I was awoken last night at about 11 (we’re usually early-to-bed merchants here) by a horrible noise I knew too well: a hedgehog in distress. Two summers ago, during a really hot and dry spell, we had several very upsetting nights when hedgehogs were being attacked by badgers in our neighbours’ gardens. Back then we were alerted by the awful shrieking calls of the poor hedgepigs in distress. Last night it was déjà vu – we’ve had a hot, dry spell; badgers can’t get at their normal prey food of worms because the ground is too hard and dry and the worms have gone right down into the deeper, moister soil, and so they turn to the hedgehogs for food.
Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus). Photo by Jpbw.
So I threw on my clothes, grabbed my torch and went out in to the back yard, ready to chase off a marauding badger. What I found were two hedgehogs together, frozen in a sheepish ‘you haven’t seen me, right?’ attitude, but clearly in a state of, how can I put this delicately, interrupted love. So I turned the torch off, apologised to them, and came back to bed. As did they ….
For the next hour we were treated to not only the unearthly shrieks but also a heavy, guttural grunting. The hedgepigs were making sweet hedgehoggy love in among the plant pots. Fingers crossed there’ll be a good-sized batch of hedgepiglets arriving soon.
Lets’s hope lots of these little fellows are the result of last night’s festivities. Photo by Calle Eklund/V-wolf.
2019 UPDATE: The walks will take place this year on Sunday 5 May 2019 and Sunday 19 May 2019. 10.30-5.00, entry by Stonegate Lodge, SP3 6SP on the Hindon-Newtown lane. Dogs welcome on leads; some paths are steep and rugged. The walks must close in high winds. Beckford books to browse, and cakes, soup and barbecued sausages are available to buy. Donations at the gate, suggested £5+, and the proceeds will again go to Parkinsons UK and local charities. Hearty thanks to the owners Stephen and Bonnie Morant of Old Fonthill Abbey for their kindness in opening the grounds to the public.
Yesterday was May Day, and despite the cold, grey weather we headed out for a walk round a small part of the 9,000 acre historic Fonthill Estate in south-west Wiltshire. The grounds of the Fonthill Estate are notably lacking in public rights of way. The ruins of the fabulous Fonthill Abbey are no longer part of the estate and are also not normally inaccessible, a rare open day for charity yesterday gave us the chance to have a good old snoop (plus a lovely walk).
I’ve written before about Fonthill and its Abbey, built by the notorious William Beckford between 1796 and 1813, and very shortlived: due to its hasty and poor-quality construction, it fell down (for the final time) in 1825 and was later all-but demolished, apart from a part of the north wing.
Fonthill Abbey: View of the west and north fronts from John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill (1823). All that remains is the part on the left hand side of the engraving: the low tower with the oriel window and everything to the left of it.
Fonthill Abbey ruins: all that remains, part of the north wing. A modern house has been built in the last year behind it and attached to some of the original cloisters / arcading.
It looks like the building work has mainly been completed, with just the hard landscaping (laying of flags etc) to be finished.
Fonthill Abbey ground plan. The small part that remains is at the very top (north) of the plan.
We walked around Bitham Lake, the smaller of the two lakes on the estate:
Bitham Lake.
Bitham Lake.
Ruined small building in the woods.
Beautiful old Spanish Chestnuts with their wonderfully twisted trunks.
The long drive leading up to the Abbey ruins.
There is another open day on Sunday 15 May 2016, from 10.30-5.00. Entry is via Stonegate Lodge (SP3 6SP) on the Hindon-Newtown Lane (Grid ref 390900 130650). Donations at the gate: all proceeds go to ParkinsonsUK and local charities.
2017 UPDATE: The walks take place this year on Sunday 30 April 2017 and Sunday 14 May 2017 (click photo below to embiggen/bigify for details):
2018 UPDATE: The walks will take place this year on Sunday 6 May 2018 and Sunday 20 May 2018. Donations at the gate, and the proceeds will again go to Parkinsons UK and local charities. Hearty thanks to the owners Stephen and Bonnie Morant of Old Fonthill Abbey for their kindness in opening the grounds to the public.
We went for a walk last Sunday (April 17) in some woods in south Wiltshire. A lone sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) and a lone rowan (mountain ash, Sorbus sp.) were already in leaf; the rest of the trees were still leafless, but budding up nicely. There are a lot of holly and birch trees in these woods; we don’t have birch around where we live as they don’t do well on chalk.
Rowan in leaf (Sorbus sp.)
Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum), also known as Woodbine, showing why it has the latter name …
The first bluebells are out, plus wood anenomes, celandine, stitchwort and pink campion, and we came across a few clumps of daffodils too.
Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta).
A bank of wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa).
Celandine (Ficaria verna).
Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea).
