We watched the news footage last night of the stall holders at the Badminton Horse Trials packing up to go home before they had the chance to sell a thing, as the entire event was cancelled due to waterlogging, and I hoped that some of those London based journalists who sneer at politicians and retailers who ever dare to suggest that severe weather might, just might, have an impact on economic activity were watching. There is an awful lot of surface water around. I know that we are still in drought, but surface water isn't the same as ground water.
The Systems Administrator downloaded our rainfall statistics for the year from the weather station, and gave me the edited highlights. In the year to the end of April 2012 we had 573.5mm, give or take. I don't suppose that the electronic rain monitor is accurate to the last half millimetre, but it's probably a more reliable figure than taking readings from a plastic rain gauge. That's quite a lot, by our standards. The Chatto Garden's website gives the regional average as 500mm, and they are barely more than a mile from us. Wikipedia identifies St Osyth, four miles or so up the road, as the driest place in the country with average precipitation of 513mm. It is curious that the driest place in the country should have 13mm more rain than the regional average, but it goes to show that statistics are tricky things, and that there is a certain amount of competition for the lowest rainfall (I have heard a spokesman for Cambridge Botanic claim the honour for that city).
Anyway, 573mm is quite a lot, for us. To put it in context, the average for England and Wales for the period 1971 to 2000 was 926.9mm, so we got a whole 62% of the national average. You can amuse yourself trying to guess which places in the Mediterranean get the same annual rainfall as coastal Essex. Our long term average is slightly below that of Jerusalem, and in the past twelve months we've had a little less than an average year in Palermo.
It gets really startling when you look at when the rain fell. In April 2012 we had 95.3mm. That's 17% of our annual total in one month. By way of comparison, in April 2011 we had 1.4mm. Yes, 1.4mm. This April it rained sixty-eight times as much as it did last year. In March 2012 we had 39.5mm, 7% of the year's total, giving us nearly a quarter of the whole year's rain in those two months. In March 2011 we had 6.3mm, bringing the grand total for March and April of last year to 7.7mm, versus 134.8mm in the same two months of this year. Since midnight last night we've had another 20mm, so May 2012 is off to a flying start.
The gunnera bed is a swamp. I walked around the back garden this morning to see what it was doing, because I hadn't been out there for such a long time, and the lawns squelched beneath my feet. Until it dries out a bit I really shouldn't walk on it at all. Every step will be compacting the soil.
Addendum I heard a cuckoo calling, the first I've heard this year, though a colleague thought they'd heard one at work. This one sounded loud and close, from the direction of our wood. The swallows and house martins are back, hunting for insects above the garden, though they don't nest here.
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
keeping warm
I have ventured out of the house today twice, briefly, once to top up the food on the bird table, let the chickens out and turn the heaters off, and again to shut the chickens up for the night and turn the glasshouse heaters back on. Last night's frost wasn't very heavy, and I could probably have got away without heating, but today was so cold that the greenhouse and conservatory won't have warmed up much, so tonight they'll be starting from a low base, even if the frost isn't much harder. Yesterday evening, despite having said that the Norfolk Island Pine would have to take its chances outside, I did lay it down in the conservatory. The winter so far has been so mild it has survived in reasonable condition. I've only got to get it through a few more weeks and it should be OK for another summer, so it seems a shame to lose it at this stage.
The cold is in full, bubbling swing. It is following exactly the pattern of the Systems Administrator's cold, which came on at the end of November, seemed much better by Christmas, and then went on to a second, more liquid phase at the New Year. Mine got going on New Year's Eve, after giving intimations of its incipient presence from mid December onwards, seemed to be almost better by the end of last week, and then kicked off again. I don't know where the theory comes from that colds last a week, but as the SA's former boss and good friend says, There is only one thing wrong with that theory: it is complete bollocks. Actually a lot of rubbish is talked about colds. They are 'only' a cold. They are the sufferer's own fault, for eating the wrong food, or going out in the wrong weather, or being stressed. They are a good thing because they are nature's detox. I don't think so. The cold virus is a supremely successful parasite, one that doesn't kill its host, mutates frequently, and defies eradication through treatment or vaccination. Most adults in the UK get two to five a year. The SA and I are well within the normal range.
