Badger scrape on front lawn at Pippins

We have a tree covered in leaves. It is our Appletoe tree, so called because it bears mistletoe berries in winter and apples in the autumn.

Just peeked over the wall. The cows are enjoying their last feed with Humphrey who is off to pastures new (literally) tomorrow leaving behind 3 very happy in-calf cows.

Patrick the Boar has decided he is a cow when it comes to tasty hay snacks. He got his head stuck just after I took the picture.

Last Sunday I was sitting in Plough Cottages counting birds for the Big Garden Birdwatch     sponsored by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).  I picked a poor time, after lunch.  Most of the birds I saw were feeding in a slow and leisurely way. At dawn, when I hadn’t had the time to sit down and record, there were a lot of birds on the feeders and in the hedges,  as it had been a cool night and promised to be a brilliant day.

All the same, at lunchtime I counted 10 different species including the redoubtable pheasant ladies.

Last month, in four inches of snow, the female pheasants had sloshed over to the bird feeders to pick up their lunch, rocking and reeling as if they were wearing gumboots.  They stood their ground when I filled the feeders.  I guess they thought since they had had to slog over they weren’t going to waste their time slogging back.  Now we are all good friends and they trust me….but then it’s a while since anyone has mowed the lawn and when that happens who knows?

It’s a quiet dark month, February, but the little creatures are starting to make nests – I was driving back tonight and saw a blackbird making a nesting “run” across Wick Street in the headlights of my car, twigs in beak, about 3 feet off the ground.

I work in an office about 28 miles south by the Bristol Channel where the weather is usually milder and I heard a thrush singing at dawn the other day and that was with the windows closed and the noisy servers roaring in the rooms either side of me.  Those thrushes are just tuning up; by April they will be singing for literally hours, little short phrases of music which sound mathematically complex, and which they string together. I am really looking forward to that.

We went for a walk on the beach this afternoon, which involves an hour in the car down to Burnham on Sea.  I took my binoculars expecting to see water fowl.  Instead I saw lots of Pied Wagtails and a little flock of Redwings having an outing.  I could just as easily have stayed home and watched them fly over the house!

A typical sunset looking out towards Edge

It has been a very frozen midwinter. It would have been more enjoyable if we had had more grit on the road but we have all enjoyed the clear air, the bright snow light, and the igloo our next door neighbours made in the paddock. Now the snowdrops are out, just poking out through the frost and snow at ground level, bang on time.

In the cottages, we have re-carpeted throughout and then we have re-decorated bed and bath in Home, with a brilliant new tile floor. When I get back to my needle (ouch!) There will be new curtains too.

We had two large kittens when I last added to thisblog and now they are proper young cats. James (the one with a white bobble on his nose) spends a lot of time off in the deep woods doing who knows what (Waking pheasants? Teasing owls?) and George, who still gets passionate whenever he hears a crisp or sweet wrapper, is more of a homebody. He spends a lot of time with his Auntie Nutmeg who thinks he is rather rude and needs correction. Both of these lads know how to hunt but aren’t very interested.

Our local gathering is in the road by the pillar box at Wick Street Farm. I learned recently that this was where the local cattle market used to be held. There is a big old oak tree there and I like to imagine a blacksmith at work there. I do wonder if the pheasants have been congregating there since the cattle market days? It would be a perfect place…sheltered and wide and flat…if only it wasn’t for the traffic.

Earlier in the autumn I watched a young family come up and eat under one of the feeders by Pippins. One of the young hens had a partridge chick in train, running around after her. I thought about how chicks of other species will imprint on all manner of subjects and I wondered how this chick had come to imprint on a pheasant? Possibly because they are the most numerous vertebrate species in the field? And how did he/she lose her parents? It doesn’t bear thinking about. It will be interesting to see what happens when the nesting season starts in the spring.

It is a dilemma for us. We love spiders. Richard loves them more than I do. It is just as well, for we live in this old house and look after the cottages! If you have old houses you have spiders. Anyone knows that. These spiders are the fastest on earth. They can weave a web within 90 minutes of a complete dusting and cobwebbing!

The cottages were barns at one time and we think were built around 1780. I think it’s interesting that we don’t get spiders in the baths in the cottages the way we do in the house. Obviously different species who haven’t yet discovered the plumbing – a real innovation after only 13 years since conversion!

We keep the spiders who make webs inside the windows in the cottages and at ceiling level down by regular dusting when they’re empty and it’s up to our guests what they do when they are in!

Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping spiders away? Suggestions not involving ultrasonic or laser equipment preferred.