| 2024 | 2025 |
| << January 2025 | February 2025 | March 2025 >> |
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1st: Enjoying the land The dogs are certainly enjoying our changing landscape!!! And in the first video, Roxy (grandmother that she is) is the one leading the chase!!! We have been dry for two/ three days now and so pond filling progress has slowed a little, although we are happy to report that our stream is still running into Nick's ponds and both ponds seven and nine have much of their bottoms covered now, purely from ground water! In exciting news, we spied more water beetles in Tree Pond this evening - two different types, one black and a good half inch long and the other a few mms long and like a mini boatman. The large black ones were very active, swimming on the surface before diving down into the depths. The first beetles we saw in here on 24th were different again, they very small and brown and crawling along the grass beneath the surface. We cannot begin to imagine how much life will find its way in as soon as we start to get warmer weather and longer days. The starlings are around in huge numbers at the moment, we saw what must have been well over 1000 in John's field this morning and we caught lots on the trail cam at the bottom of Goat field yesterday and today, we spied evidence of all their probing in the grass. Just look at all those holes.   |
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2nd: The stream is still running Another dry day with a bit more of a cold wind but a fair bit of sun too. Our stream is still running which is great news. The bird feeding station was manic today - the bullfinches were around a lot, and often perching in the trees behind when they weren't picking up fallen seeds on the ground. We have returned to a bit nighttime nature spotting this last week - looking for water beetles in John's Pond (no longer Tree Pond, we have decided we should name it after its creator) and signs of life in the garden pond too. There are masses of palmate newts in there just now - seems very early for them to be around. Nick's pond gets ever more full as the stream continues to trickle in  |
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3rd: Banks A beautifully sunny day, no rain and very little wind - perfect conditions for the two Nicks to build lots of 'banks' for us in Fruit and Swallow fields. These are deigned to break up the flat pasture and so add biodiversity. Many invertebrates (beetles especially) and small mammals will love these crumbly slopes into which they can burrow, find plenty of food and feel safe (hopefully). The scraped back turf will also allow for plants other than grasses to grow here and we hope to enable this by sewing lots of wild flower seeds. The land in these two fields has dried considerably these last few days - perfect for today's job - although not quite so perfect for filling our ponds. Wagtail seems to have dropped a bit whilst numbers five and eight have virtually no water in at all.       |
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4th: All is complete - plus, an unusual find! We start with our evening find: several young newts (not sure if they are smooth or palmate), complete with their external gills and all their legs so at a guess, around 6/7 weeks old. Eggs take 2-3 weeks to hatch so the parent newts must have spawned early to mid December - surely not?. This makes so sense. We have reported our findings to Reptile and Amphibian Conservation and to Devon Wildlife Trust and await their answers. We expect we won't be the first to have found youngsters at this time of year but it will be good to know the reasons and concerns (if any) about this out-of-season breeding. In other news, after two weeks and two days, our nine ponds and numerous banks are all complete PLUS we now have a shallow shelf area in John's Pond which has totally transformed this pond and made it look far more natural. Nick and Claire came up today to look at our changed landscape and as we walked round, we spotted what we are now looking upon as our four 'pioneer' bird species - the ones that already are showing their appreciation of the new habitats we are creating: yellowhammer, stonechat, pied wagtail and meadow pipit. All four have either increased in numbers or frequency of sightings over these last few weeks. John's Pond, complete with half built shallow shelf as being demonstrated by Nick B.  Banks in Swallow and Fruit       |
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5th: More on our newts and another busy day under the BFS Today we spent a bit more time (in the daylight) checking out the newts in the garden pond. First news is that we think they all are palmate - just look at those webbed feet on the male! We also spied and then caught a couple of very pregnant females too. Telling the female smooth and palmate newts apart is hard - a key indicator seems to be the lack of spots under the chin of the palmate, as well as the size. The maximum size of the palmate newt is 9cms, whereas that is the starting size for the smooth. We also have decided that our young newtpoles (still no photo) may well in fact be late hatchlings from last year who then over wintered in the pond, rather than ones that hatched in December. We have ordered a new net so hope to catch and photograph them in the daylight tomorrow. We were very pleased to see our three male and one female bullfinch on the trail cam this afternoon - Nick W found what he thought may be the remains of a bullfinch in Oak field yesterday (sparrowhawk??) and we didn't like to think it was one of our trio. In other news we have snowdrops everywhere (must take a photo) and tonight as we peered into John's pond with our torch we spotted a couple of huge backswimmers. Back at the house, we learnt these are bugs, not beetles. Our total for 'beetles/ bugs' in this pond is now four, the other three being diving beetles who we do hope to identify at some stage 
 
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6th: Palmate Newts We managed to catch some of our young newtpoles this afternoon (thanks to a new professional net from NHBS) - we are 99% all of the adults are Palmate - the youngsters may well be too as they can carry on breeding later in the year compared to smooth newts! We also found a damselfly larva, scores of water slaters/lice, shrimps and water measurers. How extraordinary to have this much active life in a pond at the start of February. Sadly, climate change has a lot to answer for.         And finally - what a view from the bottom of Oak field  |
