Wasps

Found this lovely sleepy wasp in the garden this afternoon, yes I did say 'lovely' because I'm a great fan of wasps - not when they sting me of course, but then again they don't do that gratuitously. But generally, they're great pest controllers around the place and actually they're amazingly handsome. I remember a couple of years ago sitting in the tea room at Corfe Castle with Philip sharing his scones and jam with wasps ("I've got lots, I don't mind sharing") - he was entranced with them nipping to and from his plate. Now, they can be a pest and last year we had to have a nest dealt with for the first time; normally we just leave them be up in the eves but this one was in a place where they could have been nasty. But generally, I reckon we ought to learn to love wasps.

Bright and sunny

The warm weather has really kicked the garden into life, with stuff coming up all over. The new hedging plants have all come into bud so I've had 100% survival over the winter and with an entire growing season now they've got their roots down I'm hoping for some serious growth this year. The frog-spawn has hatched into tadpoles, though we do have an iminent hosepipe ban in prospect so we may be topping up the pond with buckets as filling domestic ponds is banned - though the water board do say they make an exception for filling fish ponds. I've emailed them, copied to our local wildlife trust, to see if that exemption extends to wildlife ponds in domestic gardens...and if not why not? With garden ponds being so vital for wildlife these days I would have thought there was a strong case for it.

I also saw the first bats airborne this week, which is always good :-)

Mad as a pond full of frogs..

And the pond has been FULL of frogs this weekend, we've been counting somewhere between 10 and 15 at any one time, all croaking away. There only seems to be one clump of frog spawn as yet, which makes us wonder if there are a lot of males and only one female in the pond. But everywhere you look there are frogs, on the weed, under the weed, swimming around...  In previous years we've been quite worried about the number of tadpoles which do not metamorphose properly into frogs, but clearly there must have been quite a number which did given how many have returned as adults. We also got a brief view of a newt in there today, probably trying to avoid being squished by amourous frogs I should think. We've had newts consistantly for a couple of years now, though the eggs are hard to spot and newt-poles very furtive, so we don't know if they're breeding. They're common newts, and none the worse for that, including a male who does look very handsome!

Kit also had a hornet sighting in the tree house today. I trust him to identify it correctly because he's seen a hornet before and is unlikely to confuse it with a queen wasp. I'm sorry I missed it because they're such spectactular insects, though I hope it was only foraging and not looking to nest because we don't really have anywhere which can take a hornet nest safely and I'd hate to have them exterminated as they're so amazing and still quite rare - though numbers are up now. Over in the water park my mate Will says they always 'lose' a few bat boxes every year to nesting hornets. So as long as they don't nest, they're welcome to forage here any time.

No sign of any of the birds taking an interest in the new nest boxes yet, but it's still early days for that. But there are loads of them hitting the feeders still so I'm hopeful that the blue tits will make use of them.

Bird Boxes

The first of the bird boxes are up, there are lots of blue tits around the garden so with any luck they'll get used. I've put up two so far but I'd like to put up some more before the spring if I can.There are also lots of birds busy feeding in the garden now, which is great because I was really worried that numbers had plummted from what they were, but now it's looking good again.

It's turned cold again, so the frog-bonkfest seems to have stopped: no frogspawn as yet.

Annoying the frogs and cutting the hedge

Over the last couple of days the pond has become alive with frogs, loads of them croaking and making out for all they're worth. I'm guessing that the warm weather has bought them out. We had lots of frog spawn last year, which turned into lots of tadpoles, however a lot of them never turned into frogs, though guessing by the sheer number of them which have turned up last week a fair number must have done so!

The problem is that the pond was really in need of a clear out, with planting baskets overflowing, mare's tail clogging the surface and a shortage of clear water, so with the sudden frog influx the only option was to clean it out today. Even with my pond gloves on the water was very cold, so how the frogs manage I don't know! I pulled out bucket loads of unwanted foliage and root mass, and disposed of a couple of the more overgrown baskets entirely. It looks a bit barren at present but it will look all the better for it in a couple of months. Now the frogs can lay as much frog spawn as they want without me having to disturb it further.

The other thing I've been doing is to do some serious cutting back on the hedge which the council decided last year was mine. I cut it back on the pavement side quite hard so it doesn't come as near to the pavement, which means that this year it can grown back in quite thickly without overhanging the footpath. I also tried half cutting through and bending over a seedling ash tree because frankly I don't want an ash tree there...but I could live with, and in fact encourage, a bushing ash if the bulk of it was back nearer the hedge itself. There's loads of bun on the hawthornes which have so much more room now the hedge has been thinned out as it was last summer too. I've bought a couple of bird boxes to put up in some of the taller trees in the hedge so I'll have to get those put up soon. Quite a lot of stuff is showing buds beginning to break, so spring is definitely on the way.

Now the warm weather has come the birds are all over the feeders...in the cold weather when you'd expect 'em to want extra food they hardly showed up, now there are always birds on them: go figure.

Flowers!

We've been away for a week, and come back to loads of snowdrops in flower which is lovely, we've been seeing lots in Dorset and it was good to come back to some brightening our garden. The bluebells continue their inexorable appearence through the 'impermeable' membrane too. The birds have also emptied the feeders while we've been away, so while through the really cold snap they've not shown much interest given a somewhat milder week and they've scoffed the lot!

