Goldcrest

Beautiful sunny morning - Spring is here!

and a tiny Goldcrest tapping on the window. He (or she) was feeding off the small aphids that are already covering the climbing rose around our front door.

I have never seen a goldcrest here before - only seen the pictures in bird books. Hope he brings his friends.

Seed-head feeds

The spring flowers, like aquilegias, bergenias, bistorts have mostly gone over now leaving heads of dead flowers - which are turning into nice, ripe seeds. The general view of gardening is to dead-head to preserve the strength of the plant for next year and to tidy up. But don't be too hasty - seed heads provide a great food source for birds, especially needed at this time of year to feed hungry youngsters and second broods.

We were delighted yesterday by a pair of bullfinches feeding on the aquilegia seeds, the male resplendent with his orange-red chest and his more sombre brown mate. While we were watching them a goldfinch perched on a bergenia seed-head and pecked energetically before moving on to another dead flower (a blue flower like a cornflower - don't know it's proper name.)

The goldfinches are nesting in a neighbour's conifer.

Keen to have a balanced, diet the bullfinches had a feed of aphids on our roses before they left us. (Thank you guys!)

The other beauty of not cutting back too quickly is you get seedlings, or you can be organised and collect the seeds and sow them in pots. Also the seed heads are quite attractive as garden features. (I knew I could justify my lazy gardening style!)

First swallows!

Yesterday we were entertained by a small flock of swallows swooping around in the warm sunshine. No sign this morning - but the temperature has dropped significantly with a north wind and forecasts or rain. So maybe they're off a bit further south again!.

They are creatures of habit - a couple of years since we've been here I've logged the first swallows on 17th April.  But the parents fly back to Africa before the new babies - so it's a mystery how they manage it.

Birds

So many birds and so much activity!
A lot of birds have come back from their winter hideaways to start their families in our more gentle climate. We've had a thrush singing almost non-stop for 4 weeks. He's been sitting on the top of the walnut tree or the old ash tree in the field and entertaining us with his powerful, repetitive tune. This week he's come a bit closer and sitting on the hawthorn tree behind the studio  - maybe a nest?
We've had pheasants - a pair, and now a couple of youngsters, after the peanuts and seeds I occasionally put out when the weather is cold, several great tits, robins of course - following me as I dig the veg plots, a pair of crows, lots of pigeons, and I spotted a goldfinch on the Korean Fir.
Today I say a green woodpecker on the walnut tree. We don't often see them, though we hear them a lot in the wood and flying over the fields. There are a lot of holes in the trunks of the old plum trees up in the orchard, probably made by great spotted woodpeckers. Haven't seen so much of them since we stopped putting out peanuts in feeders. We used to get them regularly and they also hunt for bugs in the bark of the now-dead dawn redwood. But there's not much bark left on that now - the remaining strips were blown off in storm "Doris" last month.
When the weather is fine there's usually a buzzard or two circling overhead, with a couple of crows mocking them! The buzzards can fly faster and higher than the crows but seem to tolerate them. maybe it's just a game for both species.

Cold and grey

The temperature didn't get above zero today. After quite a mild December and early January when we had just one day of snow this week has been pretty chilly - proper winter. This morning no frost despite the cold. We haven't had any rain for about a fortnight, so too dry I suppose.

There hasn't been much activity in the garden. Stormy weather at the start of the month flattened the cage protecting the brussel sprouts. I was worried the pigeons and pheasants would strip the unprotected plants but so far they've kept away. We're having a good feed of sprouts at least once a week.

Snowdrops are just poking up through the grass. One or two helebores are flowering. But generally things are taking their time. Last January daffodils were out up at the crossroads in Coleorton and we were pulling rhubarb. This year the rhubarb is just starting to shoot, although a couple of plants we transferred into big tubs are further ahead. I dragged them into the greenhouse to protect them from the frost.

Plenty of wild life activity. Moles are very active in the fields all around and along the grass verges by the roads. They are also busy around our bonfire and have come down the garden as far as the kitchen window. Birds visiting the feeding area include a pair of pheasants, large family of magpies, crows, wood-pigeons, great-tits, sparrows, robins, blackbirds. And a couple of squirrels. The bird table is slowly falling apart. We don't put much food out - just scraps and in the cold weather a scoop of peanuts and seeds. When we filled all the feeders most of the food was taken by squirrels and wood-pigeons and sometimes rats. There's plenty of berries and seeds in the garden and surrounding hedgerows and woods so I don't think they will go hungry. It's nice to see the birds feeding, but the bird-feeders are more for our enjoyment I suspect.

