Garden Diaries @frannywatch - Tumblr Blog

April & May have been busy in the garden. The newts have returned to the pond . Plenty of pairing up & mating dances on view, I have found a few early babies whilst cleaning out algae. I have even spotted one huge newt which has to be a great crested as it dwarfs the others. No idea if there are any more about. I have seen at least two frogs & one fat black toad. We have had the tree surgeons in & one of them spotted a grass snake. They thought me brave, putting my hand under the ledge where it was hiding & touching it so that it swam across the pond & the other two blokes got to see it. Already seen two slow worms in the garden. There are plenty of bees using our bee hotels & it is lovely to see them buzzing about in the sunshine. Starting to see quite a few baby birds being fed around the feeders & patio.

#Buzzing in the garden

There was the cutest baby deer hiding among plants on our veg plot this afternoon. Unfortunately, it panicked & kept running into the chicken wire fence . No photo , instead of getting out my phone, I turned around & ran away to give it an escape route . It bolted as soon as I got out of the way. I'm sure Mum was somewhere near. Not long after we saw a Raven fly over , I'm counting that as a new tick for the garden bird list. Unfortunately, I have mislaid my little RSPB diary, so I haven't been able to do a final tally for my 2023 bird list. My new years resolution last year was to take more photos with my DSLR of wildlife in the garden, but that didn't happen. Maybe this year? Helping hubby teach photography at the moment so I have made an effort to learn how to use some of the manual settings on my smart phone so that I could pass some of this information on to the learners.

Things are starting to warm up & Spring is well under way. The first Swallows arrived in the village several days ago , I've seen Wheatears on the marshes & also I heard my first Bittern booming . There are a lot more insects visible in the garden & today I saw my first Slow worm. 20/04/23

2023 - My New Years resolution was to give up on my Capture 52 challenge & instead take more pictures of my garden & its inhabitants. But here we are in April & I have only just started. This is probably one of the birds nesting in my chimney as it was looking for nesting material, possibly one of the two that I had to rescue from my fireplace, maybe even the ungrateful bird that bit me before I released it at the patio door. I didn't mind & it was lovely to watch it fly from my hands & soar up into the trees.

2022 Bird List

My final bird total was 127 with three new lifers, Ring Ouzels, Crested Tits & Scottish Crossbills. My list for the area where I live was 82. Obviously the highlight was those Ring Ouzels. Finding them by myself after years of missing out on them was brilliant, getting them on my home patch was especially satisfying. It had been a while since I'd taken my binoculars out with me but I recently saw a lovely Grey wagtail around the corner from me so that prompted me to start taking them again. I then managed to see Snipe, Woodcock & two Water Rail to boost my list in the last few days of the Year. We had a few days of incredibly hard frosts & freezing temperatures which probably brought the Water rails out into the open. It also meant that a lot of my plants in the garden , especially my succulents have turned to mush. Some I have lost but hopefully a lot of other plants will re- emerge in the Spring. My list for 2023 is off to a good start with a couple of Grey Partridge, haven't seen any of them for years. Hoping I can beat 82 this year.

The last two mornings there have been a pair of black caps flitting about among the bushes & trees I can see from the lounge window. I have also enjoyed watching flocks of longtailed tits visiting the feeders & bird bath. We have recently returned from two weeks in Scotland where the coal tits & longtailed tits seem to be the most common birds to be seen, especially in the Caingorms where we spent the second week. We were lucky enough to see crested tits so that is a new species for our life list. We were also lucky enough to see distant views of an otter & a pod of dolphins from our first cottage & another otter in the next bay & then when I got back home to Norfolk I was thrilled to see an otter on the marshes swimming up a drainage ditch straight towards me.

This summer has been difficult for wildlife. East Anglia has had drought conditions, weeks of blistering heat with no rainfall . Our garden had no rainfall at all during July & august . We have been making sure all the bird baths are always topped up & I have put out saucers of water & ripe fruit for the insects. The ponds supply water to many of our garden visitors but the large wildlife pond in our meadow has practically dried up. The rain that finally arrived in the last few days has been a lifeline to the sticklebacks surviving in the few remaining puddles. My empty water butts have thankfully refilled & I have plenty of water for my insectivorous plants in my bog garden.

Backswimmers/ Water boatmen on the prowl. Luckily some dragonfly larvae managed evade them.

#Dragonfly recently emerged from pond

Dragonfly larvae casings, the ones that got away.

#Dragonfly larvae didn't stand a chance

#Water boatmen feeding frenzy

#WaspBeetle

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