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Gardener’s Calendar AVVM0862 (Dale Beuford Waste Recycling Q Advert).indd 1 Roses aren’t the only plants to get blackspot. 20/01/2017 05:37

Top Tip:

It’s a kind of fungal infection which weakens the plant and at this time of year hellebores – a winter favourite - are particularly vulnerable to it. As with roses the only answer is to remove any leaves which have black blotches and bin them. (Don’t compost as this will only spread the rot). Keep deadheading winter pansies to encourage more flowers. You can prune roses now while they are still dormant. Cut back branches to just above a bud, cutting on a slope to avoid wet lying on the surface. Cut old sedums back now but watch out for new growth which may be starting to push through. You can push bare-root fruit canes into rich soil now, so long as the ground is not frozen.

If you have ivy or other climbers which need pruning, trim them now before birds start nesting in them.

GARDENS

Winter birds in the gardens

Colder weather has brought lots of small birds into wildlife garden across the region. From a period of marked quiet in October and November, December saw a big increase with blue tits, great tits, coal tits and long-tailed tits in abundance. The robins and dunnocks remained throughout, and they are territorial in winter as well as summer, they even manage to sing a little too. Blackbirds have also returned to the garden with local birds back from foraging in hedgerows and woodlands across the area joined by migrants from Europe. The local birds are quite aggressively territorial and object strongly to intruders, the continental birds perhaps having travelled together for hundreds of miles, seem happy to flock. The locals take a dim view!

Finches have also arrived in good numbers with chaffinches, greenfinches (now seemingly recovering from the devastating ‘fat finch disease’), goldfinches, and bullfinches. The smaller siskin and redpoll are also in flocks across the Peak District and nearby areas and will come to gardens as the winter draws on. Feeders of peanuts, fat-balls, and sunflower seeds provide a mix of food sources to suit all tastes, but interestingly, whereas at one time niger seed were guaranteed tract goldfinches, they are now totally ignored. Instead, the goldfinches only take sunflower hearts, which a of course are the most expensive too! Dried mealworms are good for the robins although, being short-lived, my favourite birds which used to come down and ‘talk’ to me, I think has passed on. I am now trying to gain the trust of a new bird. Along with the smaller birds, my great spotted woodpeckers, male and female, are now regular visitors. I have heard nuthatches calling nearby but not seen them in the garden so far. Overhead, small groups of black-headed gulls and lesser black-backed gulls are now regular as are flocks of woodpigeons moving through. There don’t yet seem to be any big flocks of the corvids (crows) heading to afternoon roosts, but perhaps that will come with colder conditions. Several big flocks of pink-footed geese passed over and were heading south-east in late November. By February and March, these birds will be on their return migration heading north-west across the Peak and back to the Arctic via Britain’s west coast. Nature’s annual cycle goes around again and the birds reflect this with some staying put, others moving locally, and then many more covering hundreds if not thousands of miles.

Watching and recording birds in, over, and around the garden provides a remarkable insight into the bigger patterns throughout the seasons. You can also witness how bird behaviour gradually changes and evolves as well. So, the goldfinches abandon one seed to feed preferentially on a different one. Robins and chaffinches for example, have taken to feeding on hanging foods such as seed holders and fat-balls, which they never did before. Even magpies now try to feed on peanut holders, and magpies, carrion crows and jackdaws all feast on the fat-balls. The magpies also chase my robin off the mealworms.

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