Francis Hickenbottom's Nature Notes: 11th February, 2010.

Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.

11th February 2010 2009

The grey, misty weather that we have seen often during the past two weeks has not been very inviting when deciding whether or not to go out for a walk. The vegetation has looked particularly sad, with little evidence of growth.

However, I have noticed well-developed catkins on some hazel and I spotted hundreds of greenish-yellow shoots of celandine where gardeners had cleared away leaves beneath trees at Ackworth.

Despite the meagre signs of new life, there are interesting things to see. Some of the seed-cases or seed-heads of plants are worth a close look, such as those of red campion. The seeds of red campion are held loosely in the cup-shaped seed-heads. It takes a fairly vigorous breeze, or a knock from a passing animal, to scatter the seeds.

Last weekend, I completed work on the construction of two nest boxes, one for kestrel and the other for tawny owl. The kestrel box is open-fronted, with a branch fitted to the front to act as a perch, allowing the adults to sit close to the nest. For the tawny owl box, I decided to use the Dutch letter box design. This design is the same shape as a bluetit box but much larger. It has a 15cm hole for the entrance and an external ledge on which the emerging youngsters can sit.

A couple of the gardeners put up the tawny owl box in a wooded area of the school grounds a couple of days ago, during heavy snow showers, and yesterday they fitted the kestrel box, in trees overlooking a field.

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