Tag: wildlife

Garden, 6am

Garden, 6am

I’ve been awake since about 4:30 in the morning, something that’s increasingly common now that I’m not taking sleeping tablets to control the fibromyalgia. I wake up (this morning thanks to the entire dawn chorus taking place in the forsythia outside the bedroom window), and I don’t go back to sleep again. Today, after having a bit of a grumble about Nature on facebook, I decided to go outside and have a bit of a look at it.

Garden, 6am

This wild corner is in the top right of the picture above. The garden’s about 30 metres (120 feet) long, and this is standing right at the back (underneath the blackthorn tree), looking towards the house. It might look like an overgrown mess, but this is my favourite part of the garden at the moment. We’re letting it run completely wild, with just a little attempted management of the overgrown lawn grass. I need to look up when you’re actually supposed to mow a meadow, because that’s what I want this to become.

Garden, 6am

Who’s been sleeping in my bed?! We haven’t seen any evidence of foxes in the garden at all, but this squashed patch of long grass is there every morning, which suggests somebody’s been sleeping here. Could be a fox, could be a cat, could be a party of hedgehogs. Who knows? Whoever it is, I’m pleased we’ve got company.

Garden, 6am

The tiny apple tree (not even five feet tall and only a couple of years old) is absolutely bursting with braeburns. Last year we harvested them too soon, worried about losing them in the storms. This year it’s going to be even harder to wait, having watched them grow all year!

Garden, 6am

The tiny pear tree (ditto) is also looking great. The pears had all gone before we moved in, so we don’t know what they’re going to be like, or quite when they’ll be ripe. And who knew that pears grow upside down?!

Garden, 6am

The enormous hypericum is just starting to come into flower, along with some of the other long-neglected shrubs. I can’t wait to see it in full bloom, it’s going to be fantastic.

Garden, 6am

Is this a type of geranium? I’m not sure. I haven’t got around to identifying anything that’s growing in the wild patch. Whatever it is, it’s all over the place at the moment, along with lots of campions and the last of the garlic mustard. The bees are loving it, even at this time of the morning, and so am I.

Investigating the garden

Investigating the garden

One of the reasons I was so keen to buy this house was the size of the garden. This is the back third. It has been, and will be again, a vegetable patch. At the moment it’s so overgrown that you can’t see where the individual beds are, so I thought I’d start by doing a bit of gentle clearing.

Investigating the garden

I thought this readymade circle might be a good base for a little pond. My plan was to take the sticks off the top, shovel the soil into the compost bin, and find out how deep the hole is. Unfortunately the sticks on top turned out to be blackthorn clippings, therefore covered in dirty great spikes, and my gloves aren’t very thick, so it was a slower, more careful process than I’d anticipated.

Investigating the garden

And then it got weird. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to throw their schoolbag down the bottom of the garden and bury it? Seems obvious, really.

The top layer of sticks (and the schoolbag) removed, I started digging in the soil, only to discover that it was lying on top of another layer of blackthorn clippings that hadn’t even begun to think about decomposing, so there was no way I could chuck everything straight into the compost bin. I had to resort to pulling the branches out from under the compost, very carefully, trying my hardest to avoid the massive thorns.

Investigating the garden

Which is when I met this fellow…

Investigating the garden

…who I think is a Common Newt. Definitely a newt of some description, anyway!

Investigating the garden

And then I met another one…

Investigating the garden

…and another!

I turned up seven newts altogether. They’re so incredibly well camouflaged against the soil that I resorted to picking them up and putting them temporarily in a bucket, so as not to risk injuring or treading on them. There was one in particular that every time I moved it, it ran for shelter… underneath the toe of my boot. Silly thing.

I now feel terribly bad about digging up their habitat – not least because the entire point of putting a pond into that hole was specifically to encourage newts! Apparently I’ve just saved myself a lot of digging… and the next door neighbours do have quite a big pond, which is presumably where the newts have been mating.

Investigating the garden

And now my garden looks like this. A hole full of sticks, a pile of sticks that used to be in the hole, a bucket full of things that should never have found their way into the hole in the first place (metal shelf brackets, sweet wrappers, buried plant pots, a huge lump of builders’ sand…), and a temporary newt hotel.

I’m hoping that the newts will be able to take up residence underneath the pile of sticks that used to be in the hole, as I don’t plan on moving that for a while now. I think I would still like to put a little pond in here, but I’ll definitely be leaving a handy pile of sticks somewhere in the garden, for creatures to hide in.

