As usual, some of the star birds we’d hoped for, such as the great-spotted woodpecker and the sparrowhawk, didn’t put in an appearance as we completed this year’s hour of observation for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
All but three of the eleven species that we recorded visited the bird feeders, currently stocked with peanuts, sunflower hearts and Peckish bird seed. A cock pheasant and a blackbird foraged down the garden while a dunnock hopped about at the foot of the hedge.
Around 50 wood pigeons suddenly flew up from the wood, perhaps disturbed by a sparrowhawk, but not one of them visited the garden.
In the aftermath of Storm Goretti, which thankfully passed by without incident here, female pheasants sit hunched up in the morning rain.
A sparrowhawk zooms up over the hedge, turns 180 degrees without catching any of the birds on the feeders and continues on its rounds.
A wren hops about on the frozen surface of the pond and pecks at the overhanging vegetation, disappearing for a while as it explores under a clump of sedge.
The great tit’s head markings are a cross between a superhero mask and a muffler.
Four blackbirds are steadily stripping berries from a hawthorn alongside the Horticentre car park at Overton.
With the prospect of days getting longer, I feel the urge to start making a few natural history notes again.
Recent highlights have included sparrowhawks on their rounds again. So far we haven’t spotted one making a kill on one of its swooping surprise visit to our bird feeders.
It’s usually a smaller, greyish brown male visiting, which pauses for a few minutes break in the hedge or crab apple, then continues towards the woodland edge where its progress is marked by groups of wood pigeons flying up and away from the treetops.
One afternoon as I unloaded the car at the front of the house, a sparrowhawk sped past just one foot above the pavement, climbing swiftly to clear a tall larch fence and heading between the houses to the back gardens beyond.
Christmas Day
An immaculate-looking cock pheasant is pecking around near the bird feeders alongside three females. They’re not alone. There are another three females down by the pond, four checking out the hedge by the shed and more of them foraging over the veg beds, some of them pecking at all that’s left of our cavolo nero. It’s probably the calm before the storm for these pheasants as Boxing Day is a traditional day for a shoot.
Christmas Day sketches: holly, bay, Viola tricolor and a poorly chaffinch.
My father used to meet up with his shooting friends at Terrington, in the Howardian Hills, North Yorkshire, not far from Castle Howard. He’d bring back a few pheasants – two would be a brace of pheasants – which would hang from the shelves in our storeroom, smelling increasingly gamey until my mum plucked them.
Boxing Day Shoot, c.1962, Fred Green’s cottage. Fred Green, who I think is the figure in the centre, was the gamekeeper. The man in the beret, front row, right, is Eric Chalkley, who lived on Stanley Road, Wakefield and who, I believe, worked for the National Coal Board.
Boxing Day Walk
We join a motley procession. Two pied ponies with young riders are walking on, guided by an older couple, the man kitted out in yellow high viz jacket. Following ten paces behind them are four hikers in animated conversation then, another ten paces behind, a man with a dog.
We emerge from a footpath to tag along at the end. There’s no way that we can stride out to overtake them on this narrow country lane, so we adopt the measured clip, clop pace of the party, a relaxed pace that I could imagine a party of medieval pilgrims adopting.
Shepherd, Wakefield Mystery Plays
Chaucer’s pilgrims upped their pace when they saw the towers of Canterbury Cathedral up ahead We still call this pace between walking on and a gallop a canter.
Periwinkle growing in the hawthorn hedge.
It was spring-like enough on Boxing Day for a song thrush to be singing its varied thrice-repeated snatches of song. A robin sang its wistful trickle of a song in the hedgerow.
No spring flowers as such yet but a few periwinkle flowers are already showing on straggling stems in the hedge near some old cottages on Coxley Lane.
8.45 am: We hear a flock of grey geese – probably pink-footed – approaching. They’re flying low, heading slightly north of east, towards the Calder Valley. I guess there are about 200 in a couple of ragged ‘Vs’.
We had a sprinkling of snow overnight which remains powdery all day. I sweep it from the drive rather than scoop it away.