It's a nuisance that I'm booked to do a woodland charity talk tomorrow. I could cancel, but that would leave a room full of people expecting to have a lecture with nothing to do except chat among themselves, which seems pretty mean to them, and especially unfair to the organisers. The committee may keep an emergency quiz or last minute entertainment up their sleeves, but I don't think a cold counts as an emergency. Flu, yes, or total voice loss through laryngitis, or a medical crisis like appendicitis requiring hospitalisation, but not a cold. If it had been a Trustee's meeting I'd be going. Apart from a sense of noblesse oblige, that once you've agreed to do something you do it if humanly possible and don't mess people around, I have my own reputation to consider. If I turn up, even muffled and subdued, they'll be able to see that I tried, but if I don't go I look flaky. Club organisers want to book speakers who know their stuff and are entertaining, but they equally want to avoid those with any whiff of unreliability. It's my cold, and I'm going to share it with them (unless, of course, it gets a great deal worse in the night).
In the meantime I've been reading a book that turns out to be just the thing, and watching the birds on the bird table. The book is Ferdinand Mount's autobiography Cold Cream: my early life and other mistakes. I heard bits of it on R4 a while back, and have been following its progress from hardback to paperback to remaindered paperback, before picking up a copy. He is the same age as my own parents, but from a completely different world, growing up in 'Hobohemia', his parents both from landed gentry families but without either inherited wealth or any inclination to work for a living. After prep school (the fees a struggle for his parents) and Eton (scholarship), he went to Oxford, where his friends were the sorts of upper class and well-connected people whose friendship groups firmly excluded people like my parents, or (still, thirty years on) me and the SA. He drifted through private tutoring, Fleet Street, and Conservative Central Office, and wrote several novels, though I haven't got to that bit yet. It is a wonderful memoir, because Mount is such a self-deprecating, funny, observant narrator. The book is full of encounters with people who ended up part of, or connected with, The Establishment. If Mount were self-important, or crass, or a snob, it could have been the most awful book, but as he is the opposite of all of those it is a delight.
We didn't do The Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend. I was at work and the SA couldn't be bothered. The more I heard about it the less sure I was what, if anything, it would tell anyone about Britain's bird population. After the harsh winter last year if you didn't see many birds that might mean that they'd perished in the cold, but this year after the mild winter if you didn't see many birds that might mean that there was plenty of wild food and they didn't need to come into gardens. So seeing or not seeing many birds doesn't seem to tell you anything. I don't believe the counts anyway, because birds vary so much in their willingness to be seen, and I don't trust people not to yield to the temptation to put down rare visitors like coal tits if they know they have them in the garden sometimes, even if there weren't any in the hour they chose to record in. On our bird table the robins seem to pick on the male chaffinches the worst, apart from the other robins (though they are belligerent little beasts towards all other birds).
Addendum The ex Sir Fred's title doesn't happen in north east Essex and I've never met him, so he doesn't belong in this blog, but everybody else has had a pop at the subject so I'm going to. I'm with the Telegraph columnist who disapproves on principle of attempts to rewrite history, and says it is too much like the Soviet authorities air-brushing fallen politicians out of photos. I think he should have kept his knighthood, as a perpetual reminder to politicians, and regulators, and financial journalists, that they all went along with it at the time. I think the civil servants who administer the honours system should keep big photographs of Fred on their desks, and the Queen who nominally awards them should do the same. Everybody nominating anybody for an honour should have to consider the example of Fred and say whether, hand on heart, they still think this is a good idea. Or we could just not have honours, and take satisfaction from our good deeds.
The cold is in full, bubbling swing. It is following exactly the pattern of the Systems Administrator's cold, which came on at the end of November, seemed much better by Christmas, and then went on to a second, more liquid phase at the New Year. Mine got going on New Year's Eve, after giving intimations of its incipient presence from mid December onwards, seemed to be almost better by the end of last week, and then kicked off again. I don't know where the theory comes from that colds last a week, but as the SA's former boss and good friend says, There is only one thing wrong with that theory: it is complete bollocks. Actually a lot of rubbish is talked about colds. They are 'only' a cold. They are the sufferer's own fault, for eating the wrong food, or going out in the wrong weather, or being stressed. They are a good thing because they are nature's detox. I don't think so. The cold virus is a supremely successful parasite, one that doesn't kill its host, mutates frequently, and defies eradication through treatment or vaccination. Most adults in the UK get two to five a year. The SA and I are well within the normal range.
It's a nuisance that I'm booked to do a woodland charity talk tomorrow. I could cancel, but that would leave a room full of people expecting to have a lecture with nothing to do except chat among themselves, which seems pretty mean to them, and especially unfair to the organisers. The committee may keep an emergency quiz or last minute entertainment up their sleeves, but I don't think a cold counts as an emergency. Flu, yes, or total voice loss through laryngitis, or a medical crisis like appendicitis requiring hospitalisation, but not a cold. If it had been a Trustee's meeting I'd be going. Apart from a sense of noblesse oblige, that once you've agreed to do something you do it if humanly possible and don't mess people around, I have my own reputation to consider. If I turn up, even muffled and subdued, they'll be able to see that I tried, but if I don't go I look flaky. Club organisers want to book speakers who know their stuff and are entertaining, but they equally want to avoid those with any whiff of unreliability. It's my cold, and I'm going to share it with them (unless, of course, it gets a great deal worse in the night).
