As I’m writing, three fat woodpigeons are tucking into a feast of glossy black ivy berries and can you blame them? In the depths of winter, resources are scare and wildlife depends as much on our gardens as it does on our parks and hedgerows for food. Ivy is always a much maligned plant but when I see bees working away on it in autumn and then the birds eating the berries in winter, it makes me appreciate the value it brings to the garden. Did you know that ivy will only produce flowers and berries when it’s trained to grow up vertically? So all that rampant ivy that has been plaguing us in the grounds of St Stephen’s, isn’t actually of much use to wildlife other than as a cover for insects.
The beauty of having lots of berries in the garden in winter is that you never quite know what they might attract. We have a large cotoneaster at the end of our garden which is normally covered in red berries in winter until a flock of redwings turn up for lunch and strip it bare. However, that’s clearly not going to happen this year as there are no berries! The plant is remaining stubbornly green rather than dropping its leaves and there isn’t a berry to be seen and I have no idea why!
It is only writing this that I have realised we have no less than 4 cotoneaster in the garden! The one that attracts the redwings is a very large, smooth leaved variety. We have 2 that are ‘prostrate’, that is cover the ground. One of these has crept all around our pond and another is by our bins. The latter is quite hazardous when in flower in the spring as it attracts dozens of bees. We have to tread quite carefully when putting the rubbish out! Always appearing to be quite lazy, the woodpigeons also like these as they can just stroll around helping themselves to a berry when they feel like it. Cotoneaster also used to have the reputation of being a bit boring, the plant that developers turned to as a means of quickly greening up a car park, but they are valuable for wildlife and shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.
Whether we have any holly berries in the garden always seems to be question of luck. I used to blame the birds for eating them just before Christmas when I wanted to pick sprigs for decoration. However, this may not have been the case. We all know not to eat holly berries because they are poisonous to humans but it turns out that they are also quite toxic to birds too. Apparently birds have a high tolerance of the toxicity but it means that they can only eat a few holly berries at a time.
Another shrub favoured by garden birds and grown mostly for its berries or as a security barrier is pyracantha. Offering a choice of red, orange or yellow berries, it is also perhaps best known for its thorns! Not to be approached or pruned without a good set of thick gardening gloves. Being evergreen, it also provides good shelter for small birds all year round. Research has shown that birds are attracted to certain colours more than others. This might explain why the berries on our orange pyracantha are always eaten before the yellow ones. Of course it could be that the birds are waiting for the yellow ones to ripen more – which they’re not going to do!
One berry very much associated with winter that I’ve yet to mention is mistletoe. We don’t have any in our garden but recently I was surprised to see a large clump that’s formed in a tree not that far from us. When I’m volunteering in Bushy Park, I am surrounded by mistletoe. Along Chestnut Avenue in particular, the trees are absolutely laden with it and some of my fellow Rangers were speculating recently whether we are getting more mistletoe in London now due to cleaner air?
Mistletoe is beloved of certain birds and attracts some interesting visitors. Walk around Bushy on any autumn or winter day and the chances are you will see a thrush. Many of these are song thrushes but there are also plenty of the larger mistle thrush. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that they get their name from their obsession with mistletoe. It is absolutely their favourite food and they will defend it from other birds.
This winter Bushy Park, along with several other locations in London and the south-east, has welcomed a relatively rare visitor. Small flocks of waxwings have been spotted devouring any berry covered plant. Waxwings migrate from Scandinavia to the UK every winter but in some years they arrive in their thousands. This year is one of those years. They have clearly worked out that Bushy is good for mistletoe and they are going to make the most of it! I am grateful to Ranger Christine Bradley for allowing me to share with you one of the 600 photos she took of them in the middle of January!
Outside the Backdoor 