More remote camera success - and some!

Last night we set the camera trap up for video rather than stills - and got a massive surprise when we checked the files this morning! BADGERS! Not just one, but five of them snuffling about by the feeders - and in one video sequence, there's a Fox in the frame as well! A garden tick - but more than that - just fabulous.

Ton up! 100 birds completed - plus Foxes and more

Success! On Julia's birthday, you have to say rather unexpectedly, came bird species no. 100 - a Stock Dove flew over and joined two others with Wood Pigeons in the horse field. Yippee! Still no Peregrine, however....

Foxes have been regular for some weeks now, feeding on cheap catfood we've been putting out, but Julia's birthday present camera trap proved for the first time the presence of not one but TWO at the same time!





Baby birds and families have been a big feature too - notably Jays (up to four at a time on the bird table) and Great Spotted Woodpecker. At least two broods of Blue Tits were reared successfully, and there's an occupied House Martin nest under the eaves as we write.



Moths have been good too - lots of hawk moths, plus various local or scarce species, such as Lilac Beauty, Bordered Beauty, Lobster Moth and Minor Shoulder-knot. There was even a day-nectaring Hummingbird Hawk-moth on our new Verbena bonariensis!

Lilac Beauty

Beautiful Hook-tip

Blood Vein

Hummingbird Hawk-moth

Long time no blog - part 2: wildlife

The garden bird count has inched ever closer to the magic century - we're on 99! 98 was an unseen Reed Warbler singing towards Linbrook Lake, and 99 was a flyover Mediterranean Gull, picked up on call.

But more of a feature has been the explosion of baby birds - we managed at least one and probably two broods of Blue Tits from our boxes/soffit boards, and our feeders are being thronged by Blue and Great Tit families, Nuthatch juniors, Great Spotted Woodpecker squeakers and even House Sparrow neonates - plus more besides. Mallard are regular on and near the pond, and we even had a pair of Gadwall drop in there one evening. On the reserve, it's been all about breeding action too - Common Terns are doing well (and regularly overfly the garden) and the Sand Martins are as abundant as they've ever been. On the downside, we've had just one Hobby sighting this spring.

Great Crested Grebe - the male from the breeding pair on Ivy Lake

Sand Martins doing what they do!

Insects have been well-represented - the dragonfly list has boomed, with Four-spotted Chaser, Broad-bodied Chaser, Red-eyed, Blue-tailed and Common Blue Damselflies on the pond, plus a superb Downy Emerald on the Reserve, and Hairy Dragonfly.

Downy Emerald at 1/1500th of a second

Four-spotted Chaser

Moth trapping has been fair - a full season's report will follow later! For now:

Pebble Hook-tip

Apart from the inevitable Rabbit population boom (not too much damage so far, touch wood!), the mammal highlights have been several Moles (all but one dead, alas, and the live one seen by Julia only - Simon still needs Mole as a lifer!) and undoubtedly two regular Foxes, one a chunky dog, the other a very slim young vixen, we think, who has been coming to feed right by the patio under floodlight. Fantastic stuff.

Baby Bunny

I'm ready for my close-up now!

Long time no blog - part 1: the garden

We've slipped badly into a habit of not doing our blog - or maybe the excuse is having had so much to do and enjoy? In no particular order, then....

New garden hardware additions have been legion: a lovely seating arbour by the pond (now largely planted up and surrounded by burgeoning plant life), a 10m trellis down the old fence line to giove a bit of height and shelter, and an SKW designed patent pallet compost bin system!

The veg bed is now fully rabbit-fenced, windbroken (?) and growing new potatoes (ate the first ones yesterday - superb!), onions, shallots, garlic, French beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, courgettes, salad, broccoli and lots of willow whips!

Before planting - but note the ace fencing!

After - late May
And the Sweet Williams have been amazing

And here's a pond shot from some weeks ago, for comparison with a late summer photo to follow....

Spring pond - pre-tellis and pre-arbour! Note the apple trees blooming away happily....

While the spring has been marked by an absolutely absurd lack of rain (although as I write this, it is at last TEEMING down outside), and we've been watering new plants and trees like mad, we have seen so much growth and development - more encouraging and less daunting than just a few weeks ago!

