Back to Nature

On Thursday getting up at before dawn, I drove out to Langholm Moor to see some Black Grouse.

Historically the lek is always in the same place. 

It was -4 C when I left home and we were enjoying a rare non-rainy period. There was frost on the ground.

When I arrived it was dark.  I could hear the grouse but I couldn't see them.  I had to wait for the sun to come up.

They are notoriously skittish so I turned the radio off and rolled the car window down before I even got to the good spot.  When I got there, I turned the car off and sat there in the dark.  It made me smile to hear their bubbly little calls in the dark.

It was the first day of spring and the sun seemed to be taking its sweet time breaking over the hill. While I waited I enjoyed seeing the last of the moon.

Once the sun was up, I could see the dark shapes zipping around in the grass.

It was fun watching them doing their grousey things.  Sitting there by myself with no radio was lovely. Such a nice respite from the constant worry and drama of the increasing Corvid-19 virus news.

I watched two males facing off for ages.  Just when I was thinking about packing up and heading home, it all kicked off and they started fighting. Sneaky peek of my boot.

Meadow Pippit

In addition to the Black grouse there were loads of Skylarks, Meadow Pippits and a lovely female Stone Chat.

female Stonechat

It was a lovely start to the season.  I fear it is going to be worse before it is better.

Field guides

I have amassed a collection of bird books over the years.
My first ever book was  this one:

My dad had a copy of this book and I loved looking at the little thumbnail maps.  It showed if the bird was a year-round resident or a summer visitor.   I found it essential when looking for information.

When I no longer lived at home, it is one of the first books I bought.  I used it often.  

During one careless camping trip to Lake Superior, I left it out on the picnic table over night.  It got wet and the pages stuck together.  I cursed my thoughtlessness and tried to dry the book carefully.  Because the paper had a shiny finish, it made the pages stick together if they were not separated during the drying process.  I remember putting leaves of toilet paper between each page to prevent the book from becoming an unusable brick of paper.     In the end I think I bought a new copy.

I wish I had kept that damaged book, because I write notes in the margins.  I had kept a list of birds that I have seen.  I am sure that now I will have forgotten that I have seen some of those birds.  I have a few notes in the margins of this copy.  Maybe it was beyond help. 

My eldest son now lives in Portland, Oregon and he had a hummingbird at his feeder this week.  A hummingbird in November is worthy of looking up.  With minimum research, I discovered that there is a resident and year round population of Anna's hummingbirds living in Portland.  Dashing for my book of North American birds I discovered that my beloved book is only for Eastern birds.  Portland is firmly on the West coast.  Different bird populations and a completely different field guide is needed.  

Here's the thing. . . I don't live in Portland, Oregon in the Pacific NW of America.  I live here in Scotland.  Do I get myself a field guide for birds of Western Birds?  I'll only be there two weeks.  Of course I'll be visiting from time to time to spend time with my son and his family.  I may get one. . . . I can add it to the field guide section of my library.

These are my field guides to things (fish, coral, seashells, turtles etc) in the Red Sea.  I do actually  need both field guides.  There are some animals in one book that are not in the other.  I have discovered over the years that I use both.  

As you can see, I still write notes in the margins. Also obvious is the damage of one of the books. A rescue dog that we had here for a short time, ripped the book up.  It is still quite usable.  I am just going to tape it up and carry on.

Bird Ringing Demonstration

Because my good friend Sybil came out and helped ring our baby swallows, I have been made aware of what the British Trust for Ornithology or BTO does to track birds in the UK and Europe.

I found out there was a bird ringing demonstration at a local wildlife reserve.  It was a dry and bright Saturday morning and I went along with my camera and binoculars.

I was familiar with the basics of putting rings on birds.

Set up mist nets where you think birds will be

Mist net

Catch birds in a mist net and put the birds in a clean, cotton bag.  One bird per bag please

Coal Tit with next bird in a bag

Get blackbirds out of the mist net immediately as they can get their tongues caught in the nets and be double tangled.

