And other stories from the garden
Apr 8th, 2010 by Sophie
It has been a gorgeous, warm sunny day at last and I’ve had an afternoon in the garden! The pond is seething with tadpoles—there are great wriggling balls of them. This film only really shows them up where they are a bit more spread out.
The fritillaries are out and so are the comma butterflies
And there are great clumps of primroses
The blue tits have had a busy day nest building today. Here’s a few minutes out of their day:
And this is what they finished up with:
Mar 31st, 2010 by Chris
I did mean to post something on Saturday, but I kind of got distracted. I feel I should record the events of Saturday though, if only so that in future years we can look back and see when it all happened.
So, as reported on Twitter, on Saturday 27th March we saw the first signs of nest building going on in the blue tit nestbox. And it was a blue tit doing the work—we have seen great tits in there earlier and the occasional squabble, but it seems to be the blue tits that have prevailed again. Last year the first nesting was a good bit earlier, on 16th March. But I’m not sure we can really blame the cold winter for this year’s late start as in 2008 it was 26th March.
Saturday was a gorgeous day. We went for our first kayak paddle of the year on the Avon. It was pleasantly warm, and after the rain the previous week the river was full and flowing fast. Not anticipating the warmth I had far too many layers on to be working so hard to get upstream. What a contrast today! It was about 3°C when I got up this morning, and not much warmer when I had a site meeting around lunchtime. Looking at the nestcam now I can’t help wondering if the birds have decided they got it all wrong—they seem to have dragged half the nesting material out again! Let’s hope they return and bring up another brood in the Blue Tit Big Brother House
Jan 10th, 2010 by Chris
I made marmalade today—a rewarding but messy business that consequently involves a lot of time standing at the kitchen sink washing things up. The window by the kitchen sink looks out across the patio, where we have a ground feeder and various other things to attract birds.
The cold weather seems to have brought in a new visitor to our garden. A fieldfare, or so I’m told by people who know more about birds than I do (ie Sophie). And it’s a right bully.
It seems to have taken a liking to the apples that we put out for the blackbirds. It’s a fat looking thing, and you can tell why. All afternoon he’s done nothing but eat and fight off other birds. Sparrows, robins, blackbirds, starlings, none of them can get a look in. The ground feeder currently has several apples on it and large handfuls of suet and assorted seed. The fieldfare seems interested only in the apples, but he’s not letting anything else get close enough to eat the other stuff.
What do we do? Of course, the fieldfare is welcome to come and eat, but it seems determined to stop any of the regular visitors from eating at just the time when they most need to. Should we let nature take it’s course, or should we intervene somehow?
Aug 18th, 2009 by Chris
There seem to be an awful lot of butterflies around the garden at the moment. 
Mostly it’s white things fluttering around the nasturtiums but we’ve spotted the occasional more interesting butterfly. Or moth. I’m not even sure what the difference between butterflies and moths is, so no hope of working out the species!
This little beastie was on the water mint in the pond the other day. And this evening Sophie went out to get some chives for supper and spotted a tiny little blue butterfly.
Which moved on later to the green house, giving us a glimpse of the top side of the wings
If anyone can tell us what they are I’d love to know.