Category Archives: Wildlife

Alas, poor frogs!

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Last week I ventured out into the sodden garden after a few days of drier weather. Walking around by the pond I was horrified to see 7 dead, bloated, frogs floating in the water. I have seen one or two like this after a cold patch, when the pond freezes over, but not more. We wondered if it was our radical clearing out of the pond in October that had somehow left them vulnerable.

The pond before clearingpond sept

The naked pond – although still some submerged floating plants

pind dec 2012

Having taken advice from the organisation called Pond Conservation, it seems that we wouldn’t have done much harm with our clear-out, quite the reverse really. It is most likely that they did suffer when there was a cold snap a week or two before Christmas and then took their time to float to the top of the pond. I hadn’t tried to keep a patch of water clear of ice this season, so I must remember to do this in the future in order to prevent any build-up of noxious gases. I really do hate my frogs to be hurt!

Wild flowers at College Lake

26 Thursday Jul 2012

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What a difference a week makes. The weather is fantastic and yesterday we had a beautiful day at College Lake near Tring. This is an old quarry that is now managed by Beds, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust as a nature reserve. There are two lakes and a range of other habitats (woodland, grassland, open meadow, wildlife garden etc) in this lovely chalk downland.

For more information see BBOWT website http://www.bbowt.org.uk/

There are plenty of bird hides around the site with a charming one at ground level next to a shady pond with a frogs’ eye view of things. The new visitor centre has refreshments available at some times of day and great views over the reserve.

Yesterday we were looking at all aspects of wildlife, especially birds, and at the start of our walk we were treated to the sight of two hobbys in the cloudless sky. We also saw oystercatchers, redshanks, lapwings and a variety of gulls.

For me though, the real treat was the variety of wild flowers in the area providing nourishment for many beautiful butterflies. Unfortunately butterflies are not easy to identify or photograph but they included gatekeepers and marbled whites.

Here are some of the wild flowers we saw. I hope I have identified them correctly.

Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa)

Pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis)

Common Centaury (Centaurium minus)

Melilot (Melilotus officinalis)

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)

Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare)

Yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata)

Slugs rule ok!

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in Gardening, Pond, Vegetable gardening, Wildlife

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You may not have believed my last post when I commented on the disastrous vegetable situation this year so I am posting some pictures of the damage, almost entirely due to the slugs, although pigeons are not wholly without blame, and the weather started things off badly and ensured the plants were poor specimens and ready to be attacked. (Click on the first two photos for larger slugs!)

Broad bean brunch

Radish relish

Pathetic peas

Calamatous cabbages (note potato intruder)

Paltry potatoes

I have been fighting a brave battle on the strawberry front and we have had plenty of lovely fruit, but yesterday’s rain re-inforced slug numbers and I am giving up there too.

I suppose I should say that I don’t use slug pellets because we have a couple of ponds and there are loads of frogs hopping about the garden and they come first. Frogs are having a hard time over the planet and I am trying to make their lives as easy as possible here, so I suppose there will be the odd year when I really pay for that strategy.

Looking forward to next year now. It can’t be this bad can it?

Bird week

02 Saturday Jun 2012

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This has been a bird week. I have a new bird feeding station, bought after the table my father made me fell to bits. Feeding stations are much cheaper than new bird tables and also more flexible with their numerous hanging bits and pieces. You can have peanuts, seeds and fatty products. I don’t use the latter since just providing peanuts and seeds seems to cost a fortune.

Bird feeding station

I find myself a bit concerned about starting to feed birds like this. They come to rely on it and I am not sure that is a good thing. Also, we may be introducing diseases via communal feeding, dirty seeds and nuts etc. I would like to know what others think.

Since introducing the peanuts we have seen some beautiful bullfinches and great spotted woodpeckers have become regular feeders. Seems an unusual move from feeding on insects to peanuts, but what beautiful birds.

Paxton Pits, Huntingdonshire

During the week we visited Paxton Pits.

http://www.paxton-pits.org.uk/

This is a huge nature reserve around a working gravel pit alongside the Great Ouse. There are delightful walks throughout the area with a variety of habitats for birds. Herons and cormorants breed there. Most of the birds in the sky were cormorants the day we visited. Cuckoos were also flying overhead. It was wonderful to hear them calling continuously. I haven’t heard one at home for years.

The main attraction for us though was the nightingales. We heard them quite clearly and realised what a range of sounds they can produce. I hope I will be able to recognise their singing from now on. They make quite a noise for their size.

Paxton Pits is a great day out.

On churchyards

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Churches and churchyards, Wildlife

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Last week we had a very pleasant day visiting churches in the south of Buckinghamshire and Slough.  It was interesting to see what havens of peace, flora and fauna churchyards can be, especially in urban settings. They must play an important role in our perception of the quality of our towns. At St Mary’s in Slough the churchyard is still filled with graves but it is a large and peaceful place, as is the ancient St Laurence’s just down the road at Upton-cum-Chalvey.

St Mary’s Church, Slough

There is an interesting project called Living Churchyards where the participants maintain their areas as oases for wildlife. http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=271

At Langley Marish Church as we entered the churchyard we heard chirping from the wall and realised that birds were nesting in the wall itself.

We also visited rural churches including the beautifully renovated Hitcham, quaint Dorney and Stoke Poges, where we ate our lunch and visited the Thomas Gray memorial. Thomas Gray stayed nearby and may have written his ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’ here, although there are other contenders.

Thomas Gray memorial at Stoke Poges

An unusual but delightful day in lovely warm weather.

The wild garden

07 Monday May 2012

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March being pleasantly warm there were quite a few butterflies around. The brimstone is always the first about in the spring and a very welcome sight. This year we also saw quite a few peacock butterflies. I hope the cold weather in April has not been too bad for them.

Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the path

The frogs had their usual sex fest (it always seems a little later in this garden than others) and left masses of frogspawn. About two weeks ago there was still mostly a squirming mass of hatched tadpoles on top of the water lily but now they have all gone, and looking yesterday I couldn’t see a single one swimming about.  Something similar happened last year and I can’t tell where they are going. In previous years there have been tadpoles and small frogs galore. There are various predators in the pond, of course, including newts and dragonfly larva but I can’t believe they could have taken all of the tadpoles by now. Are they hiding or has something else happened to them, I wonder?  

Happy frogs, I hope!

The larger pond has probably given me more pleasure than any other part of the garden. Particularly when new here, I spent hours watching pond life. It is so charming to see what seems like a whole other world. It looks delightful but it is a nasty world of predations. One year I spent some time catching water boatmen and flinging them into the undergrowth, believing that they were too numerous and fearful for my tadpoles. I found out later they could fly. Now I leave well alone. To protect the aquatic wildlife I never use chemicals anywhere near the pond.