Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and more

A Happy New Year to all our readers and friends. It’s good to hear that these notes are read all over the world. We start the New Year 2021 with the pandemic in full swing, schools closed, and people having to exercise around the parish. Yet during lockdown 3 our wildlife is even more important to us, and it’s not disappointing you, judging by the number of excellent reports I get. For scarcity value the sighting of lesser spotted woodpeckers in Cotton Edmunds is probably the extreme highlight, but views of both barn and tawny owls, water rail, common snipe, cettis warblers, goldcrests, oystercatchers, whooper swans and pink footed geese at Hockenhull are close behind.

The playing fields have daily counts of hundreds of fieldfare and red wing whilst song and mistle thrushes, blackbirds, and nuthatch can be seen in and around the village and churchyard. Groups of up to 20 goldfinches have been feeding in village gardens and we have had coal, blue, great, and long tailed tits on bird feeders in the garden. Rare sightings of tree sparrows with their distinctive brown heads have also been seen, having been absent from the parish for many years. There have been a small flock along the canal at Rowton, and at Hockenhull Platts. One bird which has caused great surprise for many watchers has been an immature cormorant which took residence in several places on trees along the canal. These large fish eating birds are more common in coastal areas, but often come inland especially in winter. It is said that they eat up to a kilogram (2 pounds) or so of fish a day, and there is almost always one or two at The Pit but there can be as many as 20 on the lake down at Hockenhull, with several sitting on posts with their wings hanging out to dry.

The churchyard is a good place to see and hear nuthatches. These starling sized birds can be extremely noisy and often sit at the top of yew trees or the tall trees on the Village Green, calling to each other. They are birds that spend a lot of time crawling both up and down trunks of trees looking for insects. They are equipped with an extra backward facing claw that enables them to do this. The similar sized, mouse like treecreeper on the other hand, only crawls up a trunk. Other birds to look out for in the churchyard at this time of year are robins and wrens, long tailed, blue and great tits, chaffinches, dunnock, goldcrests, fieldfare and redwing, song and mistle thrushes, blackbirds, starlings, jackdaw and crows. You might also be lucky to spot or hear great spotted woodpeckers high up in the trees, whilst in the past green woodpeckers have made the occasional appearance foraging on the lawn in front of the church.

I can’t end these notes without commenting on the amount of rainfall that has occurred in the area over the last two years. When I first came to Christleton it was estimated that the annual rainfall was about 17 ½ inches or 450mm. In 2019 we recorded 52 inches or 1300mm, and this last year saw levels reach over 48 inches or 1200mm. If you walk around the Parish you will have noticed how muddy the footpaths are, how the dark brown fallen leaves from the autumn are still lying around, decomposing and filling the gutters. It seems hard to believe now that after many years of worry about water levels, The Pit is constantly full, and the overflow pipes were running with water on at least 5 occasions last year.