Category: Garden

Pond Cam

pond
house sparrow
House sparrow

We haven’t recorded a fox at the end of the garden on the trail cam for weeks now so, as we’ve recently trimmed back around the pond and scooped out the duckweed, I’ve set up my Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam there. This morning at 10 it recorded a dunnock (above) followed a few minutes later by a house sparrow.

greenfinch

Ten minutes earlier this greenfinch had been down at the pond’s edge.

greenfinch

It looks as if it’s drying itself off after bathing but, if it had been, the camera didn’t catch it. I need to clear out the last of the duckweed to give the birds better access.

At eleven o’clock yesterday the inevitable wood pigeon waddled by and a squirrel bounded along, slightly blurred on the photograph.

With a closer camera angle and a bit of stage management of duckweed and pebbles, this could be the perfect spot for a back garden stake-out.

Fox Cam

Fox cam still

The last time we caught the fox on the trail cam was at 10.30, two nights ago, in the back garden.

sketches from last night's trail cam footage
Sketches from last night’s trail cam footage.

Last night it didn’t show but wood pigeon, magpie and Boris, a neighbour’s cat, triggered it between six and eight this morning.

fox scat and pigeon feathers

Apparently all the action was in our front garden. This morning a cluster of wood pigeon breast feathers and a pile of fox scats were all the evidence left by whatever drama took place under the rowan tree between dusk and dawn.

3-bin Garden Compost

3-bin compost making

We’re trimming hedges and taking up the broad beans this morning, so our new compost bins are proving useful. To create more room for the glut of material at this time of year, I’ve been moving the progressively more broken down compost from one bin to another. Bin 3 is almost ready to use. Some of it was wet and claggy but forking it across from bin 2 gave me the chance to break up the clumps and let the air get to it.

In case of downpours, I’ve covered bins 2 and 3 with opened-out compost bags, held down with a few bricks. There’s still plenty of opportunity for the air to get to the compost because there are one-inch gaps between the slats.

I was pleased to see one or two small red earthworms as I lifted the plastic sheets. Often referred to as brandling worms, they’re part of the recycling system in compost-making.

Trail Cam Fox

Testing my new Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam yesterday in the back garden: at night in infrared mode on red fox and in daylight on grey squirrel, juvenile blackbird and dunnocks.

We think there may be two foxes; the first, with a bushy tail appears at 10.13 p.m., then ten minutes later there’s a similar-looking fox crossing the screen and finally, at 10.26, a fox with an apparently thinner tail with a lighter tip to it appears to notice the infrared light and it heads off.

The following night we recorded no fox activity, so I hope that we haven’t put them off with the infrared.

Parasol

mushroom
mushroom

These parasol mushrooms were growing in a small troop in a corner of our friends, Matthew and Tonia’s, back garden in Ossett, who’ve recently cut back shrubs to rejuvenate a shady bed by an old stone wall.

I remember that back, in the 1980s, Matthew attempted to remove the large stump of what I think had been a diseased elm from this corner, but in the end he had to bury it and leave it where it was, so these could be fungi associated with rotting wood.

To me it looks like one of the agarics, some of which are good to eat, others deadly poisonous. I should have taken a closer look at the gills.

Wood Pigeon Selfies

trail cam photo

Time to test my new trail cam by positioning it below the bird feeders and sprinkling a few crumbs and mealworms on the lawn.

wood pigeon photos
dunnock

The wood pigeon took 36 selfies and even photobombed the dunnock’s brief appearance.

Also captured on camera, a blackbird, house sparrow and what we think was a song thrush.

Next test is on the video setting through the night . . .

blackbird

A Corner of the Meadow

sketchbook page

3.50 p.m., 91℉, 34℃ in direct sun, which is filtered through a veil of cloud with lower cumulus coming in from the south-east: A small hoverfly is fascinated by the lime green top of my pen and explores it as I draw.

blackbird

A blackbird is softly scolding and a female sparrow eyes me warily from the hedge.

my little meadow area
My small meadow area, next to the revamped compost bins, has been rather neglected this summer but it’s getting nearer to what I want. On this small scale I’m now aiming to put in plenty of plants for pollinators and manage those as the seasons go by, rather than attempt to create a traditional hay meadow.

Most unusual sighting is two Typhoons flying over, turning about on manoeuvre.

Knapweed

knapweed
Blue tit

2.30 p.m., 71℉, 22℃, 100% low grey cloud, slight breeze: I’m taking a break drawing the tumbling knapweed overhanging the pond. Two or three bumblebees work the flowers joined by a green-veined white butterfly.

This morning I had a summer pruning session on the Golden Hornet crab apple, which hasn’t been trimmed for almost two years. As soon as I’d finished, three or four blue tits appeared, foraging amongst the newly exposed clusters of twigs, left where I’ve trimmed off the long, slimmer newer growth.

‘Summer prune for fruit,’ said Monty Don on a recent Gardeners’ Word, ‘winter prune for growth.’

sparrowhawk

Following on from the blue tits, a sparrowhawk swoops through the crab apple, now able to fly right through the opened up centre of my goblet-shaped tree. It perches for a few seconds, then it’s off across the next garden. It’s small and brown, so we think that it’s an immature female.

Maris Peer

drawing potatoes

Just harvested half a row – that’s two or three feet across our raised beds – of Maris Peer second early potatoes and decided they’d be a suitable subject for attempting to draw with a Canada goose quill.

quill and feather ink and wash drawing of Maris Peer potatoes.

I tried using the feathered end of one of the quills to add the wash. This is Noodler’s Black Ink.

I’ve been reading books on Hokusai and Quentin Blake, who was one of the tutors during my time on the Illustration course at the Royal College of Art. Birds feature a lot in Blake’s work and he’ll sometimes use a feather to draw and paint with.

Red-tailed Bumblebee

Red-tailed bumblebee

No prizes for guessing that this is a red-tailed bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius, but it’s different to a regular worker, as this is a male, with a yellow collar and cap and a foxy-coloured ‘tail’ that’s more orange-red than scarlet. On a dull afternoon at Wrenthorpe on Friday, it was doing what drones do best, hanging around taking a break on our friends’ herbaceous border alongside another equally unmotivated male.