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7th: Heart melting alert  |
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8th: Brave little soul today in Oak Field today We are now having a cold, dry period as far as the weather is concerned and as expected, some of the pond levels have dropped a bit, with however, the exception of Nick's Pond. The stream is just about still flowing and so the level here is still rising. Pond number nine, now Mipit Pond (Meadow Pipit!!) seems to be pretty much the same but of note here, is how clear the water already is. This is possibly due to the slow trickle of underground water from the surrounding land (it has a channel feeding it from the very wet area by the cow shed) and also because the clay in Fruit Field is quite different to that in Oak and Goat: less yellow and solid, although it packed down just as well when the ponds were being built. Back in Oak field we think we saw a channel today where Wagtail pond may have been leaking but it seems now to have sealed itself. This pond has dropped the most so when we get our next significant rain, it will be interesting to see what this one does. Meanwhile the morning and evening choruses are starting to get a little louder - robins, dunnocks and skylarks are all entertaining us well.    |
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9th: Total delight Underneath the bird feeders can get as busy as the bird feeders themselves. We love the fact that the bullfinches are now regular visitors and the fact that the chaffinch numbers just seem to go up and up. The videos show today's activity. It's hard to know where to look. Daily visitors to the Bird Feeding Station now include: Gold, Chaff and Bullfinches; Great, Blue, Coal and Marsh Tits; Starling; House Sparrow; Siskin, Robin, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Blackbird and Dunnock (15 species). Others that are or have been occasionally seen: Wood Pigeon, Pheasant, Jay and Wren. And as it was so sunny today we took a few shots of the ponds and the land in all their glory including John's pond into which we have thrown a load of straw to encourage phytoplankton to start growing - this will also (fingers crossed) help to clear the pond too so the water is not longer quite so murky!!      |
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10th: Another new visitor The trail cam has picked up another new visitor to our land - the rather 'rare' (in these parts) rabbit. We could count on the fingers of one hand the number of rabbits we have seen here - although we did find two youngsters in the old cow shed a few years back snuggled down in a tunnel! We wonder whether this one is eyeing up our new banks!! With dogs on the land every day though, we don't expect any rabbits to take up residence soon - good news and bad news!! |
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11th: Hmmmmm... This is what happens when you let your dogs go digging!!!     |
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12th: Birds and cats Love the pair of siskins in this video having a quiet feed. Notice Mustard too... we have seen all the cats apart from Nay in this hiding place in the Green land and as our many thousands of TrailCam videos can prove, not once are they seen going for the birds. They like to eat the feed (!!) and then just watch!! We have a theory that because they were used to us having chickens and feeding them, they see the wild birds in the same way and leave them alone too!! It would be nice to think this is true!! All we can say is that they never bring birds in, we never see them stalk them and we never find any evidence of dead birds!! |
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13th: Fallen Trees Today we finally got around to clearing the trees felled by Storm Darragh. We then dragged two to a place on the land to become yet another habitat for wildlife and another two we took to John's Pond, resting the end of each trunk on the banks and then getting the bulk of the rest of the tree to float on the water. Deadwood in ponds provides a really diverse habitat for aquatic life by creating hiding spaces, places to breed as well as food sources and fabulous perching places. Decaying wood in general provides a rich source of nutrients which enhance the biodiversity of both land and water 
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14th: Birds We have the trail cam by the bird feeding station every day pretty much and on most days we spot something new or exciting in the video clips we capture. Today's excitement was a pied wagtail feeding underneath the feeders - we haven't seen that before. They have actually been a bit absent from the land for the last week or so, so it was good to see one around today. This now takes our total to 20 birds seen here (see entry on 9th) - although five are these are not regular (yet).We also had three females bullfinches around today - their numbers seem to be going up every few days now and as for the chaffinches - at times we have at least a dozen around at once. We were also chuffed enormously to see long tailed tits this week, not at the BFS mind you but in the bottom hedgerow in Oak filed. We saw two on 12th and then a min flock of a good eight to ten yesterday. We pointed in the direction of the Green Lane and told them that there was a lot of feed there but they decided to fly off in to Cadbury Wood instead, We hope it is just a matter of time... |
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15th: The ponds week three/four We have had quite an interesting lot of weather since the ponds were first started just under four weeks ago: very heavy rain, winds, frosts, sun and drizzle. Both Yellowhammer and Wagtail ponds have been virtually full but both then dropped (evaporation plus in Wagtail's case a slight leak at the back). Ponds seven and eight have barely begun to fill with water. Our stream stopped flowing after a week or so but today vaguely began again. We are loving see birds enjoying the banks and the turned over soil. John's pond is now over four months old and the grass is now creeping down into the banks. What will it all look like in another four months?? John's and Stonechat 
 Spider and Wagtail 
 Nick's and Yellowhammer 
 Nick Junior and Number Seven 
 Number Eight and Mipit 
