Fairweather Gardener!

I went up to Mums for my usual 2 days of gardening last week, but the first day was a complete washout. It rained most of the day so I decided to clean windows instead (inside!). The Red-legged Partridge also decided to take shelter under the Cotinus and this Mayfly (Ephemera danica) landed on my Mum's window (a long way from the river down the bottom of the garden)

The next day was bright and sunny though so it was back into the garden. I got the last of the vegetables planted, some Red cabbage. This is a new vegetable for Mum to try in the garden so it will be interesting to see how they come on. The robin (as they so often do) kept me company while I was working on the vegetable patch.

The male Goldcrest was still eyeing up his own reflection from my Mum's bedroom so I couldn't resist taking more photos of him. Daft bird! (-:

Flower and bird display

Spring flowers have really come on in my Mum's garden since I was last up there just two weeks ago. The heliathemum plants are a blaze of colour!

The wild area which goes down to the river Churn at the bottom of Mum's garden is a riot of Cow Parsley and Buttercups. There is still a bit of Ladies Smock for the Orange Tip butterflies too.

As in years past, we have a crazy male Goldcrest which jumps up and down continuously at my Mum's bedroom window. It was always on the move, but I did manage to get a couple of photos of it! Manic!

Constable country

A friend of mine is leading a trip for the Bristol Ornithological Club to Suffolk next month so she asked if I would come with her to spend a couple of days doing a recce of the area.

We set off at 4am so that we would miss most of the rush hour traffic around London and got to Suffolk just before 9am. This gave us the rest of the day to suss out various birding sites. The day was lovely and sunny but there was a brisk north easterly wind that kept the temperatures well pegged back!

One of the most important sites that we visited was Minsmere RSPB reserve. This is one of the oldest and most well known reserves in Britain see http://www.rspb.org.uk/ . We spent some time here enjoying a wonderful wader fest with plenty of Terns and Marsh Harriers to add to the mix.
At the end of the day we made our way to our accommodation at Flatford Mill, a field studies centre owned by the National Trust. This is where John Constable did alot of his most famous paintings. We were extremely lucky to be able to stay in an old Tudor Hall, built around 650 years ago. The place was simply stunning as you can see from the following photos.
The next day it was supposed to be raining all day, but again we were lucky in that it didn't rain at all. We were able to visit several more sites which all looked very promising for birding in a months time. Thanks Jane for inviting me to join you on this wonderful trip!

Work and Play

A couple of days up at Mum's gave me the opportunity for a nice mix of work and play.

The work part centered mainly on planting up Mum's vegetable patch. She has a good mix of fruit and vegetables each year. This year we have Early and Main crop Potatoes, Peas, Broad Beans, Runner Beans, Carrots, Turnips, Leeks, Red Onions, Shallots and Red Cabbage. She already has Raspberries, Blackberries and Strawberries planted from previous years.

As usual, as I worked there was plenty of bird song all around me. Most vocal was a strident Song Thrush and a the beautiful continuous song of the Skylark way way up in the sky above me. There were also many Goldfinches in the trees around me with their lovely liquid sounding song.I checked the compost bin to see if any Slow worms had taken up residence and found this one in there and also some young ones too. I also for the first time here, managed to see a glow worm in the garden on Friday night. A lovely bonus!

The play part of my couple of days up there was being able to go out early Saturday morning to do a Birdtrack survey in the country lanes around my Mum's home. There were lots of Skylarks and Yellowhammers and also 8 Hares in the arable fields which are always great to observe.

Part of my survey walk took me through the local Bluebell wood. They are just coming into bloom and should look spectacular in the next week or two.

Gardeners delight

What a perfect spring day today. Just as well as I needed to finish off digging over my small vegetable patch in the garden. Usually the only veg I've bothered with planting is runner beans and tomatoes in the greenhouse. This year, my Mum gave me some early new potatoes (Anya) which has a really lovely flavour and also some red onion sets. So, I will plant them up and see what I get!

There is something really enjoyable about growing your own veg.

While I was digging, I had three different types of raptors fly over. First was a pair of Sparrowhawks, then I had three Buzzards, one of which was displaying. Lastly, I heard a comotion being made by two Lesser black backed Gulls and looked up to see a Peregrine zip right over the garden. It was also lovely to listen to the local Blackbird singing nearby. This is one of my favourite bird songs.

After the digging was done, I had a rest by the pond and managed to take this photo of one of our resident frogs. I also noticed that the male newts were starting to follow the females, then darting in front of them vigourously waggling their tails. Hopefully I'll be able to photograph the females laying eggs shortly.

It was such a sunny and warm day that I decided to go along to Rodden Nature Reserve which is just down the road from me to see if I could see and photograph any Orange Tip butterflies. There is alot of Ladies Smock in flower on the reserve at the moment which is a favourite food plant of Orange Tip caterpillars. After a short wait I managed to get a shot of a female. Hopefully in the days to come I shall manage to photograph a male too!

Portway pond springclean

It was a job that was well overdue, so I dragged Chris, my husband from his work to get it done while the sun was shining this morning.

