Staff member Kristel is currently working from home due to COVID restrictions, but despite being away from the NNRs is enjoying the arrival of spring and watching the birds.
“The clocks have changed and the addition of more light is very welcome as are the green shoots, flowers, butterflies and bumble bees, all of which have made me appreciate nature so much more. Living in a town house, I am woken each morning by the sound of house sparrows chirping in my neighbour’s conifer hedgerow and on the house guttering. Is it just me or does bird song seem even louder this spring? Perhaps it is due the reduction in traffic due to the corvid19 lockdown. There is no mistaking the smoky cap and rich brown plumage of the male house sparrow and his female counterpart, she is brown all over, with grey-brown underparts or “underpants!”, as I once heard one of the children shout who had come from a local school to observe and survey birds in the Dene’s wildlife garden.
A male house sparrow, a starling and a curlew.
Since the 1970s there has been a severe decline in house sparrow populations with lack of food being one of the reasons for their decline. Fortunately the Big Garden Bird Watch, has identified a bit of a comeback in house sparrow numbers . Indeed I only have to look at my bird feeder in my small back garden to see the house sparrows seem to be doing a grand job at emptying it of the millet and peanut mixes, that I’m sure I only filled up just the other day.
Another garden town house visitor worth mentioning is a bit of a scally-wag. This bird was sat on my TV aerial last night, whilst I was busy moving my empty recycling box from the front of my house to the back. I was pretty sure I could hear a curlew, but of course that it was impossible in a urban area, and it was a starling. Starlings are notorious mimics, and can even copy car alarms, but it is the first time I have heard them masquerading as a curlew. A starling is such a pretty looking bird if seen in the right light, I left some meal worms on the lawn and in the sunlight their feathers boast a shimmering green or iridescent purple.
I also have a resident blackbird who comes to visit my garden. The male lives up to their name but, confusingly, females are brown often with spots and streaks on their breasts. The bright orange- yellow beak and eye-ring is the obvious give away, for identifying the male bird. He can often be seen pottering around underneath the feeder, hoovering up dropped seeds. I think their mellow song on an evening is one of my most favourite sounds not only because it is one bird song I can distinguish, but of the positive and hopeful sound that resonates with me.
It just goes to prove that wherever you live, you can find nature all around you.”
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