Middle Spotted Woodpecker and December's tree surgery

Brrrr! We are having a cold snap with real winter weather, something we haven't had for more than a few days here and there for quite a few years. The lake has been frozen over for about a week now and every morning I have to go out and take fresh water to the hens whose water bowls have frozen solid. I'm doing the same for the wild birds' water too as they can't drink from the lake edge. It's still not been as cold as in the early years here when we reguarly had -8C, but it was down to -5C/6C a few times. I'd also forgotten about freezing pipes so we've nearly lost our kitchen cold water feed a couple of times but I've got to the tap to run it just in time, however because it's been so long since we had such a cold period I'd forgotten about the 2nd floor shower room, so the cold feed is frozen solid there! It's the first time I've worn my thermals for quite a few years too. Aaarrgh, roll on spring, I can do without all this! (However, the sun is shining all day long..... it is so much lovelier than the milder gloom and drizzle which is due to come back soon.... you just can't win!) (That blurb was written two days ago and the end of the freeze has just started with cloud and some drizzle!)

We have a new(ish) visitor to the peanut feeder. It's a Middle Spotted Woodpecker which is a fair bit smaller and a lot prettier than the Great Spotted Woodpecker. We've seen it here before many years ago (and a Lesser Spotted too) but this time it has become a regular visitor. I haven't got any very good photos so far because the only times I've had my camera to hand have been when it's been either early in the day with low light, or just plain gloomy with low light!

Having seen the state of the peanut feeder in K's photo it was time for a new one, and thankfully he found a spare feeder in the barn, ditto a seed dispenser too which is hanging on our other feeding station. I've now found a good use for the last of the rubbery windfall apples as the blackbirds are enjoying munching on them. This is the kind of weather when it's really important to feed the wild birds and especially to provide them with fresh water to drink and bathe in. (But you knew all that, didn't you?)

This is Keith's photo.

The ducks have managed to keep a small pool of water unfrozen; unfortunately for all concerned this is not close to the bank where we can put food. At first K managed to break the ice but the next day it was already too thick! Dirk is hopeless on the ice and skids everywhere and looks like he's about to break his legs, and although Rachel is managing to get up onto the ice more easily than him, she doesn't seem to want to walk over to the bank where the food is. Luckily K had a brainwave and the pole he was using to break the ice with was put to good use again - this time with the apple picking basket holding duck food! He can just reach to put the food on the ice and the ducks are happily eating it from the water. Honestly, these creatures don't want much, do they?!!

Going back to December, our 'tree man' came and felled a load of trees again, just like he did three years ago. This time some largish trees had to go, mostly due to crowding out with other trees. I had to decide which ones were most important to keep - for example, although I hate to see a beautiful lime tree being cut down, I have five of them, yet only one cedar, as we already felled one of them which had obliterated the path down to the beach. So out of three specimen trees growing into each other, the lime had to go. In the photo below it's a sycamore which has had the chop as it was shading out my liquidambar. We have loads of sycamores so that wasn't a difficult decision. All this wood will be good firewood in two years time.

The monster shredding machine. This was parked right outside the chicken run and the poor hens cowered indoors for about three days, terrified in case the scary monster started making loud noises again. Sorry hens! We have kept a lot of the shredded wood and put it down on the veg patch paths again, and also on the path leading down to the lake.

The lime tree getting the chop but one of these three trees had to go.

Originally the tree man was going to have a bash at removing the fallen stand of alders in the lake, but as the water level had risen by a couple of feet since he first viewed it this was deemed impossible and he will return next year when the water level is at its lowest. He had a mate in to help as there was a fair bit of work involved here - anyway I had a brainwave and suggested that as they couldn't do the tree in the lake, could they prune my apple trees and reduce the height considerably. We had already asked him to clear the stream banks of brambles which were taller than my head - this is a job that's bad enough doing every year but when you haven't done it for three years it gets out of control. I can tell you we both breathed a HUGE sigh of relief at not having to prune the apples and pears this year!

Taken from my living room window - man up an apple tree.

I'm surprised they managed to climb up these relatively thin branches - and so overcrowed inside the trees too.

Afterwards, one of the trees with lopped off branches. All these fallen apples have been feeding Redwings and Fieldfares this winter.

