Nestwatch

Mama (or indeed Papa as I gather they take turns to nest-sit) was away from the nest briefly yesterday and I took the opportunity to have a quick peek:

We're up from the 3 and 4 eggs we first observed in mid-May to 5 - so presuming the information I've found on incubation period is accurate (12-14 days) they should be hatching any time now.

Watch this space!

Springwatch

In homage to BBC's Springwatch, here's our very own selection of wildlife offerings.

Firstly, the baby Sparrows - doing their Feed Me, Feed Me Now thing . . .



. . . much fluffing of feathers, fluttering of wings, and frenzied cheeping . . .






. . . the adult pictured here is evidently gleaning scraps from the fat balls to keep the little ones quiet.






On a more horticultural note, the hedgerows roundabout are studded with these little white stars at the moment - an online search identifies it as Lesser Stitchwort, unless anybody knows any differently?



Finally, we have our very own nesting Pied Wagtails. They have positioned their nest somewhat awkwardly, right behind our log store (so the logs are off limits right now) but seem quite happy despite our comings and goings. No sign of any chicks just yet, but there is some serious nest-sitting going on.

Hopefully more photos to follow:

Done!

The fruit cage that is . . . just hope it doesn't blow away overnight (it's a bit windy here just now!). All being well, the strawberries and blueberry should be safe now from marauding bunnies.

Spring Weather

Haven't weather-blogged for a while, so here we go. March and April really weren't that bad - in fact the end of March brought some nice warm days if I remember rightly, and April was pretty good on the whole as well. Thus far May is actually feeling distinctly colder.

Still having technical problems with the weather-station data - this time I'm missing everything from my last download (17 March) through to 14 April - ah well . . . investigations are ongoing. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Anyway here is the run down, incomplete as it is, on March and April:

MARCH:

APRIL:

Bunny Biscuits

Not so happy with the bunnies these days - they're tucking in to our strawberry plants with gay abandon - a lot of them are more stalk than plant right now. (Which has at least pushed us in to action on the fruit cage front . . . see future post.)

The biscuits I made at the weekend were at least sweet, although they looked so much more like bunnies before they were cooked . . .