What a beautiful weekend we have had this weekend! The weather has been wonderful here and the whole area is buzzing with life! The butterflies have been out in abundance and this weekend, I have seen: Brimstone, speckled wood, peacock, small tortoiseshell, large white, orange tip and common blue. Also an amazing number of ladybirds around.
I have also seen my first swallow of the year!
Updates from the garden nest boxes. … Hopper and Dave are still visiting the oak tree kestrel box and I now have jackdaws looking in both of my tawny boxes as well. I also climbed up to the barn kestrel box (still no kestrels sadly) as some of the cables had come loose and the camera was wobbling a lot after the high winds of a few weeks ago. I have secured the camera again now and I am still hoping I may watch the footage back and see them reappear… I can but hope! I did actually see a kestrel in the general area yesterday, but no sign of them at the box.
The finishing touches seem to be happening in all the nest boxes with soft materials being brought in. The plum tree box now has numerous feathers and look particularly soft and inviting. It will be interesting to see which box has the first egg… I would imagine it will happen in the next week.
The hedgehogs ae visiting every night, from about 10.30, along with wood mice both in the hedgehog box and the mouse cam. You can watch these feeds each night on my website. Along with these ‘night’ cam, the foxes are also visiting. This weekend I have actually seen them in the field as they have come just as it is getting dark. Tonight, I even managed a couple of photos as one of them came at about 8pm… light still a bit low though, but it is really good to see them ‘in the flesh’ rather than just on the IR camera.
To finish off tonight, here are some shots of my garden this weekend…. the hard work is paying off and it is looking really pretty at the moment… you can also see the frame of my new greenhouse. Bought in Feb, it has been sitting in its box, waiting for me to get the area prepared. I finally started to build it this weekend… and would have finished it, but the polycarbonate panels have been irregularly trimmed, so will not fit, so I will have to return those.
Hopefully I will bring you some photos of the nest box action this week, so until then, here’s some shots of my garden….
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