Blogs

It's a myth that you need binoculars to get a good look at birds. All you have to do is stand still and be quiet, and very often they'll come to you.

At lunchtime, I went out for a potter around The Lodge's gardens to stretch my legs. I paused to admire the tree by the pond. It's a very strange-looking thing: a tangle of lime-green twigs armed with monstrous, inch-long thorns. Among the spikes are yellow, golf ball-sized fruits, like slightly furry limes.

As I read its metal name tag - Japanese bitter orange - something else caught my eye. A goldcrest was interested in the tree, too. It was well-hidden among the branches. Goldcrests are the UK's smallest birds. They're a rather dull green colour with a yellow stripe on their head and a charming expression.

They need to eat almost constantly at this time of year. As a tiny bird with a dainty, needle-like beak, the bitter oranges were no good to it - it was hunting for morsels of insect food.

I stood still. The goldcrest carried on going about its business: clinging to the twigs, fluttering upside down and dodging the thorns. Then it perched on the edge of the tree and took a good look at me before darting over my shoulder and into the shrubs behind.

It just goes to show you don't need to be dressed in camouflage or to sit in a hide for hours on end to have an eye-to-eye encounter with a wild bird.

• Have you had a similar experience? Tell us about it in the comment box below (you will need to register first - this is free).
• To be updated every time something is added to this blog, please subscribe using our RSS or Atom feeds. You can find information on how to use feeds in our Help section.
  

Walking around The Lodge at lunchtime, there was a rustle and then the sound of powerfully whirring wings. A fat, brown bird flew from the crispy leaves in the sweet chestnut woodland and away up the hill from us.

It made me jump!

For a split second, I thought, 'what on earth was that?' but then it became obvious. It was a woodcock, an enigmatic wading bird that lives its whole life in the... woods.

It's very hard to see woodcocks while they're on the ground. They are very good at it: their feathers are a mixture of beautifully mottled, rusty browns - ideal for lurking among leaf litter. They have long, sensitive beaks for finding creepy-crawlies on the forest floor, and their large eyes (for seeing in dark conditions) are set far back on their heads so they can see what's behind them.

When they spot you - long before you spot them - they're off like greased lightning.

This is the time of year when many woodcocks come to the UK, flying non-stop across the North Sea, to escape the harsh winter. They can turn up in some odd places - we often get phone calls or e-mails from people reporting that a strange, brown bird with a long beak is poking around in their garden, or that they've found one dead underneath their office window after a collision.

It's possible that, in spring, 'my' woodcock tapped its way out of an egg in a remote Russian forest, full of elk and bears and owls. Or maybe it bred in this country, performing a strange, grunting, squeaking, night-time display flight known as 'roding'. I'll never know, but it's nice to wonder.

What do you think?

We'd love to read your thoughts about this blog. Please leave a comment in the box below - you will need to register first (this is free).

Despite living 40 miles from the coast for all of my 28 years, saltwater definitely flows through my veins. The smell of the sea and the sound of breaking waves have accompanied many of the most memorable moments in my life.

Summer weekends spent at the seaside, partaking in a heady mix of the things that teenagers enjoy and the wildlife riches of the Norfolk Coast have left me with a craving for sand, sea and surf - and an inescapable itch that has to be scratched regularly.

One of the most perfect moments of my life happened just the other week when a pod of killer whales - a lifelong ‘must see’ – surfaced off the beach I stood upon. It was entirely appropriate that the gasp of admiration I took on seeing them breach and panic the grey seals basking on the rocks between us filled my lungs with the scent of the sea.

It was the lure of the coast that saw me spending every daylight hour by the sea at the weekend. I crunched along shingle beaches in the teeth of an easterly gale that whipped the North Sea into a frenzy and gazed inland over picture-perfect panoramas of reed, marsh and ditches laid out like silver ribbons between derelict windmills – a reminder these were once working landscapes rather than precious nature reserves.

Watching a party of penduline tits extracting fluffy sea aster seed heads within touching distance, glimpsing flypasts from bitterns, chancing upon 23 regal cranes feeding at the roadside and a veritable swarm of marsh harriers over their afternoon roost was my antidote to painting the spare room, cleaning out the garage, or doing the Christmas shopping.

And so I faced the inevitable Monday morning pleasantries of “Have a good weekend?” with a smug smile on my face and a windswept glow to my cheeks. I most certainly did.

This morning, winter made sure I knew it was there. A heavy frost had coated everything in crystals. It wasn't long after dawn and already, fluffy, hungry-looking birds were lurking in the bushes. The bird feeders were nearly empty!

Under normal circumstances, you could perhaps accuse me of being a little disorganised, but this morning I became a hyper-efficient bird-feeding machine. In no time I'd found porridge oats (central heating for birds, too), some bashed-up apples, a bag of cheap currants for thrushes and sunflower hearts to replenish the feeder. It was time to brave the cold.

