December in the Valley
Weatherwise November has certainly been a month of change. We’ve seen some lovely sunny days with higher than normal temperature, but there’s also been very heavy rain and the wind has finally arrived.
Weather aside the highlight of the winter in the Valley is the arrival of large flocks of wildfowl that are to be seen on the lakes. The birds prefer open views so they can see potential danger approaching, so it is the sites that have not yet been surrounded by tree growth such as Moor Green Lakes and Tongham Pool, that attract the largest numbers of geese and ducks. The open nature of these sites makes observing the wildfowl easy and it’s a spectacle not to be missed.
 Moor Green Lakes is one of the best sites in the Valley for watching waterfowl. Birds to look out for at this time of year include Great Crested Grebe, Gadwall, Pochard (pictured), Teal, Shoveller, Tufted Duck and Wigeon, as well as the Coot, the emblem of the Blackwater Valley Countryside.
Waterfowl aside, do watch out for visiting Blackcaps, which have been overwintering in Britain in increasing numbers since the 1960s. They eat a wide range of fruits and berries and suburban gardens play an important role in their survival. If you have any berry-bearing shrubs such as Cotoneaster or Pyracantha in your garden they may well be visited by Blackcaps. Another garden visitor worth looking for is the Goldfinch (our bird of the month). This colourful bird will be feeding on the seeds of thistles and teasels.
 Foxes are in prime breeding condition with thick red coats and bushy tails. The bare winter countryside should help make them much easier to spot and with the mating season peaking early in the New Year there’s every chance of spotting their increased activity in daylight hours.
If you do get worken up at night by some horrific screams it’s most likely to be Foxes. The Vixens are both noisy and smelly, advertising their presence to the males with alarming screams that can be heard throughout the night
Although this is not the time of year you expect to see any butterflies, if the weather is unseasonally warm and sunny one day you may see the distinctive sulphur-yellow of a male Brimstone, one of our longest-lived butterflies. They can survive for 10 months or more.
Whilst out walking in old woodland do look for old pieces of rotten wood coloured a bright blue-green, as though they’ve been treated with preservative. The staining comes from the Green Cup fungus Chlorociboria aeruginascens. If you are really lucky you may also see the fungal fruit bodies, delicate blue-green cups sprouting from the rotten wood, which are less common. Also look out for the beautiful scarlet Elf Cup fungus Sarcoscypha coccinea, which is also found on rotten damp wood. It has cups often three or four centimetres in diameter and provides a splash of colour in what is often an otherwise dark woodland. Both fungi belong to the cup and flask group of fungi Ascomycetes whose microscopie spores explode from the surface of the cup when it is touched.
Did you know that garden snails hibernate over winter? They crawl into sheltered corners and secrete mucilage which dries into a tough membrane. They use this to ‘glue’ their shell to a solid surface which will protect them from predators and minimise water loss. So if you are troubled by snails this is a good time to search out the hibernation sites and move the residents on.
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