Daffodils. They look a little large to me to be our native wild ones: there are gardens nearby so these could be hybrids.
We disturbed a buzzard (Buteo buteo) from its perching spot in a tree above us, and found a hidden trig point.
We also saw a lone roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) hoof print in the mud. Old Peg Leg, they call him.
There were some heavily pregnant sheep in a neighbouring field: they looked like they were due to lamb at any time.
I also found a pellet, not sure if it’s an owl or other raptor pellet, or fox poo or badger poo. I’ve brought it home and am dissolving it in water to see what it contains. A girl’s got to have her hobbies ….
(UPDATE: Lots of mashed up hedgehog spines 🙁 Possibly badger poo?)
It was a lovely day in glorious spring sunshine. And as an added bonus, on the way home, we saw the first swallow (Hirundo rustica) of the season. Magical.
Glorious Wiltshire (seen over a pile of horse manure).
Whoo, they’re back, and they’ve laid: an egg on Easter Monday (28 March), and another eight days later (5 April). Hopefully there will be more to follow: last year the peregrines successfully hatched and fledged four chicks.
Last year Salisbury Cathedral had a link on its website to a webcam by the nest; I hope it can manage the same this year. It will be wonderful to watch the birds’ progress. Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) are such amazing and special birds, and this breeding success is a real achievement.
And if you’d like to get an idea of the kind of views the peregrines enjoy while flying round the spire, watch these (but only if you have a strong stomach / head for heights):
I’ll add the link to the nest webcam as soon as it’s put up and I find it.
UPDATE 13 April 2016:
Still no webcam available on the Cathedral website, but there is a series of photos that show that she laid a third egg on 7 April and by 11 April there were four! Hurrah!
Four eggs by 11 April 2016. That nesting box isn’t going to stay clean for long …
UPDATE 2 MAY 2016: In response to a query from Steve Hodgkinson (see comments below) about whether the nest had been abandoned, it seems like the eggs should start hatching on or around 8 May. The Cathedral website says ‘It will take 30 days for the eggs to incubate and the process won’t start until the whole clutch of eggs is laid. Phil Sheldrake, Conservation Officer at the RSPB estimates that we should see the youngsters hatching by the end of April.’ I estimate the hatching date slightly differently using that formula: say she laid her fourth egg on 8 April, 30 days from that date = 8 May. So the eggs should be hatching in the next few days.
UPDATE 23 MAY: All four eggs have now successfully hatched. The first was born on the morning of 16 May; two more followed on the morning of 17 May and the last one on the afternoon of 17 May. The news was reported on the Cathedral’s website, but it appears that they are not providing a webcam link on the website this year, although visitors to the Cathedral can see a live feed. There are other opportunities to see the birds:
‘For those interested in a spot of peregrine watching, a marquee manned by RSPB volunteers with telescopes will offer a grandstand view of the birds from the Cathedral Lawn, Monday-Friday throughout the summer, and there are plans to introduce once-a-week Peregrine Tower Tours with Anya Wicikowski, RSPB Community Officer. Anya will accompany regular Tower Guides on the tour and answer any peregrine-related questions visitors might have. Dates and times of tours will be made available in due course.’
Thanks to Marie Thomas for the hat tip – I hadn’t looked at the Cathedral website for a while so had missed the news.
UPDATE 10 JUNE: Sadly two of the chicks have died – it’s thought the recent cold, wet weather might have been a contributing factor. The remaining two chicks, a male and a female, were ringed on 8 June.
I was with a friend in Salisbury on Saturday, and we spent the day looking round some of the sights (Mompesson House, on its first day of opening for the year), St Thomas Church (also known as St Thomas and St Edmunds Church, and as the Church of St Thomas a Becket) with its amazing Doom Painting dating from 1475, and at the end of the day, Salisbury Cathedral.
Salisbury Cathedral in the gloaming: the North Front.
We were very lucky to hear the boys’ choir practising in the Quire. The light was starting to fade, and the candlelight made it all the more atmospheric. Their singing was absolutely beautiful.
View from the Lady Chapel at the east end of the Cathedral, looking all the way down to the west end. Behind the fancy ironwork screen is the Quire. The people were looking in, watching the boys’ choir practising.
Two Cedars of Lebanon in the Cloisters.
The 123 m (404 feet) high spire seen from the Cloisters.
Hopefully the peregrine falcons will be back in a few weeks to nest on the spire again.
Today we went for a walk out from our village. Signs of spring are everywhere now, despite the sub-zero temperatures we’ve been having overnight for the past few days. Our neighbour’s bank has its glorious display of Cyclamen coum
The hazel catkins are out and the snowdrops are at their best right now
In one of the gardens walking out of the village is an old shepherd’s hut, with one axle broken. It reminds me of A Shepherd’s Life by W H Hudson, which I must re-read again. It was published in 1910, and in it he describes the life of the shepherds on the south Wiltshire downs over a hundred years ago, when those still living had memories going back to the early 1800s. I especially love it as he mentions our village.