Crunching over the grass, I made my way down the garden to the bird feeders. I got halfway there before a great spotted woodpecker burst from its position on the peanut feeder.

'Sorry, woodpecker,' I thought (I'm not yet at the stage where I'm talking directly to the birds), 'you can come back in a couple of minutes'. It was so quiet and still outside that I heard the whirr of its wings as it went to hide in the ash tree.

I also heard fieldfares 'chacking' overhead as they searched for unfrozen fields, a wren singing from down the hedgerow and saw a flock of lapwings flopping their way across the sky, also on the hunt for a nice field full of worms. I might not have noticed any of those things if I'd stayed indoors.

There was a slight hitch when I found the lid of the bird feeder was iced firmly shut, but a jug of warm water soon fixed that and sorted the frozen bird bath, too. With the feeders full, fruit scattered on the ground and oats sprinkled around, my job was done.

By the time I was back inside and peering out of the kitchen window, birds were already back on the feeders. They got their breakfast; I got a feeling of satisfaction. It was a good start to the day.

At this time of year, we see big flocks of birds building up. Some are our native birds joined by arrivals from Europe, eg starlings, others, like the whooper and Bewick’s swans that visit our Ouse Washes reserve fly to Britain to escape the cold of their breeding grounds. Huge flocks that join together, mainly for protection, give us humans a spectacular view. It makes me wonder whether birds look at us ‘flocking’ on a beach in summer, or at a football match, with the same feelings of awe and wonderment? I doubt it, but it’s a nice thought!

It’s in the estuaries where some of the biggest flocks can be seen, with waders such as knots and dunlins. However, one of the best spectacles I’ve seen is pink-footed geese returning to roost on the marshes of North Norfolk as the dark closes in. Simply stunning. There are some wonderful wildlife spectacles throughout the world, but, in my opinion, Britain’s winter birds flocking is up there with the best.

However, with all this spectacle, spare a thought for the birds that don’t flock in big numbers, the dunnocks and blue tits of this world. The garden birds. In spring, they’re the stars of the show, but right now they’re almost forgotten.

Although for most of us back garden bird watchers out, the bird feeder provides a spectacle. Small flocks of tits and finches will be there, whilst autumn and winter can bring some unexpected visitors to your garden if the weather gets really cold. Our winter visitors may be top at the moment, but come spring the garden birds will be back.

Whichever spectacle it is, it makes me remember: all of nature is amazing in it’s own way.

I could probably count the number of times I see a jay in summer on two hands, but for the last few weeks it has been difficult to travel anywhere without encountering one of these colourful crows.

With their brilliant colours temporarily concealed by the abundant lush green foliage of high summer and a natural tendency for shyness, you could be forgiven for thinking that jays leave us at this season. They are still here of course, but raucous calls coming from deep within the treetops may be the only clue to their presence.

It is a different story now though. The autumn leaf drop means there is no place now for these woodland residents to hide and jays are much more obvious through their transformation into 'hoarders' and 'stashers' of the treasures of the woodland floor.

Daily plundering sorties see every jay meticulously scouring the ground beneath our magnificent oaks for glistening acorns nestled in the golden-glowing leaf litter. The wettest summer on record has produced an acorn bonanza in our woodlands and jays have been quick to take advantage.

In spite of the abundant food on offer, jays don't spend the diminishing daylight hours scoffing their bounty and fattening up in preparation for winter. Jays, like most crows, are very intelligent and play the long game by burying their treasure in a variety of well-spaced underground stashes, providing a source of food on which they can depend when food becomes harder to find in the depths of winter.

Regular flights between foraging grounds and their stores in various woods is what makes jays so much more visible now. Of course, even the cleverest of birds, can't be expected to remember where it has buried all of its acorns and it is these forgotten seeds that give rise to the next generation of oaks.

I'd never seen one until a few weeks ago, but now it seems like they're everywhere. Harlequin ladybirds have found their way into The Lodge gardens, into our office, into my house and - it appears - into just about everywhere else, too...

At home, I was reading the papers on a sunny Sunday afternoon when I spotted ladybirds crawling over the windows. I went outside for a closer look and found they weren't 'normal' ladybirds (two- or seven-spots are common) but harlequins! The south-facing wall of the house was literally crawling with them... I estimated at least 60 were trying to work their way into my house via the window frames. We were under attack by small beetles!

They're undeniably pretty, but harlequins are not good news here. Bigger and hungrier than our native ladybirds, they were brought from Asia to southern Europe by farmers hoping to rid their crops of aphids. They arrived in Essex from across the Channel in 2004 and have already made it as far as west Wales, Yorkshire and Cornwall.

In the USA (where they're called Asian lady beetles), it's now the country's most widespread ladybird species, after becoming established as recently as 1988. Scary stuff.

Are they dangerous? If you're a native UK ladybird, a butterfly or moth caterpillar egg, or a small insect, yes - you might get eaten.

Have they made it to your neck of the woods yet? The Harlequin Survey website can tell you.