homes & gardens INDEX
February in the garden
You might feel that February is a dull and lifeless month when there’s not much that can be done to lighten the gloom. Well think again!
Words Caroline Knight T
his is just about the best month in the garden for wildlife-watching because the lack of leaves means that we can not only see the elegant shapes of trunks, stems and branches, but we can also enjoy watching visitors to the garden too. If that’s still not quite enough
excitement for you to celebrate, you might want to dwell upon the fact that we gain approximately two and a half minutes of daylight per day during this month – so although it could well be snowy, frosty or damp, the view from the window is at least a little lighter.
Because winter is pretty diffi cult for wildlife, particularly for small birds, they tend to forage for food from dawn until dusk, making spotting them relatively easy. There are large numbers of migratory birds such as ducks and geese, but also winter visitors such as redwings, fi eldfares and even waxwings. Shrubs and trees that are brilliant
for providing berries for birds include cotoneaster, pyracantha, skimmia,
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snowberry, viburnum, hawthorn and a whole host of crab apples including the popular Red Sentinel. Nature, being a cunning and clever
designer, allows fruit to ripen at different times. For example, birds will take the berries from holly and cotoneaster quite early in the season, while the rather bitter crab apples become slightly sweeter as they ripen and will often be left on and under trees until February.
Wildfowl and other winter visitors
Now is also the perfect time to watch ducks, geese and swans. There are high numbers of migratory geese to enjoy, including Brent geese, Bewick’s and whooper swans. Winter offers a great chance to spot some of the less common ducks such as pintail, goosander and red-breasted merganser. Visiting wading
birds on the south coast include
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common scoters, great northern divers and red-necked grebes.
But did you know that even your
friendly garden blackbird might be a migrant from Eastern Europe? The same applies to chaffi nches, robins and many other birds including starlings. In fact, around 40% of all birds migrate in some form or another, but not all of them do it every year. An irruption, for example, is an arrival of a fl ock of birds that do not usually visit the UK regularly. Birds such as waxwings do this when they have exhausted their food supply in Scandinavia and the event might only take place every 10 years or so.
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