Male Blackbird getting measured

2. Weigh them and measure wings. Try to determine sex and age.

Reed Warbler getting wings measured

3. Write all the information down

Male Chaffinch getting inspected

4. Put a numbered ring on the bird's leg and add that number to the information

Robin being documented

5. Let the bird go

I was there for over an hour watching them pluck birds from the nets, talking to other people and inspecting the area.  I had a good time.  The staff and volunteers at the reserve are charming.  You know what?  They know their birds too.

The club that rings birds was ringing the birds was separate from the reserve itself.  I have tried to convince them that they should come out to our place and ring the visitors to my feeders.  Turns out they are really busy and have plenty of gardens available.  My little birds are competing with the Bass Rock gannets and the puffins at Ailsa Craig.

Birds Birds Birds

When I first started this blog many years ago, I wrote a list of the bird visitors to the place.

Here is the list for 2014

Chaffinch - most common and frequent visitor to the garden

female chaffinch

Blue tit

Coal tit

coal tit

Robin

Dunnock

Great Tit

Blackbird

Greenfinch

green finch

Goldfinch

Bullfinch

Pheasant

male pheasant

Siskin

male Siskin

Redpoll

House sparrow

Tree Sparrow

Tree sparrows

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Tree creeper

Nuthatch

Brambling

Wood warbler

Wood pigeon

Stock dove

Crow

Jackdaw

Buzzard

Swallow

Swift

Pied wagtail

Grey wagtail

Wren

Starling

Collared dove

Jay

Jay

Tawny owl

Barn owl

Heron

Barnacle goose

Curlew

Cuckoo 

trio of red sqirrels

 We also had visits from red squirrels.  I love them too!

 We've had an increase in the number of birds and an increase in the wildlife. We do miss the thrushes. The Mistle thrush and Song thrush have not been here in a bit and the lapwing that used to be in the field has not come back.

Start as you mean to go on

Today I ensured all the smoke detectors in the house had new batteries,  cleaned the refrigerator and

made bagels.

The Man of the Place is a creature of habit.  He has a cinnamon raisin bagel almost every morning for breakfast.  Yesterday the last one was toasted and we were officially out of bagels. (insert ominous sound here)

We have become accustomed to living out of town and prefer it to any other sort of life.  This means that we have become very organised when it comes to ordinary supplies.  I have a little method for ensuring that we never run out of toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, light bulbs and other things that make modern life pleasant.  I also have become adept at not running out of food staples.  If we ever get caught out and find we don't have something in that we need, there are a couple of choices.  We can do without, drive all the way in to the nearest town for it or make it our own damn self.

A bagel is not a staple for life.  It is a "nice to have" rather than a "need to have".  I knew there were only a few left but chose to ignore it when we were in town on Monday.  So when we sliced and toasted the last bagel yesterday, I had a thought.  I'll just make some!

It was my first attempt at bagels.  I looked up a recipe for them in my trusty Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  It was not good.  The instructions included sticking them under the grill! I am not Jewish but I know enough to know that part of the bagel making process includes boiling them. 

Going on-line helped.  I found a good recipe and an accompanying video on YouTube.  Better Homes and Gardens you have let me down.  Please don't do it again.  

The bagels turned out really well!  I haven't had a fresh bagel in years and they were delightful.  I loved the chewy texture of them.  I used more cinnamon and more raisins than the supermarket bagels too.  That's the genius thing about making stuff at home. Sometimes it's better!

I also opened the new bird diary.  I have retired the 2014 bird log to the book shelves along with diaries of other years to be part of the Whitelees nature archive.  A new bird watching year has begun.

I simply write down all the different species of bird that I see in the garden.  I write them down in the order that I see them. Sometimes I will indicate the number of each species. I also will log birds that I can identify by their sound.  There are a number of British birds that I can identify by sound now.  

If a bird entry is out of the ordinary I will highlight the entry in yellow.  So, if I see a swallow for the first time, I will highlight the entry.  Any new bird to me personally or the garden will also get highlighted.  

When the first sparrows returned to the garden after an absence of almost 20 years, that was given a big yellow mark.  I practically had a birdgasm and wanted to put glitter on the page when the tree sparrows showed up.  

I also log red squirrels in the diary.  They get highlighted in pink.  I will write down if it is a male or female if it is known and the number of squirrels seen at one time.  If we get a mole, deer or weasel that's worthy of mentioning as well.  

