course as far north as the Arctic.

There are not many immediately here, though I watch one or two each evening as they fly out to feed but a friend in Essex saw 47 of them flushed out of a wood during a pheasant drive and many thousands have found sanctuary right down to the Scilly Isles, and across to Ireland.

Many will be shot of course, but I am also sure many will return to Sweden when this cold snap is over.

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