The pond was completely clogged up with a mixture of blanket weed, airator, water mint and with the odd buttercup thrown in there too. Chris got the worst of the mint and buttercups out by hand and then attacked the blanket weed with a handy old kitchen sieve. It works a treat, though we'll never get rid of it entirely I guess!

After just a few minutes there were signs of life in the way of several newts swimming about and two dragonfly larvae crawling on the pond liner. Chris also said a couple of frogs were moving about while he was getting the worst of the weed out. Having got a photo of the dragonfly larvae, I will now have to look in my book to see if it is possible to identify which dragonfly I have in there. I'm not sure I'm very confident. Perhaps I'll just have to wait and see what crawls up the iris stems later in the year. To be continued.......

Out and about

After quite a bit of wet and windy weather, it was a nice surprise to have some decent spring weather today. Late morning I decided to do a bird survey around Rodden Nature Reserve. I hadn't been there for at least a month so it was great to spend some time there in the warm sunshine. The local Grey Heron was content to let me sneak up for snap shot. A good bonus was seeing a pair of Reed Buntings on the reserve. I expect they are just passing through, though it would be lovely if they decided to stay and breed. A couple of the nest boxes that we put up last year appear to be getting some attention, so it will be interesting to see if any are occupied this year. Just as I was about to leave, I heard and then saw a pair of Grey Wagtails on the Mill roof. I managed to get a distant photo of this beautiful and graceful bird.

The weather stayed good after lunch so my husband and I took a walk out at Mells, a local village where one of my BTO surveys is held. Whilst walking along the Mells stream I thought I had a very brief glimpse of a Dipper as it sped low along the river. It was such a brief look though that I'm not 100%. I hope I can confirm its presence when I do my two spring surveys in a month or so.

It was pretty quiet on the farmland section of the tetrad walk, but I did have this obliging Meadow Pipit to photograph. All in all a really lovely day to be out and about.

Mum's mole mayhem!

I've just come back from two days gardening up at my Mum's place in Gloucestershire. The weather was absolutely perfect, mostly sunny with no wind. One of the jobs that needed urgent attention was the problem Mum has with moles in her lawn. They have been very busy, particularly in the orchard area in amongst the flowering Snowdrops.

Another job that needed doing was cleaning up the patio and cutting the ornamental grasses down ready for the spring spurt of growth. The daffodils have just started to flower in the containers giving a welcome splash of brightness and colour.

Apart from getting some gardening done, it was such lovely weather that I took the opportunity to go for an early morning walk on one of the days. Whenever I go for a walk up here I write down all the birds that I see and hear and then submit them online to the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) for the current atlas project. This is a really fabulous way of firstly helping a great cause and also sharpening up identification skills for the eyes as well the ears!

I had 32 species in an hour and a half walk. Everything seemed to be in full song including lots of Yellowhammers and Skylarks. A real bonus was watching 5 hares all together scampering about in a stubble field. Here's a photo of a Yellowhammer and Treecreeper, both of which I took while on my walk.

Late winter tetrad at Postlebury wood

I finally got my second late winter tetrad done for the BTO atlas today. The late winter surveys have to be finished by the end of February so this week was my last chance to get this done. The weather was mild with lots of sunshine, but it was a bit windy which isn't ideal, specially for finding small birds. My birding friend Mick joined me for the two hour walk. We surveyed a mixture of pastureland and woodland.

As expected there weren't many small birds about and there seemed to be a dearth of Wood Pigeons for some reason. We did see many Redwings with a few Fieldfares mixed in and many more Carrion Crows than Rooks. We had good looks at a Treecreeper and a pair of Bulfinches and in the second hour the Buzzards had got up into the air. On the whole it was a pretty quiet affair, though it was still lovely to get out on such a lovely day.

Birding in the Forest of Dean

I took a day trip to the Forest of Dean on Sunday with some friends. It was another lovely blue sky day. We went for usual target species that can be found there at this time of year. At New Fancy View we saw a Goshawk sitting in a tree and then giving a brief flight, but no displaying. Our next place to stop didn't have a very attractive name (Boys Grave), but there we had stunning views of a Great Grey Shrike perched on top of a tree in full sunshine. These are such charismatic birds!

Our next stop was a Brierley where was watched a pair of Hawfinches again typically perched at the top of a tree. Also here we had a beautiful male Brambling, a pair of Marsh Tits and their much rarer cousin, a Willow Tit.

Our last stop was at Cannop Ponds where we had lovely close views of these Mandarin Ducks. What cracking birds!

Willow screen for Rodden Nature Reserve

Today FAWG (Frome area wildlife group) decided to erect a willow screen on the field that overlooks the Rodden Nature Reserve pool. The weather was perfect, blue sky and mild with it!

Below are a series of photographs showing the course of the mornings work ending with the finished screen. Well done to everyone who came along to help. It was a very enjoyable morning.

The Birders amongst us managed to see some good birds while we worked including Kingfisher, Grey Wagtail, Reed Bunting, Meadow Pipit, Stonechat, Siskin, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and this obliging Little Egret.