In the meantime I've been reading a book that turns out to be just the thing, and watching the birds on the bird table. The book is Ferdinand Mount's autobiography Cold Cream: my early life and other mistakes. I heard bits of it on R4 a while back, and have been following its progress from hardback to paperback to remaindered paperback, before picking up a copy. He is the same age as my own parents, but from a completely different world, growing up in 'Hobohemia', his parents both from landed gentry families but without either inherited wealth or any inclination to work for a living. After prep school (the fees a struggle for his parents) and Eton (scholarship), he went to Oxford, where his friends were the sorts of upper class and well-connected people whose friendship groups firmly excluded people like my parents, or (still, thirty years on) me and the SA. He drifted through private tutoring, Fleet Street, and Conservative Central Office, and wrote several novels, though I haven't got to that bit yet. It is a wonderful memoir, because Mount is such a self-deprecating, funny, observant narrator. The book is full of encounters with people who ended up part of, or connected with, The Establishment. If Mount were self-important, or crass, or a snob, it could have been the most awful book, but as he is the opposite of all of those it is a delight.
We didn't do The Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend. I was at work and the SA couldn't be bothered. The more I heard about it the less sure I was what, if anything, it would tell anyone about Britain's bird population. After the harsh winter last year if you didn't see many birds that might mean that they'd perished in the cold, but this year after the mild winter if you didn't see many birds that might mean that there was plenty of wild food and they didn't need to come into gardens. So seeing or not seeing many birds doesn't seem to tell you anything. I don't believe the counts anyway, because birds vary so much in their willingness to be seen, and I don't trust people not to yield to the temptation to put down rare visitors like coal tits if they know they have them in the garden sometimes, even if there weren't any in the hour they chose to record in. On our bird table the robins seem to pick on the male chaffinches the worst, apart from the other robins (though they are belligerent little beasts towards all other birds).
Addendum The ex Sir Fred's title doesn't happen in north east Essex and I've never met him, so he doesn't belong in this blog, but everybody else has had a pop at the subject so I'm going to. I'm with the Telegraph columnist who disapproves on principle of attempts to rewrite history, and says it is too much like the Soviet authorities air-brushing fallen politicians out of photos. I think he should have kept his knighthood, as a perpetual reminder to politicians, and regulators, and financial journalists, that they all went along with it at the time. I think the civil servants who administer the honours system should keep big photographs of Fred on their desks, and the Queen who nominally awards them should do the same. Everybody nominating anybody for an honour should have to consider the example of Fred and say whether, hand on heart, they still think this is a good idea. Or we could just not have honours, and take satisfaction from our good deeds.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
a day in the front garden
The robins have reappeared. In summer they skulk invisibly, presumably moulting, but the bird books say that they pair up and establish their territories earlier than many garden birds. Recently they have started singing in the small hours, and one peered at me beady eyed from beside the dustbins as I went down to shut the conservatory doors for the night. The Systems Administrator, who combines birdwatching with supervising chicken exercise time, says that there are at least three territories in the front garden. One robin sings from the hawthorn tree near the chicken run and the dustbins, which might be the one I saw. Another moves between the Eleagnus hedge and the Genista aetnensis in the turning circle, and a third hangs out in the the hedge behind the greenhouse. There seem likely to be a similar number in the back garden, but we haven't observed that so systematically. Last summer blackbirds nested in the Eleagnus hedge and in the field maple by my greenhouse, suggesting robin and blackbird territories might be similar in terms of size and demarcation.
We have noticed song thrushes around the hedge on the way in, frequently enough to suggest that they might be living in the garden. They have a preferred patch of lawn in the back garden, at the top of the slope, not too close to the house. When I was a child they seemed as common as blackbirds, but now it is a rare pleasure and something of a thrill to see one. The S.A. has seen blackcaps, but honestly I wouldn't recognise a blackcap if it came up and pecked me. Although a lot of my life is spent in the garden I am not a good birdwatcher, as I'm too often looking at the ground or the near distance. I am an ace toad spotter.
