Wassailing. Big Garden Bird Loss. Secret Seating
Sunday at Bill's Mother's 25 Jan 2026
Morning. It’s a turning of the year. The dark days are passing, and last week lots of merry people in green sang to our apples to celebrate. And a reminder that today you have every excuse to do nothing for an hour but sit by the window with a cup of tea and a notebook, and watch the world go by, as an official citizen scientist.
Thanks so much to all the new full subscribers: we’re now at 87% of our target of 380 paying readers, when we can stop stressing every week and get a few freelances to help make this publication bigger and better.
And sorry it’s a slightly shorter edition today: my week’s work has been curtailed a little due to some additional foster child duties. He’s been very much enjoying the rain though: maybe we could all make better use of puddles.
Here We Come A’ Wassailing
Daylight’s seeping back into our mornings, and it’s time to wake the apple trees. You might like to hang toast in their branches, water them with cider, or run around your local orchard banging saucepans.
Last Saturday was wassailing day at Woodseats and Meersbrook. Community orchards are growing up all over the city, so it’s possible there may be more noisy apple celebrations to come before the end of the month.
“It was a good harvest last year,” says Catherine Nuttgens, a professional arboriculturalist as well as a singer from the Forge & Fledge music, dancing and singing group.
“Wassailing is about giving something back to a tree that is ultimately a living being,” she says. “So it’s that feeling that if you give back some of the bounty, then hopefully the tree will feel obliged to you, and give you something next year.”
Like many colourful English folk traditions, the Wassail (or good-health in the old speech) is about drinking and making merry and grabbing a few free beers, snacks and pennies from the wealthier members of the community.
The singers of the village would usually wassail on or around Twelfth Night, but since the tradition predates the Gregorian calendar upgrade in 1582, any time in January up to the old Twelfth Night around the 17th January is traditional wassail season.
“We’ll wassail bees, and apple trees, unto your heart’s desire,” sang the Woodseats fruit singers and their kids, adding later: “Good master and good mistress, while you’re sitting by the fire, pray think of us poor children who are wandering in the mire.”
Huw Evans from Sheffield Organic Growers decided against a wassail in his orchard near Gleadless this year, due to the current impassable mire around his well mulched trees. But he approves of the tradition.
“Fruit trees are so barren in mid winter that it’s easy to forget the value that comes from them in the summer and autumn,” he says. Huw shuns toast in his trees, but welcomes the thought behind the concept.
“We use bird feeders and nesting boxes, because getting birds into your fruit trees is really important. When the spring comes, birds like Great Tits eat the caterpillars of moths that can damage the fruit.”
Emma Hogg from Woodseats Community Garden said the Woodseats wassailers tied ribbons as well as toast to their trees, in order to bless them for the forthcoming year. The tradition of noisy pan clanging is to drive out bad spirits, she explains, as well as wake up the sleeping trees.
“I believe the old tradition was that the toast would bring birds. However, we did take it off at the end of the day because we now know that bread isn’t good for birds. But we still did the tradition.”
The community garden, behind St Chad’s Church, has been growing into a wellbeing space and nature reserve for the people of Sheffield 8 for just over four years.
“It’s just encouraging people to get out and connect not only with each other but with nature,” says Emma. There are Goldfinches, Greenfinches, newts and Hedgehogs passing through, she says, and the bee species recorded on site have doubled to twenty since the garden charity was formed.
The garden team have unusually chosen to work behind the scenes to win funding to cover Emma’s salary to manage the garden and its events - she says she never imagined such a full time job could exist until she landed the role in the wilds of Woodseats.
I gather this kind of rethinking of how a local wild space might work is beginning to take root in voluntary green and blue space groups. Finding a way to fund a full or part time worker is laborious, but not impossible, I’m told. (I’ll have more on Woodseats and its gardens soon).
The clattering and ribbon tying and songs last weekend were really “just a lovely way to welcome the New Year,” Emma says.
The core thread that runs through all of the winter traditions, from pagan times to now, is that it’s a very dark time of the year, says Catherine Nuttgens. Apart from the grey days and dark nights, the modern invention of Blue Monday as the most miserable day of the year aligns closely with the Twelfth Night of the dark ages.
“So wassailing in January is a time to say, spring is on its way and we’re giving something back. And it’s a chance to get out and talk to each other and do something fairly cheerful, at what is quite a dark time of the year.”
Dozens of people joined the singers at Woodseats, while over a hundred wassailed at Meersbrook Walled Garden.
Catherine adds this year the world is perhaps darker than usual, so doing something like blessing an orchard with lots of like-minded mates can feel controllable, and good.
“When people are uncertain,” she says, “then gathering together to pay respects to the trees that they can eat the apples from, it’s almost like going back to say we feel safe in this world.”
