NATURALLY THINKING

One morning in October I discovered that my pond had been vandalised.

The water feature, a terracotta urn, had been knocked over, a water plant smashed and the statue of a little boy who sits on the edge playing a pipe, his feet trailing along the water’s surface, was flat on his face amongst the duck weed.
Looking round, trying to work out what had done this, I also discovered several slimy cream coils over one of the small plants in the narrow bed that surrounds the pond, and then, worst of all, I found a single frog’s leg on the lawn nearby.

“You’ve had a badger in here…”

Whilst I was still trying to work out what vandal had caused this devastation, a visiting friend said,
“You’ve had a badger in here. They’ll eat frogs. Probably too full to eat the fourth leg and those coils, which are its innards, it found too indigestible.”
I’m not of farming stock so I’ve never had reason to dislike badgers: anyway I think I was much influenced by the rather loveable, lumbering creatures that popped up from time to time in my childhood books.
A few years ago I was especially fascinated by a young one that came visiting us at dusk one summer evening, sniffled round the entire circuit of our garden, finishing up with his nose pressed against the windows of the garden doors where I sat watching. At the moment, however, I’ve gone off them. Not because of the damage done – this can be replaced – but because it has eaten one of my two special frogs that shared their lives with me and helped to keep the slugs and snails off the hostas. Whether my night time visitor ate both of them I don’t know, but there is no sign of the other one. On the whole I’d rather have them than a clumsy badger sharing my small space.

What a difference a month makes.

A few short weeks ago the hedges down Rowden Mill Lane were still green and a few meadow pipits still bounced around from the top of them. There were butterflies – tortoiseshells, red admirals, commas, small and large whites, a few meadow browns – even a small blue and a confused brimstone. When Genevieve (my mobility scooter) and I went along there a day or two ago, the colours of the hawthorns had changed dramatically to shades of yellows from ochre to a rich burnt orange. The dogwoods are a deep mahogany red and over all are scarlet rose hips and gleaming strings of bryony berries. No meadow pipits now but just the plaintiff song of a winter robin and the raucous call of flocks of rooks feeding on the brown earth of newly ploughed fields.
I stopped to take it all in, and my attention was caught by a long bramble stem twitching and moving where there was no breeze. It reminded me of a time when our dog and I were walking round Hatherleigh Moor in my old stomping ground in Devon, and on that occasion, I stopped for several minutes because I was fascinated to find out what was making a clump of moor grass twitch violently. Eventually my patience was rewarded. One piece of grass was felled, like a tree in a forest, and there beneath it was a small, bright eyed field mouse, nibbling away at it. On this occasion, I knew that no field mouse would tackle a bramble branch so I waited and watched. At last, on the side of the ditch below it, a small rabbit appeared, paused, nosed the air, then hopped back up through the hedge into the field behind it. It wasn’t a great nature find as nature finds go, but it pleased me.

The garden has been bereft of birds of any sort for the last three of four weeks I presume they are feeding on the plentiful natural food in the woods and hedgerows.

Then, this morning a little flock of long tailed tits arrived, several great tits and a pair of greater spotted woodpeckers which were climbing the apple tree. Suddenly, after two small frosts and one hard one, the garden looks bereft, although the berries on my two rowans, some orange and some pink, have hardly been touched. I’m hoping that some fieldfares might discover them. In the meantime, I think its time I cleaned up the old feeders and ordered some more bird food.

I don’t much like the winter on this side of Christmas, I can’t say I’m a great fan of January either, but at least then there will be the promise of better times.

Spears of bulbs will be pushing up (let’s hope they haven’t all done this already and daffodils blooming unnaturally for Christmas like they did last year), there will be the first signs of budding leaves on trees, small hazel catkins and maybe the first cautious blooming of flowers in the verges. Something to look forward to.
Happy Christmas everyone!

New neighbours have moved nearby – there are a lot of them

They are living in a crowded, high rise tenement, are extremely noisy and, questions have been raised as to whether it is they who have scared away some of the long term, nearby residents.

