Frozen Spawn

It looks as though some of the frog spawn has frozen during the cold snap and become unviable, having gone an unpleasent white colour. But the stuff which was at the bottom of the clumps may be alright. In truth, we've not had much luck with frog spawn over the years as we tend to have lots of tadpoles which then fail to develop into frogs; a problem which many people have but about which there seems to be no agreement as to root cause. While it's been very cold here again, it hasn't been as freezing so let's hope this is the end of the iced over pond for this year and that some of the spawn will hatch okay. Perhaps a jar on the kitchen windowsill might be an idea...

Lots and lots of birds in the garden still, including regular appearences by the long-tailed tits. No sign of any exploring the nesting boxes yet, but I'm hopeful.

Spadgers

It was the week of heat one of the primary schools nature quiz, and Sue was team manager. They camme second but none of it can be held at the door of herself who moved heaven and earth as part of her preparation for this event - the number of flash cards and information sheets she's made and the time she put in working with the kids was epic. They're hoping they may get through to the next round as a highest scoring loser as they did really well.

The feeder visitors this week have included a lot of house sparrows, which also love those fat balls with insect bits in them. We need to be nice to sparrows these days as they're not as numerous as they were when I was younger - we used to have one of the old fashioned red nets full of peanuts and it was usually covered in sparrows. The long-tailed tits have been around a lot, as have blue tits and great tits. I'm hoping for use of the nestboxes this year!

Long-Tailed Tits

Not the huge flocks of them which some people get, and which have had in the past, but quite a few of them. They really go for our fat balls from the RSPB which have dried insect bits in them - okay so the idea of a lump of lard with bits of dead insect may not appeal to you or me but the birds love them! In addition we've had great and blue tits around on the feeders too, and the usual two grossly overweight pigeons which I think only survive the cat population because they're deemed to high-risk as prey because of their size because they've got a take-off run like a fully laden airliner...

The primroses and snowdrops are out in flower, I'm not sure if we planted or inherited these, or even if they're the actual wild ones, but they could be!

Birds and future building projects

Well we keep having lots of birds in the garden, nothing exotic but there is nothing wrong with blue tits, chaffinches and spadgers! The odd blackbird has been hopping around too which is always good. On the plant side of things, we have snowdrops and primroses, though the garden still lacks the early flowering things which would be so useful for insects like Bumble Bees and which I have so much trouble establishing. This is something on which I need to work NOW in time for next spring of course.

I've got a couple of building projects to do this year as well, a new bike shed and a reconstruct of the ricketty old tree house which I took down before it fell down. Both of them I think will offer the opportunity for added wildlife value by covering them with plants, and possibly including nest boxes in the construction

Birds

After a depressing year in which birds seemed almost absent from the garden there seem to be quite a few around at the moment. The months of wet weather last year seemed to have resulted in the birds not showing themselves and I was worried that the population had plummetted as the feeders were essentially just going mouldy where they hung. But at the moment both feeders are being visited again and over the past couple of days we've had chaffinches, great tits, and long tailed tits about. With any luck a drier year this year might get our numbers back up again..though it costs me more in wild bird food; my loss is the RSPB shop's gain of course! It would be nice if the bird boxes I put up last year are used this season

The pond is unfrozen but needs a good clean up, and plans to replant round the back of it must be a priority this year, as is the planting of more service station plants generally. No sign of Ash dieback in our hedge, which doesn't have a lot of Ash trees but there are a few mixed in with the other stuff. I'd like to get some holly in there somewhere, there are gaps...

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.