Tonight is the first time I've shut the glass since May. I'm not sure if we'll get much of a frost here, and it is forecast to warm up again over the next few days, but it feels as though winter were a step closer. I went to trim back the Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve', which have put up a valiant show all summer and still bear some purple flowers on the ends of their long, wispy stalks, then stayed my hand. A few late bumble bees are still flying and foraging, and it won't hurt to leave 'Bowles Mauve' for another week or two. I began cutting the ivy hedge instead, which led by degrees to tackling one end of the long flowerbed, which had got badly weedy and overgrown with ivy. A Callistemon which lost all of its top growth to last winter's cold is resprouting from below ground level, and I finally cut out the dead branches. The S.A. offered to cart away the prunings and trails of ivy, and I ended up getting more done than I was expecting. The soil is like dust, structureless, mere and bone dry. A pair of Photinia serratifolia, planted in the hope that they would grow up and mask the telegraph pole, are clinging to life. A book on dry gardening said that they were surprisingly drought tolerant once established, but I think the clue lies in the phrase 'once established'. A Berberis dictophylla, planted at the same time for its beautiful white stems and sea green leaves, is looking equally overwhelmed. I dug in lots of organic material when I planted them, but it has vanished without trace. Mulch, mulch and more mulch is called for.
We have noticed song thrushes around the hedge on the way in, frequently enough to suggest that they might be living in the garden. They have a preferred patch of lawn in the back garden, at the top of the slope, not too close to the house. When I was a child they seemed as common as blackbirds, but now it is a rare pleasure and something of a thrill to see one. The S.A. has seen blackcaps, but honestly I wouldn't recognise a blackcap if it came up and pecked me. Although a lot of my life is spent in the garden I am not a good birdwatcher, as I'm too often looking at the ground or the near distance. I am an ace toad spotter.
Tonight is the first time I've shut the glass since May. I'm not sure if we'll get much of a frost here, and it is forecast to warm up again over the next few days, but it feels as though winter were a step closer. I went to trim back the Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve', which have put up a valiant show all summer and still bear some purple flowers on the ends of their long, wispy stalks, then stayed my hand. A few late bumble bees are still flying and foraging, and it won't hurt to leave 'Bowles Mauve' for another week or two. I began cutting the ivy hedge instead, which led by degrees to tackling one end of the long flowerbed, which had got badly weedy and overgrown with ivy. A Callistemon which lost all of its top growth to last winter's cold is resprouting from below ground level, and I finally cut out the dead branches. The S.A. offered to cart away the prunings and trails of ivy, and I ended up getting more done than I was expecting. The soil is like dust, structureless, mere and bone dry. A pair of Photinia serratifolia, planted in the hope that they would grow up and mask the telegraph pole, are clinging to life. A book on dry gardening said that they were surprisingly drought tolerant once established, but I think the clue lies in the phrase 'once established'. A Berberis dictophylla, planted at the same time for its beautiful white stems and sea green leaves, is looking equally overwhelmed. I dug in lots of organic material when I planted them, but it has vanished without trace. Mulch, mulch and more mulch is called for.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
some amazing plant recoveries (and one not)
Looking out of the bathroom window this morning I saw a robin and a great tit already standing on the empty bird table, so refilled it as soon as I'd had my shower and got dressed. Despite the rain of recent days (11mm in the past 24 hours) there must still be a shortage of natural food, as I don't normally need to feed the birds in June.
The view of the bird table from my desk is partially obscured by one of the potted camellias which stand in a row outside the study window. Next time I'm out there I must budge the pots along to give me a clear line of sight. I've been feeding the camellias in containers with a dilute liquid ericaceous feed, about one in every three times I water them (slightly dictated by when I can be bothered to carry the watering can around to the back of the house instead of using the hose) and they have been opening new leaves for a while now, and starting to look more respectable. They were very dishevelled and sad at the end of winter, with sparse discoloured leaves and some dead twigs. I realised quite how bad they had got when I compared them to the camellias growing in the ground, which apart from a couple of branches broken down by the weight of the snow were looking green and lush, and much more densely clothed with leaves. Among the container grown plants the smaller and younger specimens suffered more, and I lost one, 'J.C. Williams', a good early pale pink which was one of the first williamsii hybrids and named after one of the Williams family of Caerhayes in Cornwall.
