Nature Notes April

Heavy rain continued throughout the month with only a few warm dry days.

SIGHTINGS
Birds:  Carrion Crows, Wood Pigeons, Magpies, Stock Doves, Jays, Buzzards, Heron, Mallard mDucks, Green/Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Cuckoo, Nuthatchs, Treecreepers, Stonechats, Tree Pipits, Siskins, Reed Buntings, Chiff Chaffs, Blackcaps, Willow Warblers, Blackbirds, Robins, Song Thrushes, Mistle Thrushes, Wrens, Goldcrests, Coal/Blue/Great/Long-tailed Tits, Chaffinches, Bullfinches, Goldfinches, Greenfinches,.
Mammals:  Grey Squirrels, Roe Deer, Foxes, Pipistrelle Bats.
Reptiles:  Slow Worms, Common Lizards, Grass Snake
Plants in flower:  Gorse, Flowering Currant, Broom, Laurel, Bog Myrtle, Primrose, Hazel, Willow.
Butterflies:  Orange Tip, Holly Blue, Large White, Small White, Peacock, Red Admiral, Speckled Wood.
Insects:  Bees, Wasps, Flies.
Pond Life:  Pond Skaters, Sticklebacks, Whirlygig Beetles.

Tree Pipits have returned from migration to the cenral heathland and heard calling from pine tree tops.
Pipistrelle Bats were detected at dusk by mid-April.
The call of a Cuckoo was heard late in the month from the north side of the Site.

Nature Fact

Why don’t we observe adult wood Pigeons feeding young out of the nest as other species do? (A question raised with Chris Packham by SBG monitor at a recent meeting).
Answer:- Breeding Wood Pigeons feed their young with a liquid slush produced and stored in their crop. The young are never fatter than when in the nest being fed on this rich source of food. When the time is right, the parents abandon the young in the nest leaving them to fend for themselves and is the reason they are seen experimenting, pecking at various items in the hope they may be palatable.