Struggling to draw garden birds flitting around the feeders, I realise why I like to get out drawing ducks, geese and swans resting and preening at the water’s edge.
As these smaller birds move so quickly, my aim is to just watch one of them until it flits away then attempt to draw the whole pose in one quick drawing.
A goldfinch at the feeder can be there for a minute but a blue tit can be in and out in less than a second. Sparrows usually settle for longer, which is helpful as each one has slightly different plumage, the males particularly: the face and ‘bib’ markings vary a lot.
Drawing whatever bird comes along for an hour or so is quite a session but if I could keep doing that I think it would improve my ability to observe.
Drawing from a photograph or a stuffed bird would be a good way to take in the smaller details but to get an impression of the life and individual character of a bird I need to stick with these flitting about garden birds.
I’ve long struggled with soft, high-pitched bird calls. I’ve never been able to pick out the contact calls of redwings migrating after dark, despite a astonished birder friend insisting “You must have heard that! – they’re all over the place.”
And, sadly, the song of the grasshopper warbler, which reminds me of a fishing reel unreeling, is something I haven’t heard for over 25 years, although it’s possible that’s simply because they haven’t returned to the bushes and brambles by the river in my local patch.
So my latest NHS state-of-the-art hearing aids have been an eye-opener – or should that be ear-opener – for me. On a normally quiet stretch of tree-lined towpath in a cutting by the canal we’ve now got chiff-chaffs in stereo, just in from Spain, Portugal and North Africa, proclaiming their territories.
Chaffinch: 2
Equally strident, the ‘tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher’ of the great tit. Less strident, but loud and cheerful, the chaffinch hurries through an emphatically chirpy song.
There’s currently some landscaping going on on the far side of the River Calder here at Addingford, Horbury, but the biggest improvement to the river’s appearance would be if we could reduce the amount of plastic, hanging in tatters from the bankside vegetation.
Coxley Beck, 8 March 2025.
Plastic isn’t such a problem in Coxley Beck but there is occasional pollution from a small water treatment unit below the dam.
Spring migrants have arrived in Stoneycliffe Wood with dozens of chiff-chaffs singing their repetitive signature song alongside the equally strident great tits with their ‘tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher’ routine.
Only the robin adds a touch of wistfulness with its trickle of a song. If there were any early arrival willow warblers I couldn’t pick them out.
At Nostell, in the Pleasure Grounds woodland, we heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming. The old partly decayed sweet chestnuts make good sounding boards. As we entered the wood we heard one calling insistently – that’s not something we’re familiar with – and observed a pair come together on a branch high in the tree canopy and there appeared to be a rather formal presentation of some food item: a bit of courtship feeding.
We don’t see as many green woodpeckers as we used to. I don’t remember having seen one or heard its ‘yaffle’ call for a year or more so we were glad to see a pair just above the weir at Horbury Junction on Monday morning. As we walked along the riverside path we disturbed one on the ground. It flew up into one of the riverside trees and was joined by a second bird.
Spring migrants are arriving but the last of our winter visitors are still with us. A week ago we saw a small flock of redwings join a larger flock of starlings on the grassy slopes of the valley.
On the same day on a quiet stretch of the river 28 wigeon have gathered below the steep bank. We’ve seen them grazing in the adjacent field between the river and the canal.
Wigeon have been regulars, along with a few gadwall, but more unusual was the pair of teal we spotted, twirling around on a smooth section of the river and apparently snapping up insects.
Goosanders have been regulars too. We saw two pairs resting on a strip of shingle at the foot of the bank by The Wyke, looking as if they might be considering nesting there (which isn’t likely). Today there were two lone males there.
This morning a pair of oystercatchers were circling over the river and landing on the adjacent bank, piping enthusiastically.
A lapwing has been diving and calling over an arable field over the last couple of weeks. I hope it stays and raises a brood.
Latest trail cam shots from our back garden: pheasants, blackbird, a pair of robins and – what are you doing there?! – Butch (yes, he really is called Butch), next door’s Labrador but my favourite shot is the wood pigeon at dawn, looking hopefully up at the feeders.