The plants in the ground have not always been so happy. C. x williamsii 'Jury's Yellow' went into the bank between the house and the wood in April 2003. It was a well-grown young specimen just ready to plant out, root system nicely filling its pot without being pot-bound. The soil on the slope where it's planted is not great, being strange structureless stuff dumped there by builders in the 1970s, and the slope made it difficult to water the camellia, though I did try. Twigs kept dying back and I kept trimming them off and hoping, until the bush was reduced to no more than half of its original size. Then, at last, it established itself and began to grow. It is now a shining, healthy plant fully 1.5m wide and tall. I hope that the smallest of the remaining potted camellias is going to pull off the same trick. 'Donation' gave up on half of its top growth last winter, but in the past couple of weeks has started opening new leaves, and I think the corner has been turned. It is hard on them standing outside all winter, and I should bring them in, or at least the smaller ones. The trouble is that there is nowhere to put them. Over-cramming the conservatory with pots just leads to everything being neglected, as I can't see what I'm doing with the watering. (To a gardener in the south west of England the pace of growth of my Essex camellias must seem painfully slow. It is. That's what happens if you grow camellias on sand in an area with just over 500mm average annual rainfall. But they are perfectly healthy. Camellias are much more satisfactory than rhododendrons for dry sites).
The olive in the front garden is shooting from the main trunk, and some of the branches. I thought it was still alive. They do say you should wait until June before writing plants off. A third harsh winter will be too much for it, I fear, but that might well not happen. I'll give it a while longer, to see more clearly which of the branches still have life in them, and then trim out the dead wood.
The plum 'Marjories' Seedling', that I had doubts about at the time of planting, never came to anything good. It was watered, and threw a weak shoot from very low down, just above the graft. I could complain to the grower, but then I would be embroiled in an argument about whether or not I had watered it enough, given the weather we've had. I think I'll try again in the autumn with another supplier, and quietly not use the first lot again or recommend them to people. It is the second time I have had a failure with one of their plums. Odd, because their cherries have been fine. Maybe plums are difficult. Two is not a statistically valid sample, but I'm sure that 'Marjorie's Seedling' wasn't right when they sent it to me. Pity, because the grower has a long and interesting list, but life is too short to spend it on arguments with mail order suppliers of bare-rooted fruit.
The view of the bird table from my desk is partially obscured by one of the potted camellias which stand in a row outside the study window. Next time I'm out there I must budge the pots along to give me a clear line of sight. I've been feeding the camellias in containers with a dilute liquid ericaceous feed, about one in every three times I water them (slightly dictated by when I can be bothered to carry the watering can around to the back of the house instead of using the hose) and they have been opening new leaves for a while now, and starting to look more respectable. They were very dishevelled and sad at the end of winter, with sparse discoloured leaves and some dead twigs. I realised quite how bad they had got when I compared them to the camellias growing in the ground, which apart from a couple of branches broken down by the weight of the snow were looking green and lush, and much more densely clothed with leaves. Among the container grown plants the smaller and younger specimens suffered more, and I lost one, 'J.C. Williams', a good early pale pink which was one of the first williamsii hybrids and named after one of the Williams family of Caerhayes in Cornwall.
The plants in the ground have not always been so happy. C. x williamsii 'Jury's Yellow' went into the bank between the house and the wood in April 2003. It was a well-grown young specimen just ready to plant out, root system nicely filling its pot without being pot-bound. The soil on the slope where it's planted is not great, being strange structureless stuff dumped there by builders in the 1970s, and the slope made it difficult to water the camellia, though I did try. Twigs kept dying back and I kept trimming them off and hoping, until the bush was reduced to no more than half of its original size. Then, at last, it established itself and began to grow. It is now a shining, healthy plant fully 1.5m wide and tall. I hope that the smallest of the remaining potted camellias is going to pull off the same trick. 'Donation' gave up on half of its top growth last winter, but in the past couple of weeks has started opening new leaves, and I think the corner has been turned. It is hard on them standing outside all winter, and I should bring them in, or at least the smaller ones. The trouble is that there is nowhere to put them. Over-cramming the conservatory with pots just leads to everything being neglected, as I can't see what I'm doing with the watering. (To a gardener in the south west of England the pace of growth of my Essex camellias must seem painfully slow. It is. That's what happens if you grow camellias on sand in an area with just over 500mm average annual rainfall. But they are perfectly healthy. Camellias are much more satisfactory than rhododendrons for dry sites).
The olive in the front garden is shooting from the main trunk, and some of the branches. I thought it was still alive. They do say you should wait until June before writing plants off. A third harsh winter will be too much for it, I fear, but that might well not happen. I'll give it a while longer, to see more clearly which of the branches still have life in them, and then trim out the dead wood.