I peeped under the tarpaulin we had left lying over part of the rhubarb patch we are reorganising and found a spherical nest beautifully crafted from dried grass with a small entrance hole. I think it's a field-mouse nest.

That was 2016

Christmas is over, the turkey carcass in the pot for stew and a new year starts tomorrow.
The last week has been cold and frosty with blue skies and sunshine during the day and clear, starry skies at night. At last a bit of proper winter weather. Until now it's been just grey, wet and very warm for December. We had a couple of days of frost which is supposed to be good for brussel sprouts and raspberries. It does clear off some pests and bugs too.

In general this year has been warm with some periods of really heavy rain and then some - shorter - periods of sunshine. 2016 is supposed to be the warmest year on record for the whole world, so global warming maybe starting to kick in. Definiely been some crazy weather which is what the scientists predict.

Round up of the year in our garden:

 

Vegetables

The big success this year was Brussel Sprouts. We've carefully nurtured them, with a big cage with fine mesh to keep out the butterflies and the pigeons and pheasants. Very little problem with slugs despite the wet weather. We had a good feed off the sprout tops and pleanty for Christmas dinner. They should keep us in green veg for another few weeks.
Chard was good and is still giving a few leaves, but the second sowing just didn't take.
Runner Beans and Broad Beans did well, but the French Beans were a complete disaster.
Onions and Leeks also did fairly well and better than expected as this was our first try after a break of a few years because of the Allium Leaf Miner. I just did a few Leeks and the ones we picked early were great, but those we left in to grow bigger got the dreaded bugs again.
The Sweetcorn experiment was a flop. We had a couple of rather misshapen cobs with just half of the kernels swelled up. Tastysnack but not a meal.
Marrows, Courgettes and Squashes were excellent, especially the Butternut Squashes. They were very late getting going, with slugs giving them a hard time for a while, but eventually produced lots of medium-sized fruit with good flavour.
This year I just did Tomatoes (Alicante) in the greenhouse, unlike previous years when we have also grown beef tomatoes in the small conservatory. 9 plants produced a massive harvest. We still have a handful of small tomatoes in the fridge and a good batch of tomato chutney.
Potatoes: Not a good year. It started with drowning spuds and didn't improve much. Spuds were of modest size and some had holes in the middle, rendering them pretty useless. The best potatoes have ben from the big pots. Got 3 pots in the greenhouse at the moment and one is just beginning to sprout.

Fruit

The soft fruits - currants, raspberries and loganberries were very productive. The only thing we do to them is a bit of basic pruning and put a bit of compost around the roots each year, so they are gold-dust really.  We did put nets over the currants because the blackbirds and pigeons can strip the redcurrants and iin the last couple of years have been moving on to the blackcurrants.

The Cooking Apples, especially the Bramley, have been amazing and the red eater. We have apples stored in trays in the conservatory (not heated) and boxes of cooked apples in the freezer. This is the first year we have just left fallen apples on the grass to rot - or be eaten by birds, squirrels or mice. But the Russet and the small eating apple didn't do so well.

The Damson produced bucket-loads. Plenty for jam, mostly damson & apple, pies and damson vodka which is lovely and makes great Christmas presents in small 125ml bottles.

The small plum tree (similar but not quite the same as a Victoria) was good, but we had nothing from the the purple plum and the big plum despite lots of blossom.

Flowers & trees

The warm, wet weather meant shrubs and trees grew like crazy so lots to trim back in the autumn and massive quantity of leaves to sweep up and compost.

Wildlife

Each spring I have a bit of a panic about the bees and this year they seemed to start a bit slowly. We had a warm month and then it went cold again. But eventually plenty of bees came into the garden to forage. Obviously its difficult to assess absolutely but I have the impression that honey bees (from hives) were in short number, but bumble bees of various sorts were doing OK. The press report wasps having a bad year. I think there were fewer, especially in the autumn, but I managed to get stung stepping on a wasps nest on the rockery and there was a sizeable nest by the rhubarb.

