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REDSTART: I was excited to get good views of a male Redstart at the weekend. I don’t often see them around Otley, and numbers generally in England have declined by 55% in the past 25 years. Back from his winter home in central Africa, he must have felt a severe contrast in temperature. Redstarts are one of those birds whose parenting services are borrowed by Cuckoos. However, a study found that rather than suffering from the presence of a large Cuckoo in the nest, the Redstar

It is May, soon our Swifts will be back, but first are our House Martins. Having returned from their African winter grounds in the Congo, they incredibly find their way back to the same nesting sites year after year. Reusing old nests, saves a lot of time and vital energy. It is about ten day's work of collecting bill-sized pellets of mud from streams and ponds and gradually building up layers to create the nest, which will require around 1000 pellets, that’s 1000 journeys to

These sturdy trees with their dense foliage and heart-shaped leaves, are valuable to a range of wildlife, including invertebrates such as aphids who thrive on the sap. They in turn create a honeydew loved by bees and produced in such quantities that it drips down on to leaves and for example cars parked below. Cultures throughout Europe have long valued the tree, too. In Poland there are many villages whose name translates as “Holy Lime”, and in Germany the name Leipzig is al

Coltsfoot Spring is my favourite time of year, more and more wildflowers appear every walk I take at the moment. If every month had a colour, I think April’s would be yellow, with Daffodils, Dandelions and Coltsfoot! These bright sunshine yellow flower heads, appear one per scaly stem, before the leaves emerge. They are a member of the daisy family and the flower head is actually a collection of florets (tiny flowers), it is another early source of nectar for bees and other p

Whilst picking stinging nettles, a dark metallic blue catches the light and draws my eye. This beetle measuring around 7mm in length feeds mainly on Alder but is occasionally found on other deciduous trees such as Beech, Hazel and Hornbeam. It overwinters as adults, I have spotted one checking into my minibeast hotel for a winter stay, they emerge in the spring. Alder leaf beetles were considered extinct in Britain with almost no records of it between 1946 and 2003! But in 20

Right now distinctive little white flowers that will later become miniature, juicy red strawberries can be spotted on the edges of woodland, scrubland and along our old railway line. There are not actually the ancestor of the commercial strawberries we will all be buying in the summer, but the wild strawberry does have an excellent flavour. With long, rooting runners, it spreads quickly and low to the ground. Evidence from archaeological excavations suggests that wild strawbe

Seen in Otley: COOT: A common and often noisy presence on Otley’s ponds and lakes, Coots are omnivores yet often struggle to feed their large broods of chicks. It’s not unusual for many to die of starvation, and the parents can be quite brutal to weaker members of a brood during food-shortages, attacking them when they beg, so that they stop doing so and die. Like their close relative the Moorhen, they’re known for their prominent frontal shields, which give rise to the “bald

If you have never tried before, now is the time to pick stinging nettles, with some good gloves obviously, just pick out the tender most tips. Before eating them, cooking is essential to take out the sting, they are delicious steamed with a little butter like spinach or blended with some wild garlic to make an irresistible pesto. A patch of stinging nettles should be easy to find, it prefers damp, fertile, disturbed ground, which make it an excellent coloniser of places enric

The Wood Anemone grows in dappled shade, claiming their share of the sunlight before the trees put on their leaves and the bluebells bloom. Wood anemone are a low-growing plants, with six to seven large, white star like flowers. They grow in clusters, to make the most of a sunny patch under the canopy and because it relies on spreading through the growth of its root structure rather than the dispersal of its seed. As a species it's surprisingly slow to spread (six feet in a h

What’s that whiff, if you pick up a foul smell whilst out walking now it might be you have caught the scent of Dog’s mercury. In appearance, it’s quite unassuming, maybe 20cm tall with hairy, course leaves and in the spring clusters of small, green flowers. At first glance, this perennial plant appears innocuous, but this couldn’t be further from the truth, Dog's mercury is highly poisonous, ingestion of this plant can lead to vomiting, jaundice, coma and eventually death, so

Also known as Goosegrass or Catchweed, the Cleavers name is thanks to this sticky plant’s tendency to ‘cleave’ to human clothing or animal fur. There's an urban myth that this plant’s stickiness was what inspired the creation of velcro, but in fact it was burdock seeds, known as burrs. However they use the same method of dispersion as cleavers, both are covered with hundreds of microscopic ‘hooks’ that catch onto the natural ‘loops’ that cover fur, clothing and hair. Cleavers

Another riverside spot, a pretty parasite! This perennial completely lacks chlorophyll (the green pigment that allows plants to obtain energy from light), which gives it an intriguing washed out creamy pink look. Common toothwort spends most of its life underground, rather than make its own food it attaches pad-like suckers to the tips of roots of a host plant. Hosts are usually woody plants, its favourite host is Hazel, but will also attach to Ash, Alder, Beech, Elm and Waln