I note other things in the margins.  If the weather is particularly horrid or if there has been a big snow, I'll mention it.  I will also note when the field next to the house is ploughed, planted or harvested.

There are pages in the old diary with nothing written down. Those are the days when I haven't had time to record what I've seen or we have been away on a holiday.  There are also a couple of days, when I just plain didn't want to do it. Those sorts of blank entry days are rare.

So today there weren't many birds to write down as the weather is so bad.  The wind, which was strong all day is really howling now.  I fully expect to find the feeder on its side in the morning.

Okay then . . .2014, here we go!

In the beginning of 2013 I started a log of the birds that visit our bird feeders.  I had been given some new bird feeders for Christmas last year and I had a spare 2013 diary lying around.  So, fill the feeders and sit back to watch through the window.

It was really fun to document what visited our garden.  There were seasonal visitors and surprise guests.  When writing in the daily log, I would highlight anything out of the ordinary in yellow highlighter.  For example if a new species (to me or the garden) showed up for the first time, that entry was made yellow.  When the red squirrels showed up, I highlighted those entries in pink.

The most common bird visitors to the place were Chaffinches and Coal tits.  They showed up every day and in good numbers.

Here is the bird list for the year.

Blue tit
Chaffinch
Robin
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Coal tit
Great tit
Bullfinch
Blackbird
Brambling
Dunnock
Buzzard - in the tree across the road
Barn owl
Tawny owl
Goldfinch
Long tailed tit
Assorted gulls (not close enough for identification)
Collared dove
Wood pigeon
Stock dove
Tree creeper
Green finch
Siskin
Pheasant
Sparrowhawk
Barnacle geese (in the field - I could see them from my window so I counted them!)
Crow
Jackdaw
Starling
Red poll
Black cap
Great heron
Cuckoo - call only
Lapwing (in the field)
Oyster catcher (in the field)
Curlew (in the field)
Swallow
Jay
Song thrush
Sparrow (first at the house in over 17 years)
Wren
Pied wagtail
 
Animals in the garden include

Polly - our dog
RED SQUIRRELS - up to four at once
field voles
least weasel
hare
rabbit
sheep
cows
horse
cat
moles
water shew
common shrew
pygmy shew
mice
hedgehog
badger
fox
common newt
toad
frog
stoat
deer 
four or five species of bat - at least one is a pipistrelle

Forty species of bird has been seen from the back room window.  I am certain that if I spent more time watching.  If I could have identified the different species of gull in the field and the list would have been longer. There are also Fieldfair and Redstarts in the field but they fly way too fast for identification. If I can't be absolutely certain, it wasn't listed. It was fun watching the winter visitors to the feeders (bramblings) and note when the swallows return, breed and take off again.

The highlights for me this year was seeing the families of birds.  We had visiting male and female Great Spotted woodpeckers.  I saw them mating in one of the trees.  Weeks later the woodpeckers brought their offspring  to the peanut feeders.  It was delightful to see the adults feeding their babies.

A new bird made it onto my life list this year, the redpoll. That was a treat!  

One day a female pheasant showed up with over 14 baby pheasants following her.  Baby robins, blue tits, woodpeckers, blackbirds and chaffinches all did that nestling behaviour at the feeders of flapping their wings with mouth wide open.

Now it is winter again, a new year has started and a new diary has begun.  I wasn't going to do another log . . . but I found that writing down what is seen at the feeder has become a habit.  The first day of the New Year and I didn't have anywhere to write down what I was seeing!  I had to get a new pocket diary in the supermarket on the next trip into town. 

Dead Tree

A few years ago a seemingly healthy tree in our garden just died.  One summer it was alive and growing and the next year - it was bereft of life.

We have been contemplating removing this tree but have held off for a couple of reasons; 1. The dead tree is the perfect hammock distance from another tree.  We would have nowhere else to put a hammock unless we BUY a hammock stand.  2. We are very lazy (I refer you to the title of the blog) and would have to arrange chainsaws or get somebody in to cut it down.  Now we have a third and important reason.  Wildlife.  There has been a nest box on this tree for many years now. It has been the site of many successful batches of blue tits.   Today while we were all watching telly in the back room, we had a rare treat.  A great spotted woodpecker was hopping up and down the trunk of this tree, pecking at holes and making grabs at a small swarm of flying insects near by.

