Things to look out for in the garden - November

If you've planted a rowan tree, you'll be one of the rare gardeners whose enjoying a range of garden visitors now because the orange red fruit are soft and juicy, which makes them a very good food for birds, particularly waxwings and thrushes, which then distribute the rowan seeds in their droppings. It's also is used as a food plant by the larvae of some butterflies and moths and it's a traditional wild-collected food in Britain and Scandinavia for rowan jelly. If you fancy making your own, cover 3 pounds of rowan berries with water in pan and cook till pulpy. Strain through a jelly-bag. Cover 3 pounds of crab-apples with water, boil until soft, strain also. Mix both juices and measure juice, allowing 1 pound sugar per pint. Mix sugar and juice in pan and boil until setting point is reached. Pot into warm jars.

Starlings - These birds are smaller than blackbirds, with a short tail, pointed head and triangular wings. They look black at a distance but up close they gleam with mottled purples and greens. They are noisy and gregarious, spending a lot of the year in flocks. In summer they live in open woodland, hedgerows, parks and gardens - wherever there are suitable trees with nest holes, but in winter they congregate some tending to migrate south, but others will move into gardens, farmland and parks to spend the winter and some starlings even come to Britain from Eastern Europe for the cold months.

The waxwing is a plump bird, which is slightly smaller than a starling and highly distinctive, with a prominent crest, reddish-brown colour with a black throat, a small black mask round its eye, yellow and white in the wings and a yellow-tipped tail. While it does not breed in the UK, it has become a winter visitor. The first British arrivals each winter are usually seen on the east coast from Scotland to East Anglia, but birds move inland in search of food, guess what, it eats, berries, particularly rowan and hawthorn, but also cotoneaster and rose.

Garden November rowan photograph by kevinzim, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

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