We've also had a collared dove in the garden, so much 'tidier' than our normal overweight pigeons, not that I want to diss the pigeons of course. We haven't seen any siskins this year, and we normally get one or two, nor have we had a fieldfare in the garden though there have been flocks of them about.

Big Freeze

It's been so cold here this week, ending with snow, that nothing in the garden has moved at all. It's been striking how many fewer garden birds there have been though as I've had the feeders full and there have been occasional visitors rather than the flocks of greedy feeders we've had in previous years. The Long-Tailed tits turned up to enjoy the fat balls this morning, but as always a camera is a LTT deterent of the first order and no sooner had I got my Canon than they disappeared. The Robin has been around of course, as have the usual few great tits and chaffinches. 

The pond wasn't frozen solid today, as the temperature had gone up a lot after the snow last night - though all is still dormant fortunately. One assumes the frogs and toads are hibernating safely under rocks and stones nearby, and the snails have retreated to the deeper water.

Big Garden Birdwatch

Sue did the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch today - as is always the case with this event for us there were fewer birds than we normally see, though she spotted Blackbirds, Hedge Sparrows, Great Tits and Blue Tits. The Long-Tailed Tits never show up in our garden for this event...

 http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/

Long Tailed Tits

Loads of them on the fat balls late this afternoon, about 8 of them rocked up from nowhere. Always a cheerful sight...

First signs of things happening

It's all still quite a lot of not a lot in the garden at the moment, though there are signs of stirring which is nice. The photos are a brief trip round the garden to show how it's looking - yes I know the Iris and the new growth on the miniature pine aren't really wildlife related but they're currently the most cheerful colour in the garden so I thought they needed showing!  The bluebells continue to power through the chippings and the 'impermeable' membrane as you can see, and they'll be showing some colour soon I think. The pond is doing nothing, though as you can see from the photo the pondweed is still green and hasn't died down, it's due to get a good clean out this spring.

The tube on the post is our solitary bee nesting box, or rather one of three we have. You can tell that quite a few of the tubes have been used because they've been sealed up which means they're full of pollen and baby-bees for next year. In previous years I've bought them in during hard weather but this year it's been so mild I've left them out.  You can also see the stretch of hedge which is due for rennovation this year, and the buds on one of the plants in the bit I rennovated last year. 

The bird table empties over the course of the day when I fill it up - I've not seen the birds in question but the fat pigeon is around so I have my suspect

Click here for the photos..

Hard Frost

The sky was amazingly clear last night when I went to put some rubbish out, which of course meant it was very cold today. I topped the bird feeder up and put some stuff on the bird table, which means well fed pigeons in this garden. But I've been out all day so won't have seen any action.

Feeding Birds

Just to prove that we do have wildlife in the garden here are some photos of birds on our feeders (they should turn the right way up when you view them). It's still very mild so not too much feeding going on compared to previous years - that feeder is in front of a twisted hazel and I suspect it has a lot of insects overwintering under the bark because the birds do a lot of hopping and exploring among the branches. We had long tailed tits around this week, they turn up and raid the fat ball in the cage: very 'happy' birds long tailed tits...

Bird Feeder Pictures

Then, just as I was going back indoors I heard a deep buzzing - yes in mid january there was a bumble bee. It's been very mild and quite sunny here today and it may have been enough to get it out of hibernation - I hope it's got enough sense to find somwhere to go torpid again soon so it survives till the spring.

The pond is still frozen over, not much going on. Though I did notice that the bluebell bulbs have come straight up through both the new stones and the membrane underneath them - I don't really mind they'll make a nice splash of colour.

Something likes the bird food..

...but it wasn't the birds in this case.  

I looked out of the kitchen window to see that the bird feeder was empty, which amazed me till I noticed that the bottom had fallen out. Just a case of failing to do the screws up tightly enough after I cleaned it out. But there was no food on the ground underneath. So something fond of nuts and seeds had a field day with the expensive 'no mess' food and black sunflower seeds. I'm guessing that it might have been down to the local rat population as much as anything. But hey while I don't want them in the house rats are wildlife too, and they are amazing creatures.

But the feeder is fixed now, so they'll have to make do with raiding the compost heaps...

No mess? No thanks..

This autumn I splashed out on 'no mess' bird food, it was on special offer and you do get more seed for your money as you're not paying for all the husks and so forth. But the birds don't seem to be eating it half as much and I just had to chuck away half a feeder full as it had gone off. Of course with the mild weather there may actually be other food around so they're not as feeder dependent, but in previous years I've been ordering food about once every 6 weeks or so. There seem to be birds about, the 'usual suspects' for us of chaffiniches, blue tits, great tits and robins, but they're just not hitting the feeders as much. So I went down to the garden centre and bought some black sunflower seeds to mix in with it and I'll see if that makes it more attractive.

Apart from the bird feeders, the garden is pretty much dormant, even the pond snails appear to be sleeping. But the pond weed hasn't all died down the way it normally does so some is still green. There are bulbs poking their heads out of the ground, and quite a lot of things still have some leaf, but not much is going on.