Half-term, and the year is winding down

Like it says in the headline, the nights are drawing in, and the chill of autumn is definitely in the air. We've done a fair bit more digging and garden planning (and spending money on trees!), and the pond is very nearly full up.

Moth traps are producing very low catches now, of course, but we've had some quality - Red-line Quaker, November Moth and Large Wainscot being special highlights. Birdwise, the tits and finches are starting to make more use of the food we're putting out, and a substantial Starling roost at Ivy Lake (estimated at about 6000 birds) means we're getting spectacular evening shows overhead and to the north. The Bearded Tit (a Blashford mega!) Simon saw at Ivy Lake has yet to make it as far as our (roughly) ten stems of Phragmites in the poorly drained patch in the Lower Field, however......

Too long between posts....

Nearly a month has passed, and it's not like nothing has happened! Getting lazy....

Several good moth traps have added some new species to the garden list, such as Black Rustic, Blair's Shoulder Knot, Chestnut, Beaded Chestnut, Brown-spot Pinion etc., but birds have been distinctly quiet of late.

Black Rustic

Blair's Shoulder Knot - best cured by Miliband's Erotic Massage

Chestnut

Beaded Chestnut

Further afield, and excellent 'viz-mig' session at Hengistbury this morning turned up 7 Ring Ouzels, a Yellowhammer, a Brambling, 1000s of alba Wags, Linnets, Goldfinches and hirundines, and a good few Siskins and Chaffinches, all east.

Garden-wise, the pond is rapidly filling, thanks to the excess black EPDM liner adding to the catchment area, and various bits of willow screening are making things feel a lot more enclosed. Shrubs and so on are going in apace - major garden photographic update to follow, methinks!

Simon's life "begins" and moths get autumnal

September 11th is a big day for Simon, but 11/9/10 was a particularly big one - 40! Duly celebrated with a Hampshire first at dawn in Gosport (an excellent female Daurian Shrike), and more traditionally with a slap up lunch and an amazing Julia-made carrot cake, and followed up with a beautiful walk in Redshoot Wood, complete with Ceps and Shaggy Inkcaps, which got eaten for tea! Yum....

A Green Sandpiper over the garden was the "megafauna" highlight, but some good moth traps in recent days have turned up lots of new species for the garden, and several lifers for us both:

Dusky Thorn

The Sallow

Red Underwing


Frosted Orange

Oak Lutestring


Feathered Gothic


Centre-barred Sallow


Bulrush Wainscot


Autumnal Rustic

More rendered unto Caesar (thanks for that, Dad....)

Rendering now complete! Simon also repaired the coping (more Y-chromosome DIY talk there) on the patio wall, and repointed (see?) the brickwork where necessary. Actually not that hard...I mean, very manly and difficult work. Thompson's Waterseal applied Sunday morning ready for masonry paint whenever.

Simon coping rather well

Biodiversity - moth sugaring attempted on the field fenceposts last night for the first time - lots of moths just an hour after dark, none of them new or very spectacular, but at least a proof of principle! Also some delicious Parasol mushrooms picked and cooked from near Rockford Lake. Yum. Let's hope they were Parasols, and I'm still here to blog tomorrow....

Postscript - see this page to see what the Parasols looked like. Just don't tell Bob I ate some of them.....

Another garden tick "rendered"

The autumn continues to turn up new birds - a Green Sandpiper overhead, and both Yellow and Grey Wagtails likewise - odd we hadn't had one of the latter before, really. Also a Pygmy Shrew rescued from the jaws of death - well, Elli the Cat.

On the DIY front, manliness is to the fore, as Simon has been stripping exterior paint and even doing a spot of re-rendering and pebbledashing. Grrrrr!

Julia is cursed....official

Well, what a difference a day makes. While geting the moth trap in, what flew north over the garden? Yup - the Osprey! And where was Julia? On a fitness run / Pied Fly hunt....oh dear.

A near miss....

After several days of dipping, Simon finally caught up with the intermittently present Osprey over the visitor centre this afternoon - and as the bird headed high south, it was unlucky that Julia couldn't add it to the garden list too!

Another good bird today - a Pied Flycatcher on Rockford Common enlivened a dusk run for Simon!

More exciting still, we made a trip to Macpenny's Nursery in Bransgore, which is BRILLIANT. Stacks of unusual plants in a very attractive setting, and we cracked, buying ourselves a fastigiate Oak, Acca sellowiana (Pineapple Guava), Arbutus unedo (Strawberry Tree), Sambucus nigra (Black Elder) and a few other herbaceous plants.

Rodents and other savage beasts in the garden

Well, a major garden tick during Amber and Tim's visit - a Brown Rat!

More interestingly, a quick twitch to Rockford yesterday secured 4 Black Terns (1 adult, 3 juvs), coming hard on the heels of a refreshingly wet wade through Vales Moor in the Forest - while we didn't find the main target species (Drosera anglica), we did see lots of Large Marsh Grasshoppers, and succeeded in finding (and moreover identifying!) a single Heath Grasshopper on Castle Hill nearby. Two of the rarest British grasshoppers, in totally different habitats, within 200m of each other - only in the New Forest. Also Keeled Skimmer, Small Red Damselfly and a very welcome family party of Dartford Warblers.

Heath Grasshopper (Chorthippus vagans) - a rare denizen of dry heaths in the southern New Forest and on the Dorset heaths. Easily (not) identified by a combination of features, including the black wedges on the rear of the pronotum reaching the rear edge, and especially the small but distinct costal bulge on the leading edge of the forewing.

Simon tries to negotiate Vales Moor bog - and fails. The wellies are wet....

Some airborne accompaniment to Orthoptera hunting

On the DIY front, Julia has planted up the right hand bed by the drive, and Simon has been presure-blasting the side of the house to get the blown masonry paint off. And was attacked by a vile wild animal! A Wasp sting right under your eyelid is no fun at all.....

More visitors - human and animal

Still more very welcome guests of late - Guy and Carolyn dropped by on Saturday for a spot of coffee and digger fun - 1.5 tonnes of JCB mega action was had this weekend, as we excavated the pond, the veg beds, and stripped the turf from both hedge lines and the woodland glade ready for autumn/winter planting! Creative destruction.....

Self-explanatory, really....fun!

Two pallet-built wildlife towers are also installed in the woodland glade, and our long-potted Camellias and a new Rowan are in the ground.

More alpha-male nonsense in the garden

Also here on Monday were Oscar and Eric, en route to Portsmouth and the Bilbao ferry - and they even managed to bring Pete and his partner Maggie along too. We all enjoyed some time in the field on the HWT reserve, and up on the Forest too. And a vast cod and chips lunch at the Redshoot Inn....

Finally, Emily came round too, with young Benedict (just two - Fionnbharr behaved beautifully with him, but less so the other two!), and we all ate too much (again).

Somewhere within this social whirlwind (more to come in the next few days!) we've had time to catch some moths (new ones included Red Underwing, Svensson's Copper Underwing, Birch Mocha, Orange Swift and Canary-shouldered Thorn), see some birds (first Reed Bunting and Meadow Pipit of the autumn in the garden, Dunlin and migrant LRP on the reserve) and even do some botanizing. But the end of the holiday is looming.....

Red Underwing

Birch Mocha

Autumn migration underway

Another visit from the Tawny Owl last night, as well as a very lean-looking young Fox. And a new garden bird today - a migrant Tree Pipit, picked up on call, and then seen perched in one of the Birch trees. Excellent!

Meanwhile, on the lakes, still two Green Sandpipers present, and the family of Egyptian Geese (six youngsters) has moved to Rockford Lake.