A lot fewer butterflies than usual.  Spotted a caterpillar of the elephant hawk-moth which apparantly like fuschias.

There was a little frogspawn in the spring although I didn't hear any croaking males. During the summer we saw several small frogs and large toads around the garden and a couple of newts. A friend asked me to write a report on the changes to frogs and toads in the 10 years we've been here, so I did this blog post in October >>

Busy birds

Long-tailed tit
(Photo from RSPB website)

Spring has truly sprung, the days are brighter and longer, and the birds are busy rushing around everywhere.

Flocks of long-tailed tits are cleaning the climbing roses of bugs and picking spiders from around the windows frames. I went to open the door of the utility room and there was a little tit hovering just at eye-level outside. Very acrobatic little birds. The RSPB have just published the results of their annual Big Garden Birdwatch which took place in January. The long-tail tits used to be fairly rare but now have reached no 10 position in birds counted throughout the UK and 9 in the county of Leicestershire where we are.

These are the results for Leicestershire:

Species	Rank	Mean no of birds recorded	% gardens seeing bird
House_sparrow	1	4.1	63.3
Blackbird	2	2.9	92.5
Woodpigeon	3	2.6	83.3
Blue_tit	4	2.6	78.4
Starling	5	2.4	36.8
Goldfinch	6	1.8	34.6
Great_tit	7	1.5	59.1
Robin	8	1.4	83.2
Long_tailed_tit	9	1.3	28.9
Chaffinch	10	1.2	39.0
Magpie	11	1.0	51.2
Dunnock	12	1.0	53.0
Collared_dove	13	0.9	41.4
Jackdaw	14	0.6	16.6
Greenfinch	15	0.6	22.5
Coal_tit	16	0.6	31.7
Carrion_crow	17	0.6	23.2
Feral_pigeon	18	0.4	13.2
Wren	19	0.3	29.7
Common_gull	20	0.2	5.9

Looking at the results the long-tailed tit has reached no. 9 in the ranks but only being seen in less than 30% of gardens. Of course when they come, they come in flocks of 10 or sometimes more.

The crows and wood-pigeons are busy building nests. They are taking dried twigs, even pulling off twigs from the red-wood, silver-birch and plum trees. Our neighbour has a very vigorous laurel hedge which provides a nesting-place for many small birds, blackbirds and pigeons. There's a bit of activity by the row of nesting boxes on the summer house, although great-tits often nest on-top just under the roof.

Ducks are busy and even though there are several large ponds close by they seem to enjoy dabbling in the flooded stream that runs through Billy's field that surrounds our garden.

And of course the birds are singing like crazy, especially the black-birds, thrushes and robins. It's a delight to walk around the garden towards evening and hear them all in chorus.

Early harvest!

After all the rain we've had two dry days - and it's amazingly warm. Up in the garden, tidying up around the leek bed and cutting back the ivy round the "thunder box" it was sunny and very still. The buzzards were soaring overhead and woodpeckers were calling around the woods. Almost like summer!

The rhubarb is coming up and, without any frost to knock it back, there's enough for a little taste. I roasted it gently in the oven with a little water. Lovely with some custard.

First rhubarb of the year

Rainbow chard leaves

The rainbow chard sown last summer is still going strong. I have been cutting off the flower stems and any old raggedy leaves and now there are lots of new leaves. So tonight we had steamed chard, potatoes (our own Desirees) sliced with onions and cooked in the oven with milk to accompany some left-over roast lamb.

It's great to be harvesting again - and unexpectedly early in the year.
.

Autumn leaves

Suddenly everything is golden. The leaves on the trees - those that are still attached - are various shades of yellow, red and brown, but mostly bright, golden yellow. The big cherry tree has started to drop leaves, aided by the stiff breeze. The big ash that we were so worried about in the early summer is completely denuded. Now it's a playground for all kinds of birds as a staging post between the rowan berries in our neighbour's garden and the bright red berries on the big hawthorn tree in our hedge. Big fat wood-pigeons, crows, blackbirds and some smaller birds which I think are field-fares. There's also some very small birds - possibly long-tail tits which move so fast I can't identify them. They are fun to watch.

The leaves are so lovely I made a picture from some of the maple leaves.

Autumn leaves from the maple.

Spring sprung!