The plum 'Marjories' Seedling', that I had doubts about at the time of planting, never came to anything good. It was watered, and threw a weak shoot from very low down, just above the graft. I could complain to the grower, but then I would be embroiled in an argument about whether or not I had watered it enough, given the weather we've had. I think I'll try again in the autumn with another supplier, and quietly not use the first lot again or recommend them to people. It is the second time I have had a failure with one of their plums. Odd, because their cherries have been fine. Maybe plums are difficult. Two is not a statistically valid sample, but I'm sure that 'Marjorie's Seedling' wasn't right when they sent it to me. Pity, because the grower has a long and interesting list, but life is too short to spend it on arguments with mail order suppliers of bare-rooted fruit.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
rain stopped play
You didn't miss much, not getting a post-match analysis of my day at work yesterday. I spent most of it stuck on the till (I suppose somebody had to be on the till), and there were rather too many customers who wanted to help, or interfere, depending on your point of view, while I was ringing their items up. There were several who tried to start putting things back into their trolley, which I had taken out, before I had finished working my way through the rest of their shopping. If plants already charged for, and which are standing on the counter, find their way back into the trolley before I've finished, this is a recipe for double-charging. Then there were the 'I've got four of those' brigade, when in fact they had two of those in 1L pots at £3.50 and another two in 9cm pots at £2.95. Also the 'I've got three of those' variety, when two of the three are right at the other end of the trolley, and when I get to them I am supposed to remember that I've put them through the till already, and not charge for them twice. And the ones who picked plants up randomly out of the trolley and waved the label helpfully (not) under my nose, when I was trying to go through the whole thing systematically. And the ones who insisted on telling me they had two of these, four of those and three of the other, when I could see they had mainly 1L pots from the same two suppliers, which were all going to be £3.50, irrespective of species or variety. Please don't try to help. By all means refrain from hiding packets of labels under bulky bags of compost and little pots of herbs under big pots of Rodgersia leaves, just don't try to help. And don't leave piles of plants and large pink plastic trugs in front of the till while you go and choose more things. People are trying to use that checkout.
The concert in Hadleigh was very good. The friend who came with me said so too, which was a relief, since it is unfortunate to induce one's friends to waste an evening of their lives and fifteen quid. She went to music college and understands choral singing and the workings of a baroque orchestra far better than I do, being an escaped folkie and new wave fan who merely knows what they like when it comes to classical music (although as my aunt said to me, who played with the Halle Orchestra in her youth, 'at least you are an audience').
It rained 3mm yesterday evening, better than nothing but still not nearly enough. Over lunchtime today we have had three sharp showers, one with a little hail mixed in, and one managing to come out of an entirely blue sky. They are not enough to do the garden any good at all, and just enough to wet the ground and the foliage and so make my gloves and knees soggy and uncomfortable. (If it were not raining there is no way I would be sitting at my computer at 15.06).
The long-tailed tits seem to have a good breeding season, which is lovely. The garden is full of them. They dash around in little flocks, making a frenetic high-pitched squeaking sound. There are convoys of blackbirds, too, flying solemnly around the garden on what look like test flights. As I look out of the window now (15.12) there is a preposterously small bluetit on the bird table. I had to rescue a bird from the conservatory. It had gone up high, and was banging against the glass, so it never got close to either door. Our Ginger came to join in, which was not helpful, but the bird eventually crash-landed between two pots on the floor, saw the open door, and dashed into the trees. I don't know species what it was. Small and brown with huge eyes. I guess it was a youngster as for most of the year we don't have any problems with birds in the conservatory, and they have presumably learnt where the door is. When the robin was nesting in the greenhouse she had mastered the art of flitting out through the louvred vents.
It has now (15.19) stopped raining and I shall get back to the deadheading, weeding and watering.
The concert in Hadleigh was very good. The friend who came with me said so too, which was a relief, since it is unfortunate to induce one's friends to waste an evening of their lives and fifteen quid. She went to music college and understands choral singing and the workings of a baroque orchestra far better than I do, being an escaped folkie and new wave fan who merely knows what they like when it comes to classical music (although as my aunt said to me, who played with the Halle Orchestra in her youth, 'at least you are an audience').
It rained 3mm yesterday evening, better than nothing but still not nearly enough. Over lunchtime today we have had three sharp showers, one with a little hail mixed in, and one managing to come out of an entirely blue sky. They are not enough to do the garden any good at all, and just enough to wet the ground and the foliage and so make my gloves and knees soggy and uncomfortable. (If it were not raining there is no way I would be sitting at my computer at 15.06).
