March Nature Notes

by David Tidmarsh - 12:38 on 20 March 2014

Kens Nature Notes

Thankfully signs of spring are appearing, the best examples after the snowdrops are surely the white blossom of the Blackthorn shrubs. These can be seen in abundance along many of the roads in our area especially noticeable travelling to Washington.     I have always thought it strange how some shrubs and trees produce a smashing flush of flowers well before any leaves appear, this of course is a welcome sight for the pollen gathers after a long dormant winter. In our area we have had it really good this winter compared to our neighbours down south hopefully they will be starting to see the water levels dropping, but there will be long term damage to land and property.

It is without doubt my favourite season, with fresh growth springing up all around us. I have managed to get some tree planting done lately but not as much as I would have liked and we are certainly heading away from the dormant period when any disturbance of the root systems would be detrimental to the success of moving trees and shrubs unless we could reduce any disturbance to the feeder roots.

Harvesting most of the willow was completed in early March thanks to some helpers; this enables a fresh flush of growth to begin which produces next years harvest, truly a great example of sustainable production.

I love to hear the dawn chorus as birds whistle away to each other in order to attract a mate. If you are a good whistler it must be better than trying different chat up lines, it is amazing the different songs that birds came come out with, it does seem to be more prevalent on a morning though than during the day.

To help nesting birds we have managed to erect quite a number of bird boxes in trees in the new Lambton plantation and our most adventurous one is a “Little Owl” box especially bought by a donation from Northumbria Water. This has been erected on a specially built structure in Woodstone wildlife area. It is hopefully to replace the old nesting site that these Little owls had in the old Fire station tower, which has been demolished to build rented accommodation.

Like all nesting boxes all you can do is site them in a suitable area, facing the recommended direction, then keep your fingers crossed that something will use them and hopefully the bird variety that you are hoping for.

Our bee hive population have done reasonably well considering most were blown over during the severe winds we had in the winter. A couple of colonies didn’t make it but other hives are very active as the bees search for any food that they can find.

So we need to restock these empty hives as soon as we can so they can make honey as the sun shines.

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