1st June
Disaster has struck, the strimmer gear box has broken and needs replacing. Fortunately the service centre reopened in Hexham today so John could take the wounded machinery straight down; unfortunately there are seventy jobs in the queue before this one. A turn in the weather is bringing lots of rain and the paths will grow furiously. John is furious.
2nd June
John has painted the tiles for the woodburner stand in the shepherd’s hut. The blackbirds in the shed nest have hatched and are hungry.
3rd June
Mel set about the June Wildflower survey and discovered that there are different Avens in the Pit Wood - Water and Wood Avens have hybridised. You can read his report here or on the Surveys page.
Wooter Avens? Watood Avens? Unseasoned Avens?
6th June
The trail camera has captured footage of a doe in the Pit Wood. John says she looks like a youngster - her legs are quite spindly and her neck is very thin. She is possibly the one that was raised on Liddells last year.
7th June
John is channelling his strimmer frustration into more camera action. The trail camera is capturing much blackbird foraging in the Pit Wood and some competition.
“I smell a rat”
“I smell a Chaffinch”
Acrobatic Siskin
“I told him not to show off”
Juvenile Woodpecker (rusty red patch on the top of the head) learning to play Hide and Seek
16th June
The bad weather has eased and Juno visited Liddells again for pond-dipping, Foxglove fittings and gate-climbing.
Water Boatman
This is a newt larva. It is very hard to determine at this stage of development whether it is of a Palmate or Great Crested Newt. John discovered a source of information in the Amphibian and Reptile Groups website
They fit!
Learning to climb at the hinge end of the gate
With an easing in lockdown rules, Kathryn, who leads Tynedale Community Choir, suggested that a Tiny Choir might meet and sing together at an appropriate distance. Clare offered Liddells for this experiment and six singers enjoyed reconnecting to the experience of singing with each other at the Point of View rather than on Zoom. Photos from Jane B and Clare.
17th June
The weather confounded the forecast and Tim was able to conduct a butterfly transect. Butterflies have been notable for their absence over the last two weeks or more so it was good to hear that Tim had seen ‘not many butterflies but a few less common ones’ - a Small Copper, a Small Heath and two Large Skippers. This is his photo of a Large Skipper on a Marsh Thistle.
Clare also grabbed the chance to have a look at the bees. One nucleus colony was full to bursting so she moved it into a full size brood box; the other nucleus has an older queen and was not so full and needed stores; Clare then looked in one of the hives that has been in purdah and discovered three frames of capped brood which indicates that a new queen has emerged and successfully mated. Clare did not spend time looking for the queen since she might still be a bit flighty. After disrobing Clare had a look back at the apiary and noticed that the brood box she had put in place was not properly on its supports and was leaning; she also realised that rather than feeding syrup to the hungry colony, she could take a frame of ready-to-eat stores from the hive with plenty of stores. Clare put her bee suit back on and then made A Bad Mistake. She thought that as these would be fairly quick procedures, she wouldn’t bother putting her wellies back on but would tuck her bee suit trousers into her walking socks and boots. The tilted hive was easily remedied, however having only recently been disturbed, taking a frame of food from the other hive evoked a mass protest, round about ankle height. Clare has understood and now feels, the error of her ways. Wellies from now on.
21st- 28th June
John has discovered that the strimmer is no longer the seventy-first job in line at the repair shop, because the new gear box has to be shipped from Sweden and may take Some Time. Meanwhile Clare has taken her sickle to some of the paths to help keep them nettle and thistle free. She is getting into the swing of things. Clare also looked at the last of her hives this week, only to have her fears confirmed that the new queen will have become ready for mating in the recent cold, wet weather and has clearly not been able to mate successfully and start laying. The bees might raise another queen from eggs taken from another hive.
The trail camera has captured a roe deer, a doe, apparently rubbing a sapling. John is puzzled by this behaviour since it doesn’t seem to fit any known pattern. John will investigate further - watch this Blog space. At the end of the clip the deer jumps. John thinks it might have seen a squirrel. The next clip is of a squirrel jumping…
John spotted a very large Tawny Owl pellet (80 cmm long, 30 mm diameter at its widest; Tawny owl pellets are usually greyer and more obviously ‘furry’ than those of the barn owl. They are medium sized pellets (20-50 mm long) with a bumpy surface. The shape is long and narrow, but irregular and they tend to taper at one end.) on the top of the Dirty Dancing Bridge - Clare can not recall similar behaviour on the part of either Johnny or Baby. Still she’s enjoying imagining a Tawny Owl spreading its wings as it remembers that ‘the most important thing is balance’. Clare has decided that another owl pellet dissection is unnecessary.
John has been photographing more juveniles from the hide.
Robin - black eye, mottled brown body. This one is too young to be showing the red blotches which will start to appear soon
Dunnock - brown eye, uneven grey and brown streaking below, line of pale spots across wings (hidden by the twig, readers will have to take John’s word for it)
John was talking to a local historian who told him a tale about a ghost rider who appears on misty mornings in November. She is a young woman on a runaway white horse, travelling east from Liddells in the direction of Doctor’s Wood. If readers wish to visit the area on such a morning, John and Clare wish it to be known that ghost-hunters do this at their own risk.
29th June
Just as John had decided to hire a strimmer (Clare wonders if there is a Strimmaholics Anonymous group he might be persuaded to join), John called in at the repair shop only to discover his very own strimmer, resplendent with a new gear box, was ready for collection and immediate use. Clare thinks John had been subjected to the air sucked in through the teeth/head shaking in doubt/slight amusement that anyone could imagine a job could be done quickly/”It’s not going to cheap”/eyes raised to the heavens response, and fell for it. The upshot is paths were strimmed today and will be tomorrow and probably several days after that.