An old shepherd’s hut that has seen better days.
We walked out of the village to the sort of chalk downland on which the shepherds about which Hudson wrote would have tended their flocks
Beautiful fungus on an old hawthorn stump:
A hawthorn clump in the grazing land, giving shelter to the sheep and a haven for the birds. In the foreground you can see molehills speckled with freshly-turned white chalk lumps.
Lovely old gate furniture.
Periwinkle and dog’s mercury among the beech leaves.
I love the markers of the year’s advance, a series of firsts leading to full-blown spring and glorious summer. One of the earliest markers that spring has truly arrived is when our pond starts roiling with mating frogs. That happened two weekends ago. Today I heard another marker: the first spring song of the chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs).
Male chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs). Photo by Gidzy.
We have chaffinches here year-round, but it is only in the spring that they sing this glorious descending song. I associate it with walks in the beech woods with the acid-green leaves bursting out of their buds. It’s not the most exciting of bird songs, but it is one of the most redolent ones for me. It means the sun is on its way back to us.
Every year, on the last weekend in January, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) asks the British public to take part in the largest wildlife survey in the world: The Big Garden Birdwatch. We are asked to sit and watch our gardens for an hour, and to count what species and numbers of birds we see during that time. The results help the scientists at the RSPB to get an idea of the health of our bird populations.
Chap and I do this every year. Normally we do it at the same time, with one of us watching the front of the cottage (where our small garden is) and the other watching our tiny back yard. This year we’re doing it slightly differently: I did my stint yesterday, and Chap is doing his today as I type.
Our kitchen has a window that looks out over the back yard. There is a bird feeder with sunflower seeds hanging about a metre from the window, and we have a ‘borrowed landscape’ of our neighbours’ garden, with its shrubs and trees and fat balls in a feeder. I have to admit that I probably slightly skewed the results yesterday: we were sitting at the kitchen table when Chap glanced up and saw a goldcrest (Regulus regulus), creeping about and poking for bugs among the white mossy froth of the woolly aphids that live on the old apple tree. We haven’t seen a goldcrest in the garden for years. At that point I said ‘I’m starting the Bird Watch right now’.
Female goldcrest (Regulus Regulus). Photo by Missy Osborn.
It’s always a very zen time, just taking an hour to do nothing other than watch the wildlife around us. I watched two robins (Erithacus rubecula) having a noisy territorial dispute, with lots of chest puffing and chasing each other, and the occasional physical spat. They were so wrapped up in their fighting that they didn’t notice the third robin who crept in and had a good feed while they were scrapping.
Robin (Erithracus rubecula). Photo by Ramin Nakisa.
A pair of blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) visited the sunflower feeder too, separately, but I hope they are a breeding pair.
Male blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla). Photo by Spacebirdy.
Female blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla). Photo by Stefan Berndtsson.
The fat ball feeder attracted a gang of noisy house sparrows (Passer domesticus),
Male house sparrow (Passer domesticus). Photo by Lip Kee Yap.
whereas the sunflower seed feeder was preferred by the even bigger gangs of goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) – our most common garden bird here.
Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis). Photo by Ómar Runólfsson.
Last year’s results are impressive: over half a million people took part, counting a total of 8,546,845 birds in total.
There is still time to take part: the survey runs til midnight.
Every now and then in our garden, we get a flower that has ‘gone wrong’. Sometimes it has way more petals than it should, or the stem is thickened or flattened; it doesn’t look right.
This snakeshead fritillary (Fritillariameleagris) should have one flower per stem. This one growing in our garden had four, and you can see the flattened stem quite clearly:
Snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) with fasciation.
Snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) with fasciation. The flattened stem is clearly visible.
We’ve also had snakeshead fritillaries with double or more the number of petals they should have.
What has happened is a condition called fasciation. The causes aren’t clear – they may be a combination of genetic, hormonal, environmental, fungal, bacterial, and viral factors. According to Wikipedia
is a relatively rare condition of abnormal growth in vascular plants in which the apical meristem (growing tip), which normally is concentrated around a single point and produces approximately cylindrical tissue, instead becomes elongated perpendicularly to the direction of growth, thus, producing flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted tissue.
The plants in our garden in which we see the condition the most are euphorbias and fritillaries. We’ve also had our white foxgloves affected by it more than once. It doesn’t happen every year – probably every three or four years – but it’s so noticeable when it does happen, and as I like curiosities and oddities, I’m very happy to see it.
