The Times A Year in Nature Notes. Derwent May

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      PIGEONS AND DOVES breed nearly all the year round, and in the sunshine are already showing signs of spring. Wood pigeons can be seen making their aerial displays. They fly sharply up into the air from a roof or treetop, clap their wings, then glide down. They may do this several times before they settle again. They are laying claim to a territory on the land beneath them, and showing off to potential mates.

      Collared doves are singing on television aerials: their loud triple coo is sometimes mistaken for a cuckoo’s call, but the cuckoos at present are all in central or southern Africa. Collared doves like to look around when they are perched, stretching their long, flexible necks and peering about with an anxious expression. Town, or feral, pigeons, which are mainly descended from wild rock doves, make their grunting, groaning song from holes in walls.

      In the woods, the little heart-shaped leaves of sweet violet are beginning to push aside the leaf mould.

      

15th January

      MANY SMALL CREATURES may be revealed if a piece of bark is broken off a fallen tree trunk. Woodlice lurk in the darkness of the rotting wood in order to keep moist, with several of them often clustered close together to make the process more efficient. One species of woodlouse rolls up, when exposed, into a shiny ball that looks as if it is armour-plated, and drops to the ground to escape. At one time, these little rolled-up crustaceans used to be prescribed as medicine by quack doctors, because of their resemblance to a pill.

      Centipedes may also be found lying under the bark in winter, keeping very still, but they too come to life when exposed to light and air, and fall to the ground writhing violently as they go. This startles and confuses a bird that might want to eat them.

      The bark may also conceal millipedes – which do not have a full thousand legs, but have two pairs of legs on each segment of their body, as opposed to the centipedes, which only have one pair on each segment. On warm nights, centipedes go hunting for other tiny animals, while millipedes and woodlice eat dead plant matter, such as soft, rotting leaves.

      

16th January

      SNOWDROPS ARE IN flower under the trees at the edge of damp lawns, and their leaves are coming up everywhere in woods. The pure white bells nod daintily on the green stalks; if you lift their heads and look inside, you see green, crescent-shaped blotches. They have a strong, sweet scent. The flat, grey-green leaves continue to grow after the flowers have opened. In some woods, especially in warm places such as the Inner Hebrides, they will soon be covering the whole woodland floor like a fall of snow. On valley sides, they can look like flowing white streams. They are members of the daffodil family.

      A new voice in the woods in late January is that of the stock dove, whose song is a soft, rumbling ‘woo, woot’ that is easily overlooked. The bird too is elusive, since it is much shyer than the wood pigeon. It is a blue-grey dove, with a green sheen on its neck, and without the conspicuous white wing-bars and white neck-mark of the wood pigeon. Instead, it has a noticeable dark edge to its wings. Stock doves suffered badly from eating chemical seed dressings in the 1950s, but their numbers have since recovered.

      There has been a considerable influx of waxwings from Scandinavia. These striking pink birds, with a crest like a quiff and red and yellow marks on their wings, feed on the decaying berries in hawthorn hedges, and on cotoneaster berries in places like supermarket car parks and roundabouts. At present they are steadily moving inland from the east coast.

      

17th January

      HAZEL CATKINS ARE beginning to turn yellow as the pollen forms in them. But even on the same bushes as these loose-swinging catkins, others are still small and hard. Last year’s lime tree seeds, like miniature drumsticks attached to a wing, and last year’s hornbeam seeds, like Chinese lanterns, can also still be seen here and there on the branches. On ash trees, there are still dense clusters of seeds, or keys, very dark and damp-looking.

      Black-headed gulls are beginning to acquire their chocolate-brown summer hoods. In winter, when many of them come inland, they have only a small mark behind the eye, but already more of the head is getting darker. Sometimes this process begins with another dark mark next to the first, like a pair of inverted commas. Juvenile black-headed gulls can be picked out by the brown bar on their wings and their black tail-band. Some of them stay on playing fields when the adults have gone to their nesting colonies.

      

18th January

      THERE IS MORE life stirring in the woods. Grey squirrel males are chasing the females, with two or three of them sometimes joining in the pursuit: they go round and round the trunks and along the branches, with much excited chatter and daring leaps from tree to tree. Green woodpeckers are beginning to make their mating and territorial call: this is a soft, mellow laugh, easily distinguishable from the harsh, clattering laugh they make when they are alarmed.

      The small, bright green leaves of wood sorrel are coming through on damp woodland banks. They have long stems and three heart-shaped leaflets with folds down the middle. These leaves are very sensitive and mobile: they close up when they are exposed to bright light, when it rains, and when night falls. The flimsy white flowers, with pink or purple veins, will not open until April.

      

19th January

      ON ROCKY BEACHES all round the coast, turnstones are turning over the pebbles with their beaks to see what crabs or other sea creatures they can find beneath them.

      Sometimes it is the clicking of the pebbles that draws attention to them, because they have mottled brown backs that camouflage them well against a background of dark shingle and seaweed. They also frequent sandy shores where there is a chance of finding mussels. They are winter visitors from the north, some of them from as far afield as Greenland and Canada. Before they leave for their nesting grounds in spring, their backs will turn a rather beautiful tortoiseshell and orange.

      Another winter visitor from the Arctic is the purple sandpiper, which is sometimes seen in the company of turnstones. It has purplish-brown plumage, and is often very tame. It pokes about among the seaweed but does not flip stones over like the turnstones.

      

20th January

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