Blog Archive (2) Posts Made in February 2025

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Wonderful Woodcock!

Tuesday, February 25th 2025

The Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) is a wading bird with resident and wintering populations in the UK. Some populations stay in the UK year round, breeding and wintering here. Other populations migrate to the UK from Russia and Finland for winter.

Foxglove Covert has a successful population of Woodcock thanks to the large area of willow carr (wet woodland) on the reserve. Despite being a “wading” bird, woodcocks prefer woodland habitats with dense vegetation as well as damp, clear areas of ground where they can feed. They use their long beaks to probe leaf litter and soil for earthworms and other invertebrates.

Woodcocks are most active at dawn and dusk, and tend to feed at night. This means that visitors to Foxglove Covert will rarely see them; Woodcocks are secretive, shy and extremely well camouflaged. However, there is still a chance of seeing one while wandering around the wooded areas of the reserve, especially near opening and closing times. You might just disturb one while walking around, so look out for a chunky wader which zig-zags away in flight to find cover away from noisy walkers.

At Foxglove Covert, areas of the willow carr are coppiced in a rotation, so that there is variation in tree age and canopy cover throughout the reserve. This means there is always a mix of open and enclosed areas, providing Woodcock with sufficient feeding, roosting and nesting areas. Last winter volunteers created a glade in one of the coppice areas, which has provided an additional open area for Woodcocks, ideal for feeding. Woodcock have been filmed on a trail camera feeding in the glade multiple times this winter.

Although Woodcock numbers are difficult to monitor due to the species being so elusive, we hope to continue managing woodland habitats so that Woodcocks can thrive at Foxglove Covert.

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Listing Birds

Thursday, February 20th 2025

I like making lists, and as a birdwatcher I keep a list of all the birds I see each year. I haven’t had the chance to go far on my birdwatching trips this year; limited to my garden, local patches in walking distance, and of course Foxglove Covert. So, my list is still quite short for 2025, and full of the usual suspects; blackbird, robin, jackdaw, et cetera. But one day this week was a particularly good day for birdwatching at Foxglove Covert, and I saw three new species in one day.

Arriving in the morning, I glanced out the window to the Field Centre garden, and immediately caught sight of a Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla) in amongst the Lesser Redpolls (Acanthis cabaret), happily enjoying the niger seed. And then – another, and another, and another – at least 8 Brambling in the garden. The last sighting of Brambling at Foxglove was in early December 2024, so it was lovely to see them back at the reserve, and a first for 2025 for me.

Only a couple of hours later, while clearing some vegetation around Spigot Mere, Reserve Manager Carl flushed a Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) from the edge of the pond, and we watched as it frantically flew away. It was a very brief encounter, as encounters with Snipe often are. It has been a little while since I’ve seen a Snipe, so it was a nice bird to add to my 2025 list.

The final new bird of the year was the Little Egret (Egretta garzetta). These small herons are a beautiful bright white with contrasting black legs and a shock of yellow on the feet. The rapid expansion of the Little Egret’s range means that for me, growing up in North Yorkshire, this bird has gone from a rare sight to a relatively common one. But I still hadn’t had the chance to spot one in 2025. One was seen by volunteers on the lake just two weeks earlier, and I’ve been keeping a look out for it ever since. It was therefore a delight when we caught sight of it stood near the lake, just before it took off and flew slowly away, a stark white spot over the treetops.

Hopefully many more interesting birds will show up at Foxglove Covert in 2025!

 

- El, Reserve Ranger

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