We've had a few lovely sunny days. The birds and spring bulbs have definitely declared it's Spring. Wonderful to be outside, even just tidying up. Although I love my day job as website designer and marketer I'm starting to resent time spent at the desk and not out in the garden with these lovelies:

Purple crocuses in the grass

Hellebores and snowdrops

Small blue iris peeping through on the rockery. Don't remember this in previous years.
Plants arrive without any help from us - or maybe result of creative neglect!.

Rainy spell

After our "proper summer" and the driest September since 1910 we're having a week of wind and rain. The rain-water butts are now full and the ground well soaked - except under the large rhubarb and marrow leaves where there are still dry patches.

While tidying up the yellowing rhubarb leaves I discovered an abandoned pheasant nest with 10 perfect grey eggs. What a shame they didn't hatch, but I suppose the hungry family would have plundered anything green and edible in the veg patch so probably best they nest in the field.

There's still a lot of produce to harvest. Yesterday I picked 2lbs tomatoes from the greenhouse, 6 courgettes and 2 squashes plus half a punnet of rather soggy raspberries. These are a late variety and still have plenty of flowers and unripe berries as a promise of early winter fruit. The eating apples are not quite ripe yet. With the rain they should get to a decent size and will probably be red and ripe in a couple of weeks.

We're still trying to get on top of the cooking apple glut. We've given some to neighbours and stored some in the cool, dark storeroom behind the garage but they are going off so quickly we're trying to use the apples in as many ways as possible. Last week I made 8 jars of apple chutney and on Sunday an apple crumble, apple cake and apple flap-jacks (like nutty, oaty health-bars).

Blue sky musings

The last few days of August have been patchy weather-wise. We've had the typical "sunny spells with showers" - more grey than sunny.

Yesterday during a sunny spell I lay down in the grass under the damson tree and gazed up through the branches into the blue sky.

Right above me lots of plump-looking damsons ready for picking this weekend. Last year we had a bumper crop and the cupboards are still full of damson jams of various types and damson vodka. Flitting around the damson fruit were several brown & white butterflies and an enormous dragon-fly.

Then, swallows - flying very high. I haven't seen many recently (since the babies fledged) and thought they may already have gone south. But obviously they have just moved their roosting spot further into the fields.

A big silver bird came into view - no, it's an aeroplane moving silently across the blue sky shining in the sun.

Then the engine noise followed joining the orchestra of wood-pigeons cooing, long-tail tits squeaking and woodpeckers calling as they fly and THUD! - a large cooking apple dropped a few feet from my head. Definitely time for harvesting!

Swallow families

This year there are loads of swallows and with the sunshine following the rain on Saturday there are lots of bugs. We've had great fun watching their aerobatics and swooping down to feed their fluffy babies perched precariously on the telephone wires. The transfer takes half a second. I think the swallows have their nests in our neighbour's big barn.

Some years we've had no swallows. Last year we had martins and swallows but this year just loads of swallows. Certainly the warmer summers help.

See first swallow entry >>

Starlings

The weekend was sunny and hot (22C) with clear blue skies. Summer's here! On Sunday I was greeted with an amazing cacophony at the top of the garden. There are usually pigeons and blackbirds nesting in the holly trees but this was much more. I got the binoculars out and confirmed my first reaction - this was a whole nursery of starlings!

I love starlings. They are so much fun making elaborate and inventive song with clicks and squeaks and mimmicking car alarms and mobile phones. They are noisy and squabble a lot, but they always seem to be having fun. They are so beautiful with all colours shimmering through their mainly black and grey spotted plumage.

I watched and listened to the activity in the trees. Adult birds swooped in with beaks full of worms, their arrival causing the decibel level to rise sharply. More adventurous youngsters had left the nest and balanced precariously on outer branches. With their fluffy baby plumage they looked twice the size of their harrassed parents.

In the afternoon I was startled as the whole flock rose from the trees and swirled about the sky. They were joined by others from the spreading oak tree in Billy's field and created an acrobatic display for a few minutes - a flying lesson for the babies I suppose.

We haven't seen many starlings for a few years here so I'm really pleased to see this colony doing well and looking forward to some of those clicky, babbly, songs again.

