April wildlife in our Shropshire garden

See our garden wildlife list

April weather continued the rather dismal trend so far this year – cold, wet and windy!  Still it did feel more spring-like as flowers began to bloom and birds were singing from the hedges, treetops and sky above.  Yellowhammers, chaffinches, skylarks, blackbirds and thrushes made up the dawn chorus with wood pigeons cooing and calls from tits as well.  Quite noisy here first thing in the morning!    Both woodpeckers and nuthatches were calling from the wood next door as well and at last, at the end of the month, some summer migrants arrived – chiffchaff, willow warbler and whitethroat, all singing around the garden.  On the 26th one of our swallows arrived – my yearly wildlife highlight – and he checked out last year’s nest site in the front porch, just outside my office window.  Another year of great wildlife watching ahead!  Its nice to think that all that effort that was put into building the nest in the first place was worth while – with just a little repair with mud from the edges of our new pond, the nest was ready and he began singing and twittering from the porch to encourage his mate.  She arrived at the very end of the month.

April was a good month for butterflies at last with a few small tortoiseshells, peacocks and on the 27th the first of the orange tips in the garden.  Newts, both common and great crested were seen in abundance in the shallow water of the new pond.  I am assuming that they over winter in the woodland next door (which is not managed and therefore full of dead wood) and can easily find our pond which is within a few meters of the pond edge.  

So with our bluebells, honesty, dandelions, lungwort and apple trees in flower to feed the bees and summer migrant birds and some butterflies around, all we need now is some warm weather in May to make spring a really pleasant experience!

 Over time we hope to monitor as much of the wildlife here as we can. New records will be added to this site as we identify what's here in the garden.  To see what we have seen so far, click here.