After the woodpecker flew off, The Man of the Place and I went out and inspected the many holes that have appeared on this tree.  Seriously, there weren't any holes there on my birthday when I went to hang the pinata on a branch.  If there were holes, I didn't notice them.

No missing the woodpecker holes now!  They go all the way down.  There is obviously food there for the bird or he wouldn't give the tree so much attention.  The woodpecker's validation of the dead tree has ensured that the tree will not be cut for now.  Dead trees are important to wildlife as this woodpecker has shown us.  We will keep the camera in the back room to see if we can get a photo of a return visit.

Over in the other part of the place, I checked on the swallow nest.  There was only one egg!  I don't know what happened there.  Was the nest predated by some other bird or (horror) a rodent?

In any case, the swallows are not losing any time.  There has been a new nest built and there are three eggs in it!

I really hope that the eggs hatch and that the birds manage to get big and fat quickly enough to make it all the way back to South Africa!

The Only Good Thing

The only nice thing that has come about since the death of our cat is that the local bird life has come back.
The number of blackbirds hopping around on the lawn bounced back immediately.  There is always a bird hopping around on the grass now.  Lots of thrushes and blackbirds have returned.

Swallow nest in the beams of the tool shed

The swallows are happy.  One of the old nest sites - in our tool shed has been revitalised.  Just this spring Julio caught and killed a swallow.  I found him later sitting on the tool bench waiting to ambush his next victim.   These days the swallows are shooting in and out of the open door of the tool shed with what can only be described as joyful abandon.

One got confused and came in the house today.  All the doors are open as we enjoy a rare dry and warm summer day. I grabbed the bird as it seemed to be in full panic mode in the window and released it back out the same door it came in.

the best nest shot I could manage - 4 eggs

There isn't an easy way to see what stage the nests are in the tool shed.  I know the parents are swooping in and out many times a day but  I haven't heard any baby peeps yet.  I stuck my camera up into the small space and clicked the shutter.  It turns out that there are four white eggs with pretty brown speckles on them.  They are on top of the soft feathers the parent birds prepared earlier. 

I hope this brood is successful!

Love of Field Guides - Part 1

For many years, I have been a bird watcher.  I have kept it at the casual hobby level.  I don't get all hard core about it.  I have never actually gone to a place to see a specific bird.  I will take my binoculars with me on most outings.  I keep a small pair of binoculars in the car and I have a host of bird books in the house. 

I have kept a life list of birds I have seen.  The life list needs to be revisited at some point and add a few birds in there.  I know that the bee eaters I saw in Egypt aren't in there.  I have a small stack of bird books from my years in the US.  When I moved to the UK, one of the first things I did was get some field guides to birds in Great Britain.  Almost every bird in the UK was different to the birds in Iowa.  There are some that are the same, sparrows, starlings, morning doves, Canada geese  and a smattering of other ones.  There were birds that looked very similar to US birds but were just a bit different.  For example, coal tits look very similar to chickadees.  

There are some that I really miss.  It was weird that I would miss redwinged black birds.  I miss those and Great horned owls.  Great horned owls have the best hoot of all owls in the world.  We have Loons over here, but they are called Divers.  I don't get to hear the lonesome cry of Loons on a summer night though. They breed north of us.  Loons are good.

One of the things I really miss is the way I could identify birds by the song or call in the US.  I can't do that as well here in the UK.   I can recognise a few birds by the song, but not the vast bulk of them as I can back in Iowa.

My favourite bird book was the Rodger Tory Peterson Field Guides Eastern Birds.  My folks had an earlier edition and I got one for myself in the 1980s.  The first book was left on a picnic table  over night while camping and got rained on.  The pages stuck together and I had to buy a new book.  In the front of this book is a tick list of all the birds in the book and you could tick them off as you identified them.  I transferred my ticks from the old book into the newer edition and carried on. 

I'm looking at the old list now and I'm smiling. There are so few seabirds ticked on that list.  Iowa is just about as far as you can get from the sea in the US.  It is the geographical centre of the continent and I was 19 before I ever saw an ocean.  It isn't surprising that I can be found in the sea most weekends.