Birdwatch 2014

We didn't do the RSPB Birdwatch this January - just ran out of time. Also we haven't been putting out nuts and seeds on the bird table so don't see as many visiting close to the house. Again - lack of time and also getting very expensive. The wood pigeons (and squirrels) are really greedy and "hoover" up as many peanuts and seeds as you can put out and this doesn't really seem to qualify as helping the wild life. This year we haven't had a big freeze so the little birds haven't been under a lot if stress.

The RSPB have just published the results http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/   I extracted the results for Leicestershire ranked by number of birds recorded in gardens and parks throughout the county:

1. House sparrow
2. Blackbird
3. Blue tit
4. Woodpigeon
5. Starling
6. Goldfinch
7. Great tit
8. Robin
9. Chaffinch
10. Collared dove
11. Dunnock
12. Magpie
13. Long tailed tit
14. Greenfinch
15. Jackdaw
16. Feral pigeon
17. Coal tit
18. Carrion crow
19. Wren
20. Bullfinch

Surprised at the number of goldfinches and starlings spotted. We occasionally see a small flock of goldfinches but can't remember the last time we had a starling in the garden. 

Our January 2013 results were a bit different. Without doing a proper count I'd say, this year, our most frequent visitors are:

1. Woodpigeon
2. Blackbird (lots nesting now - but there weren't so many around in January)
3. Robins
4. Great tits (nesting in boxes under the summer house roof)
5. Sparrows
6. Blue tits

The numbers vary during the year. Obviously there's many species that migrate which wouldn't show up on a once-a-year study like the fieldfares and swallows. Chaffinches and other finches travel around a lot too. 

Swallows on schedule

The glorious spring weather is continuing.

Just seen two swallows! Early again this year - coincidentally last year's first swallow was spotted on 17 April 2013!

The green pipe which channels water through the fern garden and to the waterfall to the pond has stopped flowing - an indication that the water levels in Billy's field have dropped. See it in full flow during the wet summer of 2012. However, there is still a lot of water flowing down the right side of the garden and the soil is pretty damp where I've been digging over ready for the next lot of potatoes.

Forecast for the East Midlands is for a sunny start to easter weekend so hopefully I'll get those spuds in and plant up some squashes,  marrows and runner beans.

Winter flowers

After a couple of weeks of rain and grey, but mild, days we've had two frosty nights (-2 C) and glorious sunny mornings.

The mild weather has brought forward the spring bulbs which are now pushing through and the robins and blackbirds are singing like they think its spring already.

There are flowers in the garden, mostly winter bloomers like mahonia, winter jasmine and heather and the rhubarb is sprouting nicely.  



Winter jasmine

Mahonia flowers

Primroses

Heather



NO-vember

I remember this poem as a kid - about the limit of my poetry-remembering skills! (If it was me writing I could nearly add No blog!)

November by Thomas Hood

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -
November! 

Don't know much about Mr Hood (read Wikipedia entry here when I get a chance) but I think he was being a bit pessimistic or perhaps he was a townie.

Today - last day of November - we've had a few hours of bright sunshine and blue skies, lovely for walking, and during this month the moon has been bright and large when we've had clear night skies.

As for "no birds"!

The bare trees provide a great opportunity to see birds of all kinds which are normally hidden by leaves. Our maple was alive with long-tail tits. And this year we have some winter visitors - fieldfares. I don't remember seeing them so close to the garden before, only in ploughed fields when I've been out walking. This afternoon there were 20 or more at the top of the walnut trees taking advantage of the last rays of the setting sun.

Image from BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Fieldfare

Swallows and Martins

Sitting in a chair taking a rest with a cup of coffee I was treated to a magnificent aerial display. Swallows, with swept-back wings and forked, pointy tails, dived and swooped across the garden, between the fruit trees and over the hedge. Martins, smaller and with shorter stubby tails, flitted acrobatically high in the sky.
I was fascinated. Some were swooping just a few feet from my face. However, over on the telephone wires in Clay Lane they were starting to congregate in lines. I guess they will be on their way to Africa in the next few days.
This summer has been a lot warmer than the previous few years and we've seen many more swallows and martins this year.

Summer flowers

At this time of year there are some very striking flowers in our cottage garden. The subtlety of spring has given way to bold shows of colour and style.

Sunflower grew from seed dropped by the birds under their feeder.


 

Bright pink roses

 

Staely yucca with creamy-white bell-shaped flowers