Mike Williams, Jenny Tonry, Hugh Glennie
and myself met as usual on Thurs 3rd Jan to go ‘streaking’ in the
Worcestershire countryside.
Our plan on this particular Thursday was to
search an area on the outside perimeter of a wood that lies close to the east
of Grafton Wood, where BH eggs had never previously been recorded. (Last winter
we had searched almost the entire perimeter of this wood but had found almost
no suitable blackthorn and no eggs. On that day though, heavy rain had then
curtailed our search just before we had reached the section of the perimeter
that - unbeknown to us at the time - supported a reasonable amount of
potentially suitable young blackthorn growth).
We therefore began our search on Thursday
morning in this promising area. After a lot of detailed searching we eventually
recorded some eggs on the western side, including a double. Only two hedgerows
link this wood to Grafton - one to the southwest, and one to the northwest
close to where these new eggs had been found. A theory was then put forward
that the female BH that had laid the eggs we had just found, would have had to
have found its way there by following this nearby hedgerow all the way from
Grafton Wood. If that theory was to be proved correct then it seemed a
reasonable assumption that we should find at least some eggs along the length
of this ‘linking hedgerow’. We therefore began that search.
We did indeed record small but steady
numbers of eggs along the entire length of this hedgerow up to the point it
joined Grafton Wood, thereby (according to me at least!!) proving the theory J In total, we found about 40
eggs in this area including a treble and a double separated by only about a
centimetre – i.e. almost a ‘fiv-er’!!
In the afternoon we met the ‘Footpath
Warden’ for the nearby (and delightfully named) village of Upton Snodsbury
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