The long-tailed tits seem to have a good breeding season, which is lovely. The garden is full of them. They dash around in little flocks, making a frenetic high-pitched squeaking sound. There are convoys of blackbirds, too, flying solemnly around the garden on what look like test flights. As I look out of the window now (15.12) there is a preposterously small bluetit on the bird table. I had to rescue a bird from the conservatory. It had gone up high, and was banging against the glass, so it never got close to either door. Our Ginger came to join in, which was not helpful, but the bird eventually crash-landed between two pots on the floor, saw the open door, and dashed into the trees. I don't know species what it was. Small and brown with huge eyes. I guess it was a youngster as for most of the year we don't have any problems with birds in the conservatory, and they have presumably learnt where the door is. When the robin was nesting in the greenhouse she had mastered the art of flitting out through the louvred vents.
It has now (15.19) stopped raining and I shall get back to the deadheading, weeding and watering.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
garden birds
This weekend is the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. I won't be taking part, because I'm working.
There are a good lot of birds in the garden. There were at least three blackbirds' nests last year, in different hedges. Thrushes, though, far from singing out from every bush are rare sightings nowadays. When I was a child in Devon forty years ago song thrushes were as common as blackbirds and I remember watching them beating snails out of their shells on the stone edges to the flower beds, but now it is a thrill to see the odd one. I see mistle thrushes occasionally, but no more than that. They are leggier and specklier and more difficult to mistake for a blackbird.
The robins are bold, trying to defend the bird table against all comers and following me around when I'm doing anything to disturb the soil. There is the odd hedge sparrow on the bird table, but they seem to live mainly down the lane opposite the neighbours' house. At this time of year a day doesn't pass I don't see great tits and blue tits. They are busy on the bird table now, but do their bit through the summer picking the aphids off the roses. There are long tailed tits, that charge around in a gang making high pitched staccato shrieks. They look like bouncing feathery golf balls with long tails. Last winter in the coldest spell coal tits came to the bird table, but not this year. They are shy creatures that normally shun the garden, so either they were not hungry enough to venture out of the wood, or they have not survived.
There are generally some chaffinches about, but I haven't seen many big finch flocks this year. Gold finches have visited in the past, though I don't think they're around permanently.
We very ocassionally see wrens creeping about. I hope they are still with us. There is plenty of shrubby ivy for them to hide in, so I'm optimistic.
There are two collared doves. They are indeed a devoted and lovely-dovey pair. I like them better than the pigeons. The way pigeons sit in the trees and flap annoys me unreasonably, and their endless irritating cooing in May makes me think of school exams even after all these years. I'm not crazy on the pheasants either, because they eat the fritillaries, and because they roost outside the bedroom then squawk loudly in the middle of the night, presumably when alarmed by the fox.
The starlings are just as noisy and I love them. They nested for years in the roof above the bedroom, and made an amazing amount of noise, banging on the ceiling in the small hours, and hurling lumps of insulation out through the hole in the soffit board. For years I argued that they should be allowed to stay despite the noise. Then they began to travel further afield in the roof, and down inside the walls. Sitting in the study on winter evenings we would hear desperate scrabbling from under the plasterwork. It was all getting too Edgar Allen Poe, and reluctantly I agreed that before the nesting season started their hole would have to be blocked. We put up two purpose built starling boxes on the wall, but I'm afraid they haven't taken to these. They still sit on the telephone wires in the mornings, making whistling noises. Years ago there used to be one that did a convincing telephone imitation, and one that did an owl, confusing when you heard it on the roof in the middle of the day.
There are tawny owls, and they do call by day for parts of the year, though not from the roof. We often hear them, seldom see them. I'm sure they nest in the wood. Sometimes in the summer you hear the small birds mobbing one. There are kestrels, which I think nest in the wood. Buzzards now live in this area, and have flown through the airspace above the garden, but I don't think one has ever touched down, so they don't count. I deduce the presence of sparrowhawks from the piles of pigeon feathers that appear on the grass now and then. I once as a child saw a sparrowhawk pluck its prey, screaming all the while as it pulled the feathers out.
I often see green woodpeckers. They forage on the lawn, which is a very good reason for not dosing the grass with chemicals to kill leatherjackets etc. I'd far rather have the yaffles. They have red heads, a dipping flight and a thoroughly dirty laugh. We hear drumming very infrequently, which is the spotted ones, as green ones don't drum.
There are magpies, and jays. Nobody gets excited or pleased to see them, though they are handsome birds. I find acorns and chestnuts in all sorts of odd places, and presume I can thank the jays for the fact that I have a regular supply of evergreen oak seedlings coming up in the garden, though the nearest Quercus ilex is across three fields. There are black corvids, but I have never worked out whether rooks or crows. I will read up on them one of these days.
