Hugh’s News – 6 March 2022

As I write this in the back garden, the warm sunshine makes it feel as though spring has finally arrived properly.  A Wren is calling loudly from cover and 3 Dunnocks are engaging in their complex, group courtship rituals.  High above, a cronking Raven flies earnestly eastwards – they are usually nesting by now so I wonder where it is headed.

I have recently noticed several Song Thrushes belting out their beautiful songs with the typical, repeated phrases.  It all makes a welcome change from the recent poor weather and the sad news headlines.

I noticed the result of new hedge laying of a line of hawthorns at Park Fields in Parkgate.  It was finished in good time for the new growth to provide cover and food for birds.  The wet weather had led to a good growth of toadstools (or mushrooms?) on a rotten trunk. Can anyone help me with an identification?  I normally associate fungi with the autumn, so it was nice to find these now.

Bill found an obliging Kestrel hovering while he (Bill, not the Kestrel!) was having coffee at Net’s Cafe near Denhall Lane, Burton.

Bob and Hilary Beale wrote to tell us about a Buzzard visiting their Spital garden. They had been told that a buzzard frequented one of the large ancient beeches at the bottom of their garden, but it was often surprisingly difficult to spot among the congested branches and ivy until it moves.  It perches on a fence, sometimes sharing the position with a couple of magpies or crows which ignore it.  After about ten minutes it leaves the fence and alights on the freshly dug soil, presumably looking for worms, and then returns to the fence repeating the manoeuvre a couple of times before flying off.  Once it flew across the garden followed by another buzzard. They await developments!  The photo is not Bob’s Buzzard but an old one of mine taken on the Wirral Way a little way beyond Neston.

Hugh Stewart