Dinton Pastures

Dinton Pastures

Yesterday was my first weekend day off work in months that didn’t already have a plan attached to it. When the weather turned out to be nice, we decided to go for a walk to Dinton Pastures.

Dinton Pastures

Everybody else seemed to have had the same idea, so we had to park miles away in the overflow car park. This turned out to be good, as we walked a corner of the park that we hadn’t really seen before.

Dinton Pastures

I spent ages trying to get the perfect shot of a bee hovering on one of these flowers, but my camera wasn’t quick enough to keep up. So I had to make do with this picture of a bumble bee’s bum instead.

Dinton Pastures

I came home with some souvenirs –  a few photos, a touch of sunburn, and eight (at the last count) insect bites. Ouch!

An old lady and a wet rabbit.

Old Lady moth (Mormo Maura)

Today, the rabbit escaped. He lives indoors, but I must have left his gate ajar, because he managed to make a dash for it into the garden. Paul came home from work to help me capture him, and while he was moving some pieces of wood around (Paul, not the rabbit), I spotted this great big moth.

It turned out to be an Old Lady (Mormo maura), and I took this photo of it while we were waiting for the rabbit to decide whether he was going to stay underneath my Shed all afternoon.

Eventually Paul managed to capture Mister Stinkyface (real name Johnny Depp, long story, not our fault!), and we took advantage of his captivity to unceremoniously dump him in the bath and give him a wash.

After more than an hour of wrestling with an angry, wet rabbit, we eventually decided he was as clean as he was ever going to be, and let him go.

Johnny after his bath.

As you can see, he is NOT IMPRESSED by this outrageous treatment.

Perhaps that’ll teach him not to go around escaping in future!

Shiny Shoes!

Conker Shoes

Yay, my shiny new Conker shoes have arrived!

They were delivered on Friday, while I was out at work. Paul very kindly went to pick them up from the sorting office for me while I was out at work on Saturday. He was somewhat startled to find that the postman knew me, and was not at all surprised to discover that the parcel contained shoes! He used to drive the delivery van for our area, so he got to know me very well in the days when I was collecting unusual Dr Martens from Ebay. Sometimes he used to wait on the doorstep while I opened my parcels, so he could see my unusual choice of shoes. I think he’d have been impressed by these!

I wore the shoes to work on Sunday, and they’re lovely! Not quite enough room for orthotics and handknit socks both at once, which tells me I should probably have ordered a 6F rather than a 6E. Conker offer amazing customer service and I could have sent them back to be stretched a little bit, but being the impatient sort I couldn’t resist wearing them straight away.

Conker Shoes

The lovely people at Conker are probably going to cry when they see this picture. I don’t think they’d take them back in this state! Yes, I knew it had been raining, and I should have put on a big pair of boots. But, new shoes!
(I know, I know. And yes, I have cleaned them now that the mud’s dry.)


Photo © Sarah Wainwright

I went for a walk with Sarah (Skycarrots), and we sketched and made rubbings and nibbled leaves and took pictures. Sarah took a picture of me, taking a picture of my shoes. She also took some lovely ones of a meadow full of cowslips, glowing as the light faded. We’re planning on making these walks a regular occurrence, so hopefully we’ll have full sketchbooks and photo albums to show you soon. It was lovely to go out with a friend, and find a bit of creative inspiration in our local area.

Feathers and Fur

Feathers & Fur
Peregrine

I haven’t taken any bird photos for a while… but today was Paul’s birthday trip, which was a visit to Feathers and Fur, a local falconry centre. It’s a tiny place, inside a garden centre, and a friend had told us about a Groupon offer on their Hands On falconry sessions.

Feathers & Fur
Willow, barn owl

We were incredibly lucky to have the entire two hour session to ourselves, and even though it’s apparently not the right time of year for falconry (the birds should be out hunting and getting fat), everyone behaved beautifully.

Sadie was really friendly and taught us lots of things about the birds, their environment, and how she raises and looks after them. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and we laughed for most of the session. It turns out that watching a barn own swallow his lunch whole is somewhat inelegant, but absolutely hilarious!