In the summer house martins and swallows hunt over the garden. On a hot evening you can see the insects. House martins nest on our neighbours' house, but have never favoured us.
And those are the birds, but whether they are more or less abundant this year than last I couldn't say, having not done the Birdwatch. It must be useful to try and keep track of whether numbers are rising or falling, but frustrating to spend your hour watching and at the end of it have not recorded a tenth of the species you know are there, or were yesterday.
There are a good lot of birds in the garden. There were at least three blackbirds' nests last year, in different hedges. Thrushes, though, far from singing out from every bush are rare sightings nowadays. When I was a child in Devon forty years ago song thrushes were as common as blackbirds and I remember watching them beating snails out of their shells on the stone edges to the flower beds, but now it is a thrill to see the odd one. I see mistle thrushes occasionally, but no more than that. They are leggier and specklier and more difficult to mistake for a blackbird.
The robins are bold, trying to defend the bird table against all comers and following me around when I'm doing anything to disturb the soil. There is the odd hedge sparrow on the bird table, but they seem to live mainly down the lane opposite the neighbours' house. At this time of year a day doesn't pass I don't see great tits and blue tits. They are busy on the bird table now, but do their bit through the summer picking the aphids off the roses. There are long tailed tits, that charge around in a gang making high pitched staccato shrieks. They look like bouncing feathery golf balls with long tails. Last winter in the coldest spell coal tits came to the bird table, but not this year. They are shy creatures that normally shun the garden, so either they were not hungry enough to venture out of the wood, or they have not survived.
There are generally some chaffinches about, but I haven't seen many big finch flocks this year. Gold finches have visited in the past, though I don't think they're around permanently.
We very ocassionally see wrens creeping about. I hope they are still with us. There is plenty of shrubby ivy for them to hide in, so I'm optimistic.
There are two collared doves. They are indeed a devoted and lovely-dovey pair. I like them better than the pigeons. The way pigeons sit in the trees and flap annoys me unreasonably, and their endless irritating cooing in May makes me think of school exams even after all these years. I'm not crazy on the pheasants either, because they eat the fritillaries, and because they roost outside the bedroom then squawk loudly in the middle of the night, presumably when alarmed by the fox.
The starlings are just as noisy and I love them. They nested for years in the roof above the bedroom, and made an amazing amount of noise, banging on the ceiling in the small hours, and hurling lumps of insulation out through the hole in the soffit board. For years I argued that they should be allowed to stay despite the noise. Then they began to travel further afield in the roof, and down inside the walls. Sitting in the study on winter evenings we would hear desperate scrabbling from under the plasterwork. It was all getting too Edgar Allen Poe, and reluctantly I agreed that before the nesting season started their hole would have to be blocked. We put up two purpose built starling boxes on the wall, but I'm afraid they haven't taken to these. They still sit on the telephone wires in the mornings, making whistling noises. Years ago there used to be one that did a convincing telephone imitation, and one that did an owl, confusing when you heard it on the roof in the middle of the day.
There are tawny owls, and they do call by day for parts of the year, though not from the roof. We often hear them, seldom see them. I'm sure they nest in the wood. Sometimes in the summer you hear the small birds mobbing one. There are kestrels, which I think nest in the wood. Buzzards now live in this area, and have flown through the airspace above the garden, but I don't think one has ever touched down, so they don't count. I deduce the presence of sparrowhawks from the piles of pigeon feathers that appear on the grass now and then. I once as a child saw a sparrowhawk pluck its prey, screaming all the while as it pulled the feathers out.
I often see green woodpeckers. They forage on the lawn, which is a very good reason for not dosing the grass with chemicals to kill leatherjackets etc. I'd far rather have the yaffles. They have red heads, a dipping flight and a thoroughly dirty laugh. We hear drumming very infrequently, which is the spotted ones, as green ones don't drum.
There are magpies, and jays. Nobody gets excited or pleased to see them, though they are handsome birds. I find acorns and chestnuts in all sorts of odd places, and presume I can thank the jays for the fact that I have a regular supply of evergreen oak seedlings coming up in the garden, though the nearest Quercus ilex is across three fields. There are black corvids, but I have never worked out whether rooks or crows. I will read up on them one of these days.
In the summer house martins and swallows hunt over the garden. On a hot evening you can see the insects. House martins nest on our neighbours' house, but have never favoured us.
And those are the birds, but whether they are more or less abundant this year than last I couldn't say, having not done the Birdwatch. It must be useful to try and keep track of whether numbers are rising or falling, but frustrating to spend your hour watching and at the end of it have not recorded a tenth of the species you know are there, or were yesterday.
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