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Eco church diaries: March 2021

This month, St Michael's eco church is celebrating the joys of spring, and the upcoming Easter of course.

It’s been a busy month for nature at St Michael’s. Despite being flanked by two main roads and a railway line, it is one of the few green spaces in this part of Bolton with its steep valley and stream running through it.

Bird life that has been spotted includes robins (hopefully to occupy the robin boxes we’ve put up within the church yard), mistle thrushes, wrens, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, dunnocks and carrion crows that sit majestically on top of the church tower.

We also have herons flying overhead on their way to Doe Hey reservoir and also the odd parakeet, for which the hanging bird seeds have been extremely popular!

Frogspawn in a pond at St Michael's eco church in Bolton

Frogspawn has appeared in the pond at St Michael's

As we celebrate new life this Easter, the daffodils are in full bloom amongst the ancient trees and young nettles on the more wild side of the church yard as well as early leaves on the hawthorn bushes.

Interestingly, at the bottom of the valley, young roe deer have been spotted as well as hedgehogs and foxes in the church yard itself.

There’s also been activity in the adjacent school grounds and frogspawn and common newts now inhabit the small pond as part of the same conservation area.

As the recent windy weather has brought down a great many small twigs and branches, we plan to gather these into a pile so that beetles and shrews have the opportunity to nest here.

Finally, we can’t forget the owl boxes as more of these have been made to be put up in the coming weeks by volunteers. Now that spring is here, nature has finally woken up at St Michael’s after the cold and snow of winter.

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