March 9th, 1999

On the 3rd, after a gap of several weeks, I saw a group of about seven fieldfares near the school, in a hedgerow at the 'Meeting of the Waters'. This is at a point, upstream of the school, where a tributary joins the Went, alongside the field that used to be a cricket field. Fieldfares have been unusually scarce in this neighbourhood this winter. The last sighting was a month ago and was of a flock which was passing over the school. The place where I saw the most recent flock was where small groups were seen earlier in the winter and this makes me wonder whether those original birds are now passing through as they move back towards their breeding grounds. In a normal season, I would expect to see fieldfares using trees all over the grounds, so it does seem more than a coincidence that this group should be using the spot used by the fieldfares in early November. Redwings remain absent from the area and I have not seen or heard one for many weeks.

As the snowdrops begin to fade away, crocuses are coming into bloom. Although these garden varieties are not native plants, they can be useful to honeybees and other insects which are active at this time of year. In recent weeks, on mild days, bees have collected pale yellow pollen from snowdrops but now they can be seen with loads of vivid orange pollen from the crocuses. Unlike honey, pollen does not store very well so, in spring, bees are eager to collect fresh supplies. The pollen is the source of protein for the developing grubs and will be in great demand from now on as the bees increase their rate of reproduction to build up a large population in preparation for the main flowering season.

I am still waiting for the frogs in Great garden to produce the first blobs of frogspawn. Their lateness now seems even more puzzling to me because I was in the northern pennines, near Dufton,with a group of students at the weekend and we saw that the frogs in that area had started breeding, despite the harshness of the climate. The pools of water in which we saw frogspawn were on the edge of open moorland which is still in the grip of winter weather.