Winter Wonderland
You may think that with the severe onset of winter, most of our wildlife would now be holed up hibernating or sunning itself in warmer climates. While this is true of many species, some choose to tough it out, staying awake and active all winter long. In fact, some species of bird have even joined us from much colder countries such as Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
At the end of autumn, ABLE appeared to be a somewhat lifeless site, but the first snow and ice of winter has revealed it to be anything but…
As ABLE’s wildlife find food scarce, they reveal themselves more readily at our feeding stations or out and about feeding on whatever natural food is left. Take a look at this wood mouse; Andy and Mick were able to catch this little fella feeding near our entrance gate on some old bramble for about 10mins or more. Andy managed to get to within 4ft of it to take this photo (right).
Footprints left by our wild friends are an obvious indicator as to how busy things are, especially at night. Long lines of tracks cross our footpaths and drive way. Unfortunately, we are unable to identify many of the tracks but some are a little easier, like this photo of the fox tracks (left).
We also get some new bird species moving into the area in winter. Three big sightings in the last week are a Curlew – very unusual winter visitor which really should by now be sat on a mud bank at one of our costal estuaries, a Barn Owl and a more regular visitor, the Woodcock.
Most of our other birds spend their time on the river - species such as Teal, Goldeneye, Wigeon and Goosander join us as their more regular haunts become frozen over.
Winter is always an interesting time at ABLE, always full of surprises, get in touch to find out more.
