NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Ranmore Common yesterday morning. Four inches of snow had fallen overnight. A Christmas Card cliche of snow and crystal-clear light, the ice crystals sending sparks of brilliance into the air. The stillness was eerie, the only sound being the pattering of the melting snow as it fell from the trees and onto the white cushion below. And that was the only sound. No birds. No birds at all. I walked for miles along the woodland rides, through dense forest and across clearings. Silence. I stopped and scanned tree tops, across wooded valleys, looking for the tell-tale signs of birds on the move, of feeding flocks. Nothing. In three hours, within the wood, I recorded a handful (c20) of mixed tits, two Nuthatches, four Goldfinches and seven Siskins. And a few Robins - we need them in the snow to keep up the Christmas theme, don't we... It wasn't much better overhead, with just a single Red Kite, a Common Buzzard and a few Wood Pigeons and corvids. This lack of birds is replicat...

February 1st. A chilly, grey and drizzly day outside. My SAD (seasonal affective disorder) credentials are kicking in - depressed, lethargic, overeating, irritable, feeling down and unsociable. The NHS website tries to be helpful and suggests these 10 steps to redemption: Keep Active, Get Outside, Keep Warm, Eat Healthily, See The Light, Take Up A New Hobby, See Friends and Family, Talk It Through, Join a Support Group, Seek Help... some of these do seem a bit drastic. I'm just fed up with the lack of daylight and the weather, I'm not living in Aleppo! I am following most of these suggestions already (if eating an apple directly after finishing a packet of biscuits counts as eating healthily that is). No, winter cannot hurry up enough and turn into spring as far as I'm concerned. Winter does, admittedly, have its own charm and it would take an emotionally bankrupt individual to not take joy from a heavy frost, Redwings and Fieldfares, er... Redwings and Fieldfares... did ...

A ringing alarm clock pierced the dark and woke me into a cold, still world. A glance out of the bedroom window confirmed that there was a heavy frost. The world looked pretty - from the twinkling stars down to the twinkling pavements - a winter wonderland that was soon to see me off to Beddington Sewage Farm. With a packed rucksack I ventured out of the back door to retrieve my bike from the garage, freezing to touch, not really all that inviting a prospect. The cold was chilling, but a four mile ride would soon warm me up. There was little traffic to detract me from watching my breath form into a grey vapour before my eyes. Apart from a fox dashing across the road in front of me my journey was uneventful, my eastward procession lit by the barely emerging sun. It all seemed portentous this dawning of the new day, full of hope and pregnant with possibility. Cycling over Hackbridge bridge and onto Mile Road opened up the farm on either side of me, the fields shockingly white with a se...

Winter. What, as birders, do we want from this particular season? If it is a hard one, with snow and freezing temperatures on the continent, together with biting easterlies sweeping across the North Sea, we can hope for an influx of wildfowl, thrushes and who know's what else. But as exciting as such times are, the birds will undoubtably suffer. Do we really want that to happen? The flip side is for there to be benign, unremarkable weather - a bit like what we are 'enjoying' in 2014-15. Not too cold, not too wet and not too windy. But with the 'ease' that such weather brings, the birding is largely predictable. Locally it seems as if nothing much has changed since late November. There are few flocks out on the fields but they are unremarkable in number and composition. The finch and thrush numbers are poor - just where are the Redpolls, Siskins and Bramblings? But we carry on looking, we still scan the flocks, and we still skywatch just in case. .. I spent a goo...

Very few Bramblings. Hardly any Redpolls or Siskins. No Waxwings and certainly no white-winged gulls. And there are no flocks of Hawfinches in that special valley. To be honest, on a local level  it is all a bit dreary. The thrush flocks are of a medium size, the Chaffinch and Linnet flocks are very ordinary and nothing to get the pulse racing is flying over. I always hope for a garden Goosander (overhead, not on the pond, that is just about the same size as the sawbill) or a trickle of Golden Plover, but even such modest winter expectations are not being met. It could all be a different tale within a few weeks, but at the moment the birding is utterly predictable.

What do you know? After sending the MV out into the garden to reignite the 'Warren Road Back Garden Moth Year List', and being successful with a Spring Usher, the past two nights trapping have produced... bugger all! Both nights have been very mild, mostly cloudy and I have even inspected the trap in the wee small hours dressed but in my jimjams - and not felt even chilly. I'm not being greedy, a Chestnut would have done! So, how do I break this blank spell? Make a sacrifice to the Moth Gods? Should I just accept that in suburbia at this time of year a blank night is the norm? Change the bulb? Ah, that jogs a memory. I seem to remember reading somewhere that you should change your MV bulb every season as it loses some of its ability to function at 100%. Is that something that the bulb manufacturers invented to ensure that we buy them more frequently? Whatever the truth is, I will replace the bulb tonight that is, admittedly, at least into its third year. There is no dou...

Back in the first week of December, standing in snow, I scanned the horizon and something didn't quite seem right. After several minutes (it was cold, my brain was going-slow) I realised what was troubling me. I was looking at a wall of green - a line of oak trees, some two hundred metres in length, still in full leaf. Most of this leaf was still green in colour, with little bronze and sickly ochre on show. Since then I've paid attention to what trees are still in leaf. Oaks are still hanging on, as are Silver Birch and Sycamore. I cannot remember this from previous winters, although I may have overlooked it in the past. The skeletal tree branches on a winter horizon are still being muffled by leaf, and that, to me, is puzzling. This week in North Downs and beyond land : I've dipped on the Belmont Waxwings four times; it is snowing again; I have high hopes of a good flyover this weekend.