Despite the dreary weather this month, there has still been some evidence of the coming spring.

Going out for lunch at a local pub on Tuesday, we could hear the argumentative 'caw caw' calls of rooks at their nests above the sound of the traffic going past the adjoining roundabout.
The rookery is sited on the roundabout itself and in relatively young trees but it has been there for several years now and appears to be expanding. There are at least twenty nests with more on trees further away.

Plantlife slowly awakes

I've seen wild arum leaves poking up in the garden and it won't be too long before our sweet violets begin to flower.

Sweet violets do smell sweet, unlike dog violets which don't smell and flower a month later. However, dog violets are the larval food plants of several fritillary butterflies so they need a change of name!

And February is the month when the sap rises up the trunks of silver birch trees and so no doubt some folk will be making birch sap wine by carefully tapping a tree. This does no harm to the tree as long as the tap hole is properly plugged up afterwards.

I recall going to a very remote and rarely visited Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve when I was carrying out a survey there and afterwards being offered a glass of homemade birch sap wine by the resident voluntary warden. It was very welcome on a cold wet day!

Derby City Local Nature Reserve (LNR) set to lure Little Ringed Plovers back

The Sanctuary Local Nature Reserve was set up by Derby City Council on Pride Park in the city some twenty years ago.
Plans to convert part of it into a cycle track in 2013 were eventually defeated but not before part of the reserve had been bulldozed.
Now the good news is that the city council has obtained funding to redress the damage and the work will begin shortly.

The bulldozed area will be reprofiled, small pools will be created and new gravel patches will be laid in the hope that little ringed plovers (LRPs), which used to nest on the LNR, will return and nest once more.

Neonics Banned

More good news (and don't we need some) came recently in the form of a ban on the use of bee-killing neonicotinoids which will no longer be allowed to be used on sugar beet even in 'emergency' when the crop is threatened by a virus transmitted by insects.
UK Government rejects 'emergency' use of neonicotinoids - BirdGuides
The Wildlife Trusts' Joan Edwards said: "There is simply no place in modern sustainable agriculture for highly toxic pesticides that kill bees and poison soils and rivers. Neonicotinoids were originally banned in the UK in 2017 but were granted repeat authorisations for use, despite explicit guidance against their approval.
"Many farmers across England have already turned their backs on these devastating chemicals. It's time for British Sugar to take greater responsibility, and pay growers a fair price for producing beets without neonicotinoids".

Surviving these long cold nights

Small birds like wrens, long tailed tits and treecreepers lose heat quickly despite their thick layers of feathers. This makes their survival through these sixteen hours of darkness and cold a real challenge which they meet in very different ways.

Wrens roost collectively in tree cavities or in bird nest boxes if they can find one. Up to 50 have been seen leaving a nest box at dawn!
By contrast, long tailed tits simply find an evergreen bush and huddle up to each other as close as they can.

Not so secretive after all

This little video shows a water rail feeding in a stream at Calke Park in the south of the county. I came across it on the website of the Long Eaton Natural History Society.

Usually, these very secretive birds only appear in the open in icy conditions when they are forced out of cover to feed.
This one however is feeding quite happily in a flowing stream: Water Rail at Calke Explore - YouTube.

You more often hear their pig-like squeals coming from a reedbed. 

Water rails are night migrants, continental birds flying across the North Sea unseen by anyone.

The Derby Cathedral peregrines have caught more than one, providing the only indication that they pass over the city by night.
The floodlighting enables the falcons to pick out and catch any night migrant that happens to be passing low over the city.
My study of the remains of prey items there showed that species caught also included little grebes, a corncrake no less, snipe, jack snipe and many woodcock. Quite a gourmet diet!

On a dark December night in 2010, our webcams captured footage of a woodcock being brought back to the cathedral tower, finally providing the first evidence from anywhere in the world of the peregrine's ability to catch prey after dark. Quite a coup for the project!