Nature Notes

The chiffchaffs are back calling in the nature park (CNP), for me a great moment announcing the approach of spring. This year 10th March was the magic date.

The song thrush has been singing non-stop near us from way back in February, starting around 5am – a delight or a complete pain depending on your mood at that time of day! Both these species tend to sing from tree-tops and can be easy to spot before the trees are in leaf. The thrush is easy enough to recognize from its pale brown appearance and speckled front, but the chiffchaff isn’t as big as a robin, so just looks like any little bird up in the trees – you know it by its call, a prominent steady repeating of 2 or 3 high notes. There are likely to be at least 6 or 7 of them around CNP if past years are anything to go by.

Another highlight is on the way, the first of the cowslips in the meadow by the car park are just beginning to show. Unbelievable when you compare with the height the meadow grows to through the season. Celandine has been around a while already and there’s wood anemone if you know where to look.

At the recent Friends of Caldy Valley AGM we had an informative talk by Iona Cowell from Record, the local county body for recording wildlife sightings. They’re going to be taking part in the City Nature Challenge in April (25 th -28 th ) when there’s a big push at encouraging people to send in records of what they’ve seen using the iNaturalist App (Apple, Android).

We’ll report a bit more about this soon but you can check out Record’s website (record-lrc.co.uk) then follow Projects.