The stream is visible! The other side has now been cleared by the owners of that land - it will grow back but K is going to try to strim it and keep the brambles and nettles down. In the past I've wanted to keep the nettles for the wildlife, but there are times when nature just has to be controlled. There are tons of nettles out in the ditches for the butterflies and moths to lay their eggs on.

At this time (December) there were still some leaves clinging to the Liquidambar tree and glowing in the sunshine.

Even on the ground they retained their colour for a long time. This way you get to enjoy the colourful leaves for much longer!

I'm jumping backwards and forwards in time but I have already uploaded the photos and can't be bothered to delete and rearrange the order here! In this cold sunny snap it seemed a good time to burn all the crap we've been piling up in the veg patch waiting for there to be enough to have a good bonfire. We are not supposed to have bonfires anymore for environmental reasons and because of the nuisance to neighbours. Well we didn't really know that but we do now, although having googled to try to find the law on this one for our department, all I can find is a lot of conflicting information on government sites. What else is new?!

You can see how much stuff there was - a mix of brambles, whippy elm growth, sycamore saplings, ivy and a fair bit of dead thuya hedge, plus a lot of veg patch weeds. The official advice is to compost or shred your garden waste (we do, but you can't do this kind of thing!) or take it to the tip. This would be quite a few trailer loads plus a lot of the twigs and stems would need to be cut to fit into our small trailer, all of which takes a lot of time. I've been cracking on with clearing the jungle much faster by not having to snip up bramble stems along the way.

It did produce a lot of smelly smoke but it's not like we're doing this every week - in fact it is only our fourth bonfire here in 12 years! We won't have one again though now we know it's not permitted. Since I wrote this one of our neighbours has had a smelly bonfire..... :-)

To finish off, whilst I was clearing up our overgrown pathways I found this twig with some interesting fungi on it. It's dead wood and the twig is thinner than my finger so the fungi is really small. I wasn't entirely sure if that is what it was but the underside of the fungi looks a bit like Turkey Tails. The small bits look like scale insect though!

Honestly, the less frequently I blog, the longer my posts get. If you made it this far, well done! It's been quite a marathon for me writing it..... :-)

It's starting to feel a bit like autumn

I'm one of those people who refuse to accept that it is autumn before the due date, i.e. the autumn equinox. However all the signs are appearing, from the cooler mornings with dewy grass showing up tiny webs which I try not to step on, and larger orb webs visible when I let the chickens out early in the morning. After the rain some shroomy things have been appearing, though not like the amounts we'll get later on in real autumn. Robins seem to have returned; although I don't think they go away, they always seem absent during the summer and then appear to come back because they start singing when the others birds stop, and continue singing all through the winter. Thank goodness for Robins! The late summer butterflies are back and lovely and colourful, ditto the late summer damselflies and dragonflies I see here. And we are eating our pears and it won't be long before the first apples are ready - they are already looking plump and red on our best eating apple trees. 

Gathering pears - we have two more trees
but there are not many on them.

Looking for Wasp Spiders at home with a helper.
We didn't find any here.

The bit of lawn that was brownest is greening up nicely,
although half of that green is weeds!
Some bits have had to be mown already.

A fat fungi I've never seen before -
the stalk is more than an inch in diameter.

About four feet away this little one came up,
which after three days is now looking like the one above.
Any ideas anyone?

This is a nymph of the Striped Shield Bug (Graphosoma lineatum),
the red and black stripey bug.

This true bug I have no idea! All I know is that it's not the
Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina) cos I found one in the garden
and checked out its underside..... I love the colours, whatever this is!
And before you ask, I have no idea why I did not take
a photo of its top side..... hmmm!

Back to those bug eggs again - this is the best I could do.
They do look like tiny bugs emerging, but as the eggs are 1mm wide,
I really can't do any better than this.

On the M. W. Walk, we came across this beautiful dragonfly.
It's a Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta) and probably a young male,
as the mature males tend to have a blue/brown abdomen.

I had to take a few photos as I've never seen this dragonfly before so here it is again.....
Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta)

At home the Western Willow Spreadwings (Lestes viridis, or Chalcolestes viridis) have appeared.
They are always happy to perch on vegetation near the pond.

Western Willow Spreadwing (Lestes viridis, or Chalcolestes viridis).