I'm sure that if I grew up near the sea, all these gulls with their confusing feathers would make more sense.  Gulls have winter plumage, breeding plumage,  the 1st year juveniles and then older juveniles . . . .and not all gulls have all these phases.  Forget it!  I'll take the occasional photo and nail the bird identification that way.  It usually ends up being some form of a herring gull.  :-)

When ever I see a bird, I like to know what it is.  I like to know what it is that I am looking at.  After asking a local person, a good field guide is the next place to go.  I have a couple of guides for the UK and Europe (note to self: add in storks to the list from your visit to Hungary a couple of years ago).  These guides covered enough of Europe to be of some practical use when we went on family holidays to France and later on Greece. 

They were not good enough when we went to Tunisia and barely any use at all for Egypt.  I could identify egrets and the bee eaters but I could not identify one of the hawks that few over the hotel complex in the morning.  I need another book.

I was in South Africa about 10 years ago. I bought a bird book when I went there.  That was an exciting trip.  Not only was Africa a new continent, I was in the southern hemisphere for the first time.  I was there in February. I said hello to all the swallows that would eventually make their way back north to Europe to breed.  The thing that struck me about seeing the swallows there, was that they were so quiet.  Up here they make a whole lot of chattering, friendly noises as they breed and raise their families.

Sun birds, sugar birds and ostrich!!  All the birds down there were so exotic to me!  A malachite kingfisher was a flying jewel and the oystercatchers on the beach were completely black except for their tell-tale orange beaks and legs.

The bird book I am hunting for at the moment is one that covers Egypt.  We've been there four times now and I'd like to have a better bird book for it.  I've got the fish of that country covered . . . .

Dad Was Here

At the beginning of October, my dad came for a visit.  He hasn't been here in a long time.  The last time he visited, the extension project was in its infancy. I don't think I had seen my father since my sister Katie's wedding.  That was too long between visits.

We had a lovely time together. I cooked a lot of his favourite stuff - mostly soup and cake.  :-)  He loves soup.  I took him to a couple of places that I like to visit.  Its great when he visits because we have the same interests.  If I take him to look at stuff I like, I know he'll enjoy it too.  As we wandered, we talked about stuff we used to do; fishing, nature walks, swimming.  I loved those conversations!  One of the reasons I like the things in the natural world is down to him in the first place. 


There was a visit to Caerlaverock Wildfowl and Wetlands reserve too.  We saw a family of four Whooper swans arrive from Iceland.  If the swans are just in from Iceland their feathers will be all stained from the tannin in the water.  There were some barnacle geese arriving as well.  At the end of November there will be tens of thousands on our Dumfriesshire shores.

The staff were really wonderful.  Dad was having mobility issues during his visit and they allowed me to take the car in and drive up to the hides.  It was a Monday morning and it was howling a hurricane.  There were only a handful of stalwart birdwatchers there (and an ITV news team) so my car didn't impact on any other birdwatchers.

The next day we went to the river Esk to see if we could see some salmon running.  We couldn't see any salmon but it was nice to sniff the fresh pine scented air and listen to the river run across the rocks.  I brought along a walking stick (Claude's) and a folding chair.  I'm glad I did - both came in very handy!

I love my dad.  His visit was all too short.  I hope it isn't as long as that before I see him again.

The Cuckoo

I heard one calling last week and then again two days ago. The call I heard sounded to be a few fields away, though distinct, was faint.

This morning at about 10:00 while walking the dog one few overhead, landed on the top of a nearby pine and stared to call. It was LOUD!I was thrilled to not only have one calling so close, but I actually saw this secretive bird. One of the nests that cuckoos like to lay their eggs in is the nest of the dunnock. We've got a lot of dunnocks around here.

I hope we always have cuckoos near us. For a number of years, I didn't hear a cuckoo at all and I feared that Rachel Carson's prediction in her book Silent Spring was coming true. Bird numbers keep falling and every year we hear that another species' numbers are plumetting faster than expected.