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16th: Starlings The starling numbers seem to go up on a daily basis and even more interestingly, we very rarely now see them on the Crocombe land and wires, instead they now seem to favour our fields (we see their 'divots' most days) alongside the poplars, beech and oak trees in and around our Green Lane. We think the fact our bird feeding station is in this area is no coincidence. Every day we get a good six to ten birds on the feeders and today, the trail cam caught them in large numbers picking up the fallen seed etc on the ground. We are now regularly treated to morning and evening starling choruses and mini murmurations How amazing would it be if some of them stayed and we had resident birds once more!! |
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17th: Willow, Frogspawn and Starlings Nick Benge came over today bearing gifts in the form of around 400 willow whips comprising around eight varieties, and three very healthy lots of frog spawn. The latter went into three of the ponds: John's, Nick's and Mipit; and the former he planted in all the banks in Swallow and Fruit fields. The willow has lots of jobs: it will hopefully provide a bit of a wind break, it will hold the banks together, be a great place for animals to take shelter, hide, makes their nests and be a great food source. Willow is second only to Oak in it's usefulness to wildlife. Their presence will totally transform these fields alongside the 150 plus trees we have already planted here. And look what the trail cam caught at the bottom of Goat field: what a fabulous sight and sound.   |
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18th: Mulching and dogs Today we got a load more mulch around the hedging in John's Pond area - we need to give it a fighting chance for when the grass really starts to grow. We also added stakes and guards, mainly so we can see them all and so keep an eye on individual plants. We have a huge pile of woodchip from the conifers we felled in the 4-Fruit tree area and are keeping our fingers crossed it will last. We do have a lot of wool we could use for mulch too and look forward to seeing how we could best use it. The dogs have been out a lot today on the land - it was rather dull at times but we still managed to snap a few decent shots of them.     Redwing and Roxy   Otter and Kite   |
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19th: Birds We were delighted to get a vaguely decent shot or two of some long-tailed tits today as a small group of them obligingly flittered in the bushes just by Yeti's gate. They are the most endearing birds with their permanent looking baby faces and gorgeous blend of pinks and whites. The meadow pipit was a lucky spot, sat as it was in the bottom hedge in Oak trying to look very inconspicuous. And the video of the crow pulling up the sods of grass was just fabulous to watch. There is some power in that beak and those shoulders!     |
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20th: In flower We have had snowdrops out for a while and in this last week or so the primroses, a single crocus and some celandine have joined them.      |
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21st: Busy as ever |
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22nd: Spring? The birdsong gets more pronounced each day as do the colours on the birds. And the frogspawn in our ponds is developing well too. Interestingly, in John's pond, it is a little behind the clumps in Nick's and Mipits, due in all probability to not getting as much sun and so having slightly cooler water. Although the ponds are all south facing, the position of the spawn in John's pond is a little bit tucked around a corner and so the sun won't hit it quite as much as the others!     |
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23rd: Fat balls, elder and frogs At times it looks as though our bird feeding station is in an aviary - there are so many birds flying around in such a small space, it's hard to know where to look. The fat balls are so popular and the blue tits certainly like to have their fill. In other bird news we spotted a song thrush in the garden a few days ago - our first this winter. The collared doves have now pout in a couple of appearances and the numbers of goldfinches and chaffinches seem to grow week by week. And best news of the day, firstly: the elder whips have open leaves already - they were spied through the guards in both the Mike/Felix and the Nick/Claire copses (Fruit and Goat Fields respectively) AND there was a frog in John's pond in the area where Nick put the spawn last week - are frogs attracted to ponds that already have spawn? They are meant to return to the place they were born but maybe if another area of water is close by they might go to that one instead??? Seems very likely when we know that frogs spawn in puddles that weren't there the previous year...   |
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24th: They are back It seemed that the pond building works scared off our fox and badger but we are happy to report they are back. We captured a glimpse of the badger (via the TrailCam) back on the 15th and last night we caught the fox enjoying a feast of dog biscuits and peanuts, We hopefully can keep encouraging them with nightly feeds (if the cats don't get their first) |
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25th: Colour    |
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26th: A fabulous afternoon at Maddy's A fabulous afternoon at Maddy's finding frogspawn, lichens, hidden tunnels and memorizing trees whilst the buzzards mewed above us. Our place may look like this one day!!!       |
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27th: The bottom of the bird feeder Great view of our male GSW, closely followed by one of our two squirrels |
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28th: Ham Wall An amazing day at Ham Wall with Nick and Andy - it was all rather quite on the bird front - sadly Nick confirmed it was the quietest he had even known it and that year on year, this seems to be the trend. Nonetheless we heard the booming bitterns and saw and heard Cetti's Warblers as well as spying a marsh harrier and lapwings which I haven't seen in decades, literally. It was a gorgeously sunny day and the water reflections were stunning!! 
   
 
 
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