In other words, we have a rookery

This has coincided with a sudden decline in small songbirds that has been noticed in one or two of the nearby gardens.
It is those living in The Triangle and beyond who have noticed a decline this year – which may be coincidental – and their place has been taken by multitudes of sparrows and pigeons. I am not that far away from The Triangle but don’t seem to have been affected.
Is it possible that locally it could be rooks?
They are sometimes blamed for the sudden decline in smaller birds but is that fair? They are largely insect eaters so it is not as though they were hunting them down. The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 which protected rooks, crows and all their near relations (known collectively as corvids) ensured that there is little that can be done to keep their numbers down and they do seem to be increasing. At the time when little boys were sent up chimneys, they were also employed to stand for hours in fields to scare rooks and crows off crops, and rook scarers, which were still being used day and night when we lived in Devon, are no longer allowed.
According to Google, it is the loss of hedgerows and habitat, changing farming methods and climate change which are the chief culprits in the decline of songbirds generally. However, farmers in our country are now much more aware of the problem and are doing all they can to help, and developers are at last being encouraged to have a broader outlook than just squeezing as many of us humans as they can together.

Since I haven’t reported on anything natural since the May/June edition, there seems a lot to catch up on.

My tit box was taken over at the beginning of summer by bumble bees. I was delighted but they didn’t last long. Several times I saw a hornet coming out and the bumble bees gradually disappeared, presumably eaten. I wondered whether it was an Asian hornet but I couldn’t see it closely enough for a positive identification.
I had a family of woodpeckers on the nuts – parents and baby. The youngster at first hadn’t got the hang of feeding itself and hung awkwardly on the nut holder. Most of the time it sat on top of the arbour and let the parents do the hard work but within a week it had got the hang of things. I had families of blue and great tits, starlings and goldfinches at the feeders near the house,
and families of robins and blackbirds waiting around beneath them feeding on anything that dropped down. The baby blue tits couldn’t get their bearings after feeding and flew into the window so often that I sent off for some of those silhouettes that adhere to the glass. Not so many chaffinches this year.

Janie and I both seemed to play host to a lot of Tiger Moths in July.

Such pretty things, with their flashing orange, white and black markings. She told me of the number of flowers on the verges of the A303 between Sparkford and Wincanton, which included a whole bank of corn marigolds, ox eye daisies and field poppies and the enormous number of flowers on the M5 to Birmingham. Lovely way to cheer a dreary journey.

I acquired a mobility scooter at the beginning of July and my own flower records have become quite pleasing now I can get around and see verges clearly.

The tally is very satisfying. It has reached 33 along the Wheel and almost as many down Rowden Mill Lane. I have a friend who quite often spots things that I don’t spot so there are probably more.

I love Rowden Mill Lane.

Some days in the height of the warm periods there have been any number of butterflies – not in actual varieties but in numbers of the varieties that were there, small whites, gatekeepers, meadow browns, small blues and tortoiseshells. They have been very busy in the garden too, and here I have had, as well as the above, red admirals, peacocks, commas, one or two brimstones and others that I’m not clever enough to identify.

I have made a conscious effort this year to add only plants that attract pollinators of all sorts and it seems to have paid off.

One day in June I found a huge cockchafer beetle, otherwise known as a May bug.
Correction, there wasn’t just one, there were two, attached to each other by their rear ends, one upside down and obviously dead.
It would have been indelicate to ask what they had been up to but, since the live one was having trouble taking off with its attachment, I put my foot gently on the dead one and – ping – the other escaped and flew off, only to be promptly swooped on by a blue tit who, finding it too big for its little beak, dropped it.
It lay on the grass for a few seconds then took off again. How long it lasted before a larger bird got at it I didn’t see.
It’s a striking looking thing, black but with a brown casing and brown, almost furry, antennae. Shame its grubs live in the ground for up to three years, nibbling furtively at any crop that happens to be in its path. T
he adult form is rather handsome and interesting.