A few years ago the number of sparrows dropped suddenly. The bird that was so common throughout my life became a rare visitor at our bird table. The year before it could be counted on that there would be a cloud of them near the local dairy farm where they would take advantage of spilled cattle feed and nice hedges to hide in. The following year there were about ten where there had previously been hundreds. It may have been a virus that had run riot through sparrows. Having witnessed the drop in sparrow numbers I worried that I had heard my last cuckoo. You will be happy to know that the local population of the common sparrow is rebounding nicely and today I heard a cuckoo and I saw one!

In The Garden

It was a nice spring day. Though I was warmed by my tasks, the sweater never came off. Laundry dried nicely on the line as The Man of the Place helped me to get the vegetable patch dug over.Chaffinch

I discovered to my delight that my dear neighbour Charlie is the owner of a rotovator! He was kind enough to loan it to me first thing this morning. Charlie even got it down to our place for me. I started it up and began the first few runs. I was quickly out of breath and tired. Those things are heavy and I have never had much in the way of upper body strength. I asked for assistance and it was given! So, though there is some raking to do, the ground is tilled! Yippee!! The weeds and grasses that were hauled out of the garden were thrown into the hen run. The chickens loved that! Siskin

There was a hard frost last night and it is a sharp reminder that we live in the far north. Nothing tender should venture outside the protection of the greenhouse until the end of May. A few warm dry days would tempt an impatient gardener to risk it, but don't.Goldfinch

I loved being out in the greenhouses early in the morning. I was out there watering a few seedlings and sipping my tea and I heard a buzzard scream. I looked and directly above me way up high a buzzard was circling. I know that it won't go for my hens when they're in their run so I just enjoyed watching it surf the air currents. Perhaps it is the same buzzard that was bold enough to sit by our pond a few weeks ago. I heard a curlew cry down by the burn and in the distance there was a woodpecker drumming. I felt that all was right with the world.

We've had a good week for birds here at the house. Our swallows came back today. I hope they enjoyed their stay in Africa and are ready to get busy. The last big storm knocked the swallow nest off so they'll have to rebuild. We will also have to be extra careful and keep the shed door shut. Swallows will nest in there if given half a chance.

Last week I had a new sighting at the bird feeder. I always get excited when I see something new. I couldn't figure out what the bird was that looked like a striped version of a sparrow.I managed these two blurred photos and sent them to Dean from Dean's Daily Diary (formerly Mostly Macro). From this flimsy documentation he helped me to identify the bird as a reed bunting! It thrilled my nerdy little heart. It's a new one to my life list. Thanks for the help Dean!

Here is a list of the birds that have been seen by me here at Whitelees in the past seven days:

Swallow
Chaffinch
Greenfinch
Goldfinch
Blue tit
Great tit
Coal tit
Siskin
Mourning dove
Wood pigeon
Blackbird
Mistle thrush
House sparrow
Reed bunting (!)
Robin
Wren
Buzzard
Lapwing
Crow
Jackdaw
Pheasant
Curlew
Starling
Great spotted woodpecker
Canda goose (flew over in a big V)

I'm glad the garden is dug over as the forecast for tomorrow is drizzle (of course). The garden tools are safely stored and I am all set for the next burst of good weather to start putting some hardy things out in the garden to grow.

Siskins

We've been having nice weather today. There has been a bit of sun, no wind and mild temperatures. The bird table has seen some action. In fact, I think I'll have to refill things over there tomorrow morning.
The peanuts were the big favourite today. We had a couple of siskins visit. They're pretty little birds. They remind me a bit of the winter version of American goldfinches.

Big Visitor !

I still feed the bird feeders and try to notice what comes into the garden. There is a seasonal variation to what can be found in our quite little garden. Last week we had a real treat.

I have a rubbish little digital camera and I have to work with its limitations. So, when a majestic buzzard came into the garden, I was keen to get a photo if it without spooking it. (For the folks in the US, a Buzzard Buteo buteo in the UK is a very large hawk and not a vulture.)The bird was seen three separate times last week sitting on a rock at the edge of our frog pond. We have a number of them living and breeding near our house. I quite often hear them screaming. I'll look up and way above me will be a couple of them circling. In the late summer there will be entire families of buzzards soaring above the fields. This is the first time I have ever seen one get this close to the house. Naturally the photo is blurry and you can barely make out that there is something in the centre of this picture. I tried blowing the photo up and using digital photo editing, sharpen the edges. This is as good as the photo got. Certainly the mole hills that are peppering the front lawn are plainly visible. *sigh*

I have a spotting scope that is almost permanently set up in the front room with the lens focused on the bird table. One can see the songbirds and occasional great spotted woodpecker in lovely sharp focus. Knowing that digiscopes are just spotting scopes manufactured so that a digital camera can be attached I tried sticking the lens of my battered camera up to the eyepiece of the spotting scope and took a few photos. It's tricky to get it angled right among other things.

