Your GARDENING FORTNIGHT
Val explains how our feathered friends have been faring
Iam not known for my technical wizardry, because our wi-fi signal used to be almost non-existent here. If I had to use the mobile, I would have to walk a hundred yards into the middle of the field in front of my house and the weather was not always conducive. Consequently, Twitter, or whatever it’s called now, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat passed me by. The signal’s much better now and I have surprised myself by loading an app called Merlin to record and identify birdsong. When I wake early in the morning, I set it up for ten minutes, because birds are very chatty early on – a bit like me. As evening wears on, I set it for another ten minutes.
Identifying which birds are singing
It is a blessing in disguise, for the singing birds light up in yellow on the app. As a person born with awful hearing, forced to wear hearing aids, I’m finally learning to identify their songs because there’s a play back facility. I hadn’t realised that two birds sing far more than any others. The undisputed champ is definitely the melodic blackbird, either singing to attract a mate or defend his territory. Blackbirds have enjoyed the wet conditions this year because the soft ground has allowed then to collect lots of earthworms. Their song is mellow and rich at this time of the year, because they are still breeding. I can often hear three or four at once, and I can see males and females perched high in the canopy.
The trilling robin also seems to sing forever and much of that is due to defending a prime territory and I’ve often watched scrapping robins in winter. I’m a great admirer, because robins sing all year long, except when moulting. Their song starts high and then descends and they have been mistaken for nightingales.
Moth numbers are dwindling and why this matters
Robins and blackbirds will carry on hunting in well-lit urban places into the night. Street lights aren’t all good news though. Watching the brilliant Chris Packham in this year’s Springwatch he explained that researchers, from the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College in London, have made an interesting discovery about moth behaviour and artificial light. Moths align the top of their bodies to the light source and this behaviour explains why moths seem to circle lights again and again. I can clearly remember the huge moths that came into the kitchen when I was a child in the 1950s, because they scared me.
When moths continually circle the light in this way, it’s exhausting and disorientating for them. They are unable to feed, breed and fly through the air naturally. Whe
