Tower and Town, December 2021

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Nature Notes: Special Moments

It is at the end of December that Radio and TV programmes look back over the year’s highlights, so I have leafed through my nature logbook to pick out a few special moments:

On a freezing day in January at Castle Eaton I was lucky enough to see four whooper swans on flood water by the Thames. Those wintering in Britain are from the Icelandic breeding population: most are seen in Lowland Scotland and Northern England, but in Wiltshire it is a notable rarity. Unlike the mute swan, it calls, especially in flight, with a loud ‘whoop-whoop-whoop’, hence its name.

February is a good month to witness the courtship display flight of the goshawk, one of Wiltshire’s rarest birds of prey, and sure enough, in a wood of mixed coniferous and deciduous trees I find a pair soaring and gliding above the tree line.

With chiffchaffs beginning their stuttering song at the end of March I set off on my annual search for the mysterious stone curlew on the local ranges. Blending in beautifully with the stony field they were standing on, a pair were happily ensconced, and a pair of common curlew, now rare inland, were gliding overhead, uttering their bubbling cries.

In early April my wife and I stopped by Ramsbury Lake: there were swallows flitting back and forth over the water, and above, perched on a dead tree, an osprey looked down!

By early May it had probably transferred to a nest site on a Scottish loch, whilst here in Wiltshire most summer visitors were back: in one area of the Cotswold Water Park I logged ten warbler species, a pair of water voles, two cuckoos, three hobbies and a nightingale.

June and July are the months for butterflies and flowers: there were purple, pyramidal, lesser butterfly, fragrant and twayblade orchids at Morgan’s Hill and memorable amongst the butterflies were the purple emperors gliding back and forth above a favoured tall oak in Savernake Forest. An adder crossed our path on a canal towpath and my neighbour found six grass snakes wriggling about in his compost heap.

Summer visitors were drifting south in August: redstart, spotted flycatcher and sedge warbler all passed through our local fields and a quail was still calling on Windmill Hill.

September and October were notable for two separate sightings of hedgehog, whilst at Town Mill in Marlborough a dipper has occupied a stretch of the Kennet where kingfishers and grey wagtail have also been seen, as well as the spraint of an otter.

Flocks of fieldfares and redwings are still arriving in November, as are golden plovers and wintering lapwings. And what is there to look forward to in December? holly, ivy, mistletoe, a turkey, and my favourite - a Gressingham duck!

Dipper

Robin Nelson