Spring watch in Durness; Some migrant birds are on their way home to Scandinavia and will often be seen and heard in the crofts around Durness over the next weeks – Redwings and fieldfares, they look a bit like thrushes and are related to them but the underside of the redwings wings are reddish whilst the fieldfares are a bit larger and have greyish heads. They sometimes fly in large flocks and can be quite noisy. If you took part in the RSPB schools birdwatch check their website for the results, which are quite interesting.
Check all your ponds and ditches for frog spawn, if you are out by a pond at night you should hear them croaking away to each other. Frogs are the ones with smooth skin and are usually green, brown and yellowish, toads on the other hand are a uniform olive brown with small lumps on the skin and mostly they crawl. Another amphibian you might come across is the newt, probably a palmate newt around Durness; we caught good numbers of them last year. It is vaguely similar in appearance to a lizard but is smaller and far slower with wet smooth skin and you won’t see a lizard swimming under water.
Quiz question; what is the name for a baby newt?
Check all your ponds and ditches for frog spawn, if you are out by a pond at night you should hear them croaking away to each other. Frogs are the ones with smooth skin and are usually green, brown and yellowish, toads on the other hand are a uniform olive brown with small lumps on the skin and mostly they crawl. Another amphibian you might come across is the newt, probably a palmate newt around Durness; we caught good numbers of them last year. It is vaguely similar in appearance to a lizard but is smaller and far slower with wet smooth skin and you won’t see a lizard swimming under water.
Quiz question; what is the name for a baby newt?