96 and counting....

Two new birds in recent days - a migrant Sedge Warbler in song (but unseen) and a Garden Warbler audible over the bottom fence today. Also our first Broad-bodied Chaser, prospecting the pond!

Easter holidays begin

Lots more achieved in the last week - both pond beds are now done (and mucked, courtesy of three trips - count them! - to Lady Muck's horse paddock) and planted up with all kinds of goodies. Even more impressively, the veg bed is fenced (although not yet quite finished), and everything is burgeoning.

Pond looking great....

...and house looking great in the pond!

Dungtastic

Veg bed ready to go - almost!

More recent moth trapping has turned up Early Tooth-striped and Twin-spot Quaker plus lots of commoner early spring species. Comma, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and Hummingbird Hawk-moth (!) have all put in daytime appearances.

Spring - new arrivals!

The most exciting news of the lot this weekend was the unexpected arrival (and not only to us but to the owner, Chris!) of a beautiful foal in the field. She must have been born on Friday night or Saturday morning, and she's now gambolling about happily, well looked after by her experienced mother. She already has a name (not given by us!) - Spice. So welcome to the world, adorable creature.

Awwww!

Spring is well and truly sprung now - Chiffchaffs are singing everywhere, trees are bursting forth (not the birches or oaks, mind you!), the hedge is growing happily, Brimstones, Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells are on the wing and there were even Pipistrelle and Noctule Bats hunting this evening, the first day of BST.

New species for the garden have come thick and fast too - a long-overdue singing Goldcrest last week, and an unseen calling Redshank today - we're now on a scarcely believable 95 species. Moth-wise, a good trap in mild conditions produced several lifers among garden ticks - see some photos below, plus Clouded Drab, Brindled Pug and Diurnea fagella, a micro, of which interestingly Portland had only their second ever record today as well.

Pine Beauty

Oak Beauty

Engrailed

Early Grey

Fionnbharr has also been keenly helping - in this case hunting moles.....

More pondtastica

Well, here's the documentary evidence - pond complete, and even with a few plants in it!

One empty pond, and a load of bags with aquatics
and marginals from Winchester.

A superb view of the artistic logpile constructed by SKW, plus some dogwoods

Julia ritually lobs the first handful of oxygenator in!

Planted with Purple Loosetrife, Yellow Flag, Marsh Marigold and others.
Note also the crocodile-impersonating tethered alder log....

And in the bed on the left of the pond, we've planted a load of stuff - including one of our two Witchhazels (bugger off, rabbits and deer....), Euphorbias, Arum italicum, Acer palmatum etc.

This has been a "hard work" half-term, and we both ache significantly - but some big jobs which had been looming are DONE, and it's not even March yet. Result.

More action - of various kinds

Lots of change this week - and lots of VERY hard work!

The pond is now "finished", in the sense that the edges are all tucked under and covered, and we can now think about doing a spot of planting! And the bed on the left hand side is dug over and ready to go, too.

The ornamental cherries are all down to ground level (high masculinity points with the chainsaw for Simon - including getting the chain resharpened, refitting the chain, AND not cutting any limbs off), and either chopped for firelogs, stacked (brash) in a new dead hedge down the end of the garden, or making up part of the new amphibian logpile by the pond. We'll get Olly to grind out the stumps when the ground is a bit drier.

Less directly to our credit, but still a major watershed moment (as it were) was the emptying of the cesspits! Ugh! A whole new world of horror and subterranean disgust....but the good news is that all was functioning as it should, and we probably won't need to get it done for another two years at least. Excellent....

If it was ever going to happen.....

....it really had to be this year. With the biggest and most widespread Waxwing invasion for decades, and perhaps ever, we have been hoping against hope that we'd get a fly-over or two (at least) in the garden this winter. We've been ramping down expectations now spring is almost here - BUT this morning "a sibilant peal of silver bells" came tinkling down from the poplars, and there were 18 of the little beauties feeding on our clump of Mistletoe! Result!

How Bohemian can you get?