Here are a few of my first efforts. I think if I stick with it, I could get better at getting in-focus photos of the birds that come for a visit and a snack. Coal tit - looks like a North American Chickadee but has that big white spot on the back of his head. Greenfinch Great tit with a male chaffinch off to the right.Female chaffinch

Bottom of the Field

In all the years (almost 15) that we've lived here The Man of the Place and I have never walked to the bottom of the field behind the house. We've been busy or it is raining or there are bulls in the field, the sheep are in lamb, there are lambs in the field . . . pick an excuse.

We've been in the field countless times for lots of reasons. In fact when George was in primary school, on fine days he could walk home (if there were no bulls in the field and it was dry enough). We would go half way down the field and then turn south toward the school which is three fields away. The distance of about three good city blocks.

If we are going on a walk it has always been much easier just to walk on the road to the north or south of the house. The west side of the house is all trees. As time has gone on the trees that were once small and of a size we could poach for a Christmas tree are now mature with big hawks and owls sitting in the top branches. The eastern aspect just gets ignored.
Walking due east from the house and once one gets past the point in the field for the turn to school, a ditch starts to form. The old beech trees (probably well over 200 years) used to be part of an old hedge. You can see the scars on these matriarchs of the field from their time in service as part of a hedge.This tree still has a bit of old barbed wire sticking out of it.
There is evidence around each tree that there are little animals living underneath the roots. Very Wind in the Willows!
It was the call of the curlew that inspired me to ask The Man of the Place if he wished to walk with me to the burn. In the spring and then all summer long we will hear the laughing cry of the curlew as they live their lives by the side of this burn.To hear their song, please click on these words that are underlined. The link leads to the RSPB page on curlew with a button to click to hear the song. It is Britain's largest wading bird and more than one live by this burn judging by the noise. Their cry reminds me of loons on Lake Superior. I hear the sound any time I am outside doing something that doesn't involve a lot of noise; hanging clothes on the line or digging in the garden. It's nice. Recently we heard these guys too, lapwings. My neighbour saw them arrive just the other week. The song of the lapwing reminds me of a comedy slide whistle. I love it when the summer visitors start to come back. There are about six lapwings in this field. They're pairing off and getting ready to nest. We saw them but as I don't have a long lens on my rubbish little camera, you'll just have to take my word for it.

You can see by the photos that the fields aren't as deeply green as they would normally be. We haven't had a lot of rain in the last month or so. In fact, since the snow melted, we haven't had much at all. Over all this is not so bad but it is lambing time and the ewes that have just given birth would be grateful for a bit more grass.

We found what is probably a badger set down by the burn and I look forward to going down there more often to investigate. I think it was badger rather than fox as there were about five holes, the holes were very clean and didn't smell. Fox dens really smell quite strongly of fox.To get down to the burn and home again we climbed over a part of a dry stone dyke (wall) that had been knocked over by one of the bulls last year. You can see in these photos the stones that have been pulled from the burn as they're all rounded and smooth and the stones left by the Romans when they were here centuries ago. There is an old Roman camp at the top of one of the nearby hills. As was common, the local tribes used the nice dressed stone that had been abandoned for their own houses and dry stone dykes.
I don't know if you can make it out, but there is the remnant of an old Roman road cutting diagonally through this field. Romans liked their straight lines when making roads and this road goes from the camp I mentioned earlier (you can make out the hill in the distance) to Carlisle 28 miles away which started out as Luguvallium in about 78 AD.
Here is The Man of the Place having salvaged some old fence posts on the return journey that were then cut up for kindling.

I'm quite happy to take any visitors on this walk when they get here. :-) Bring wellies!