Big Garden Bird Loss
Have you spent an hour doing citizen science in your rainy garden yet? You’ve got until the end of the day, so don’t worry.
Pete Brown says he’s been surveying the birdlife around Millhouses since long before the term Citizen Science appeared in the dictionary. But he says the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch (“the largest citizen science survey in the UK” trumpet the charity every year) is still a useful exercise to chart changes in UK birdlife, often related to chemical farming, habitat changes, and ever weirder weather.
“For me, it’s about the involvement of young people,” Pete says. “If you can get youngsters involved, and people who aren’t birdwatchers, it’s about them looking out and thinking about how they might attract birds to their gardens, and appreciating the nature around them.”
Pete is a member of the RSPB and the Sheffield Bird Study Group, and he’s led many years of bird and nature walks for all ages.
“Kids are knocked over by what they see, like a flock of Long-tailed Tits or finches coming through. They love it.”
Last year, nearly 600,000 people in the UK recorded over 9 million birds in the survey, but the RSPB warn that total bird numbers have gone dramatically down since the survey began in 1979. 38 million birds have disappeared from the UK’s skies since the 1960s, they say.
Last year’s counts for South Yorkshire had a top five of House Sparrow, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Blue Tit and Starling, but numbers were generally down, with just Robins, Blackbirds and Woodpigeons increasing over the previous year. Pete’s observations around Millhouses paint an even starker picture.
“There are increasing sightings of parakeets, and Goldfinches, but I’m also noticing the decline in House Sparrows and Starlings. When I do my guided walks in Millhouses Park, I always carry a chocolate bar to give to anybody who can show me a Starling, and half the time I come back with the chocolate. This area seems to be a Starling desert now.”
Collared Doves have also gone missing, he adds, although plenty of both species are still seen in the east of Sheffield. Why? It’s possible western Sheffielders have carried out more home improvements to reduce nesting sites, which could affect Starlings as much as Swifts, he ponders.
Or perhaps eastern Sheffield is closer to less chemically managed arable farmland? “We just don’t know,” he says, Maybe local counts this year will reveal more.
Locally he thinks small birds like Blue Tits and Long-tailed Tits have been doing quite well thanks to comparatively mild winters in recent years, although national counts of the species are down.
After doing the survey (remember seeing almost nothing and sending it in is still useful citizen science, he stresses), it’s worth thinking about your garden for the next year. You need to provide four main things, he says: food, water, native plants and cover. The latter is often forgotten, but trees, ivy, or bushes are crucial for birds to hide from predators like Sparrowhawks, he says.
“But the main thing I’d like people to take away from the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend is to engage in conversations about birds and nature wherever they are. Just talking to people about birds and what’s around and sharing that information.”
I hear a flurry at the end of the phone, which I know is next to his small and bush- laden garden.
“Oh! Yes! I think a Song Thrush just passed through. Well, that’s the second of the year. Great stuff.”
A top 10 bird in the early Big Garden Birdwatch years, Song Thrush is now number 20 in South Yorkshire, after UK numbers halved since the 1960s.
Sign up and download what you need at: https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch
More What’s On Out There (from Sunday 25th January)
A tiny selection from our new (and regularly updated) What’s On Out There news and listings post for January. (Full post is for full members, preview for all).
Sun 25th - Stampede running event, Graves Park
Mon 26th - Fri 30th - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Tues 27th - Friends of Ecclesall Woods volunteer & footpath repair session
Weds 28th - Sheffield Ramblers Walk - Bakewell (11m)
Thurs 29th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment
Fri 30th - SRWT Volunteering - Greno Woods
Sat 31st - Shire Brook Valley - Community bird walk and ringing demonstration
Sat 31st- CycleBoost cycle confidence & Learn to Ride cycle training at Greenhill
Secret Seating 17
After last month’s almost impossible chair conundrum (solved in style by seat sleuth and multiple medal winner Cassa) we have a possibly illicit double secret seat and coffee table on a secluded path, that’s nevertheless likely to be recognised by dozens of you. So get your guesses in early! (In the comments section below).
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Hi David The secret seating is alongside Porter Brook, in Bingham Park when entering along the footpath through the gap in the wall from Oakbrook Rd on the Nether Green side of the mini roundabout at junction Rustlings Rd/Oakbrook Rd.
I've lived in Broomhill since 1982 and the decline in the number and kind of bird in the garden is pretty shocking. In 1982 I would see blue tit, long-tailed tit, great tit, wren, robin, starling, blackbird, song thrush, magpie, wood pigeon, collared dove, house sparrow, dunnock, the occasional jay, and the occasional sparrow hawk. Most of these have now disappeared. I still see blackbird, magpie, wood pigeon, blackbird, the occasional robin, but the collared dove, house sparrow, dunnock, thrush, etc. have all gone.