Another Harvestman, quite different from the one I showed last post.
I've never delved into Harvestman identification so I'm hoping JJ might know! :-)

Sawfly larvae on a small Alder tree by the pond.
This one in the foreground has just had a moult, and you can see the
discarded skin under the first three true legs on the twig.
Its head will darken up like the other one after a few hours.

On the same tree I found this tussock moth larva. It looks very like a Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antiqua) but the tail end is a bit different and not the normal dark colour. However I can't find any other European tussock moth whose caterpillar looks remotely like this, so maybe it isn't a final instar one??

Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar - I think!

Vapourer moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar - I think!

This moth was on a stinging nettle by the orchard -
it doesn't have a common name, only Latin, Carcina quercana.

Butterflies gorging on rotting plums - Red Admiral, Peacock, Comma and in the pic bottom left,
there are two Commas and a Red Admiral. I'm too lazy to add Latin names but you
European peeps know these butterflies well!

I'm adding a final photo but I'll keep it hidden from those who don't like spiders so you will have to click to see it. I had been doing a bit of gardening and whilst wandering around, felt something tickling my shoulder. I put my hand inside my T-shirt and felt something furry! Eeeks! I freaked thinking it might be a wasp or a bee, as I react badly to wasp stings and don't fancy being stung by anything, particularly right now; lord knows what would happen with my buggered immune system. So I hurriedly stripped off down to bra in the garden (not overlooked thank goodness!), turned my T-shirt inside out, and was hugely relieved to find it was 'only' a large Cross Orb Weaver! Phew. :-) Pic here.

After a lovely few days it looks like cooler wet weather is coming back again but at least I got out away from the house twice this week, and I'm meeting up with friends for lunch next week and desperately need to get a hair cut too (preferably before seeing friends...). So many things to do whilst I've got a bit of energy. Still not heard from the hospital as to when my last chemo will be, but quite frankly right now I don't care! 

Mummy's little helpers

Sometimes you need a bit of help with the harvest - other times you don't but you get it anyway whether you like it or not! First up was the rogue pumpkin that had grown on the other side of the perimeter fence. To save my OH having to get out stepladders and climb over the fence, he went and got a net which made more sense. But something had crawled into the barn and thought it would be a good thing to pupate on!

Hang on, what's this attached to the net?

I'm pretty sure it's a Large White chrysalis (Pieris brassicae)! We turned the net inside out
and no future butterflies were harmed in the harvesting of this pumpkin.

Will you hurry up and come and cut the pumpkin vine instead of taking photos?!
(That pile of brown stuff is well rotted horse manure courtesy of my
horsey neighbours to be dug in later - have loads more of it).

All that just for this (courgette has nothing to do with it....).
But I've only three Potimarrons total so it was important!

And over in the orchard..... he's 6 foot 4" (195cm) so comes in very handy -
so does that harvesting net on a long pole.

Pathetic apple harvest this year - that's the total from our two best trees for eating apples
(as opposed to those best suited for cooking, which totalled even less). But you can't have it all
every year and this is just the start of the walnut harvest from my earliest tree (we have 3)!

Back in the veg patch it was time to collect coriander seed for sowing next year.

But Bertie decided he'd come along and 'help'.

This is his idea of helping, that's after snotting all over me when I was squatting down
with the camera and risking smearing my lens.....

I have to say, it was nice to be cool enough to get back in my wellies!
And please ignore the weeds...... ;-)

I love you, Mummy.

Needless to say, I gave up with the harvesting at this point!
All that greenery around the coriander is self seeded physalis, by the way.
To think I BOUGHT a plant this year! Now I know better as it's self seeded everywhere.

There's very little in the veg patch that is still in neat rows apart from the winter veg -
here the purple curly kale is growing really well and the PSB on the right is coming
along too. Those eggs from the Ornate Shield Bug on the kale just
completely disappeared though - I guess a bird or something ate them all!

I've got a vole gone beserk in here too, and has tunnelled under all my most
recently sown young veggies. :-(

I've no idea if Bertie caught it but later I found the soil dug out and all over
the place; the only good thing is that he didn't poo in the middle of it!!!

And finally - we have a lawn! It's greened up even more in the two days since I took this photo.
A bit of rain has helped enormously.

I have a load more photos to sort through from this last week but I just don't know where the time goes - I'm always meaning to try to blog more often than once a week!! Will try to get the others up over the weekend.