Y.E.T.I : The Cold Wind Doth Blow

. . . . and we shall have snow.

Rivers and streams can be especially productive places to look for wildlife in cold weather, due to them being slightly warmer than their surroundings.

With more snow forecast and plenty on the ground already across much of North and East Yorkshire, any earlier comments about it being an exceptionally mild winter are perhaps no longer relevant. With insects difficult to come by in such weather and most plants covered in snow, more attention than usual turns towards birds and mammals, for entertainment. Speaking from a local perspective we appear to be seeing slightly more movement from waders and wildfowl since the snow began, possibly pushed west by snowfall on the near continent or have moved away from frozen inland areas. Coastal habitats are often occupied in cold weather due to them being less prone to freezing and thus allowing successful foraging to occur, when inland sites are frozen. Lapwing in particular are seen travelling south when hard weather hits, although some birds have begun to revisit the breeding areas, this typically increases from mid January on-wards These small flocks appear to have a strong male bias, as would be expected, staking a claim on the best breeding territories for the following season.

Lapwings are increasingly associating with breeding sites, there is a noticeably higher concentration of males in these small pre-breeding flocks.

As well as lapwing there has been a few curlew moving through the area too, which was a surprisingly late year tick for me this weekend. A decent sized feeding flock was working some of the farmland which surrounds Scarborough. Flocking behaviour like this in curlew tends to be more common in agricultural habitats rather than coastal ones, where birds remain quite spaced out. This increases the level of vigilance within the flock and individual feeding success.

A Curlew foraging flock, moving between fields, before eventually heading south.

It's not just waders which change their habits to cope with the weather. Many of our small common birds move into gardens and sub-urban areas where they can exploit artificial feeding areas and slightly warmer roost sites. Small insectivorous birds like blue tits need to spend up to 85% of the day foraging to gain enough fat to see them survive each night. This is the equivalent to one eating 300 insects weighing 10g per day!

Blue tits spend up to 85% of their time foraging in winter.

A species not particularly being phased by all of this cold weather and snow is the mallard. Mating is in full swing within the region, which might seem early but it's actually not. Certainly in respect to wild mallards mating can occur as early as late September, with a marked increase in copulation in February and March. Ducks tend to start to form pairs as part of their winter flocks before migration back to the breeding grounds, another bird locally showing breeding behaviour is the Goldeneye. The male duck performs an elaborate display, to woo the females.

Mating Mallards! It is not unusual to see ducks mating and displaying during the winter.

Displaying male Goldeneye. Hopefully he will get more attention from the females than he got from these Wigeon.

Despite all of this snow and ice we still managed to get the first ladybird for the list, over the weekend, in the form of a 7 spot ladybird. All British ladybirds pass the winter as adults and can occasionally be found basking on the bark of trees in winter sunshine. 7 spot ladybirds overwinter in a wide variety of places including inside cracks and holes in trees and walls, dense foliage and gaps in the ground. They have a preference for sites close to ground level, in comparison to some of the other species.