Feathers & Fur
Kestrel

I used the 70mm macro lens this time, and I’m really pleased with the photos I managed to take. I went for portraits rather than action pictures (Paul has some gorgeous ones of the owls in flight), and am thrilled with the detail on the image below. The snow made the light a bit weird and I was worried about the photos being over-exposed, so I dropped the ISO down to 400. I think that was a mistake, as some of the images are darker than I’d like, but I definitely had a higher success rate than I have in the past!

Feathers & Fur
Billie Jean, eagle owl

You can see the rest of my photos over on Flickr. If you’re feeling sensitive, one of them’s a bit gruesome (the aforementioned barn owl lunch), but hey, everybody needs to eat.

We’ll definitely be going back and booking another session – probably a dedicated photography one next time. Sadie took some great shots with Paul’s camera, and understands how to position you to get the pictures you want. Although it’s always nice to have the opportunity to have the birds fly to you, so another session like the one we had today would be great.

(Note to self: No, you can’t have a barn owl. Really.)

Paradise Wildlife Park

A couple of weeks ago we went to Paradise Wildlife Park.

My photos are here.

Thanks to a special offer pointed out to us by a friend, we had tickets for a “Monkey Tour”, which turned out to be absolutely brilliant.

We got to meet ruffed lemurs, who were very laid back, and like to be tickled under the arms. Also they were keen on sunbathing, and when something startles them they’re VERY LOUD. We got to feed dried apricots to golden-cheeked gibbons, who were very appreciative, and have very soft little hands. We were given a guided tour of the littlest primates (tamarins and marmosets, mostly), some of whom shared an enclosure with the world’s happiest sloth (bless him!) and a little armadillo. SO CUTE. Steve, the Head of Primates, suggested that we might like to smell the armadillo, so we did. He smelled a little bit like cheesy crisps. Adorable.

The last part of the tour was to go in and actually feed the ring-tailed lemurs, which was AWESOME. As long as you’ve got food, they’re quite happy to leap all over you and scoff it out of your hands. They don’t like to be stroked, but you inevitably touch them, and they’re so soft. A baby lemur held onto my thumb with both of his little hands. Awwww. I was very sad when we ran out of banana and the lemurs lost interest in us.

We also saw the most evil emu in the world ever, some Mara, who look like a very odd cross between a little deer and a massive guinea pig, and a lynx who reminded us of Skycarrots‘ cat. Oh, and we learned that reindeer antlers are soft, gibbons can kill you (which is why we fed them through the bars), and squirrel monkeys are evil.

Paradise was a fabulous place. Brilliantly geared up for kids, but not in a boring-for-adults kind of a way. I very heartily recommend it.

Impolite Beetle

Stag Beetle

Walking home yesterday evening, this female stag beetle crossed my path. When I stopped to take a photo, she stuck her tongue out at me. How rude!

Fanciest Pigeon

Pigeon

This glamorous fellow is a Nicobar Pigeon. We met him at Bristol Zoo, in the Bird Forest. It’s a little section that you can walk through with lots of birds flying (or in fact mostly walking) around freely.

We also met a Roul Roul Partridge, who has an excellent punk hairdo and does a funny little dance when he digs in the leaves on the ground. He was the perfect size to pop in my pocket and smuggle out of the zoo, but I think they might have noticed. Shame.

I tried really hard to take a photo of the Nicobar Pigeons bathing in a little waterfall, but sadly it was just too dark in that section of the forest. You’ll just have to imagine how pretty they looked with the light and water bouncing off their feathers.

Tuppence a Bag

Feeding the Lorikeets

Way back in February, on our way home from Devon, we stopped off at Bristol Zoo.

I took a few photos, as usual, but I wasn’t feeling very well that day so I wanted to try and concentrate on seeing as much as possible and having a good time. I love anywhere that you can actually walk in amongst the animals, so getting to feed the lorikeets was the highlight of my day. You pay £1 for a little cup of nectar, stand in the designated feeding area, and noisy little parrots come and land all over you. Brilliant!

There was also a lemur enclosure that you could walk through, where we met ringtailed and mongoose lemurs and a bird forest. (More about that later.) There were also the most adorable fruitbats, but being February they’d wisely decided to stay indoors!

I loved the Twighlight area, which featured several aye-ayes, a not-very-slow loris, and the tiniest deer I’d ever seen. So cute! I also spent a long time failing to get a decent photo of a hilariously grumpy-looking chameleon, and laughing at a tern with a very dignified moustache.

I wouldn’t normally recommend going to the zoo on a freezing cold day in February, much less the first weekend of half term, but we really enjoyed ourselves.