With a feeling in the air now that spring really is just around the corner, the daffodils in the garden are shooting upwards and the snowdrops are fully open at last. With plenty of bird song bursting from the hedges, only one thing has been missing. Usually by February we have song thrushes singing, and sometime a local mistle thrush too. So far this year there has been nothing from either of these two species. Their beautiful songs are the real herald of spring as far as I am concerned and they often nest in the hedge just across the lane from my house. But today a song thrush appeared in the garden. Not singing (maybe a female) but at least poking around in the borders which are all left uncut until later in the year, to harbour the maximum mount of natural food for anything that needs it. Looking back through my notes, I haven’t seen a song thrush in the garden since October! Hope she’s here to stay for a while.
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About wildlifegardening
Jenny Steel was a Plant Ecologist at Oxford University before becoming a writer. She has more than 20 years experience of writing about and teaching ecology, natural history and wildlife gardening. She is also a photographer, journalist and former plant nursery owner, and a lecturer and tutor in adult education. She has appeared on a variety of radio and television programmes including Gardener’s World with Alan Titchmarsh, and she presented a series of items on the BBC 2 gardening show, How Does Your Garden Grow. She has worked with and written for a variety of organisations including the Royal Horticultural Society, Natural England, Atropos, Ernest Charles, the Adult Residential Colleges Association (ARCA), Haiths, Usborne Books, Complete Gardens, Oxfordshire County Council, the charity Growing Native and several of the Wildlife Trusts. She is also the Garden Bird Guru for the wild bird food company JustAddBirds of which she was a co-founder. The Emmy Award winning film company Panache Productions are currently making a film about her wildlife garden in South Shropshire. She has written 10 books on wildlife gardening. Her website can be found at www.wildlife-gardening.co.uk and her bird food company at www.JustAddBirds.co.uk
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What a lovely post and an image of a throstle you have there. As for my Song Thrush or should I say Thrushes, their singing has been unrelenting. Where I live, the song can be heard virtually every day, well before dawn and has been continuous since November. Like other confusing Phenology indicators, the timing of this event is increasingly earlier, year on year. Because of this, I no longer note their first attempts at singing.
Good post again, keep it up.
Tony Powell
I’ve been rather concerned that I haven’t heard one here yet. We had a very dry year here last year and I hope that hasn’t affected breeding success.