Busy Bees

At last there is some colour in the garden with a good show of crocuses underneath the apple tree and it is not just me that's enjoying them as they are a buzz with lots of bees all with their heads covered in pollen.

It is nice that it has turned a bit warmer (we even had a moment of sunshine!) and it has brought the insects out but unfortunately the warmer weather didn't arrive in time for our visit to Bedford to see a demonstration by Monty Roberts (horse whisperer). It was freeezzzing but it didn't detract from the evening and Monty was amazing as ever. It was quite nerve wracking to watch a 76 year old man walking behind a horse that was kicking out at lightening speed. Needless to say the horse was quickly brought under Monty's spell. I wish I had his skill...and his courage:)

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting my eldest son and his girlfriend who also live in Bedfordshire. We stayed at a hotel next to an area of lakes full of wildfowl. Unfortunately I had forgotten the binoculars but it was still lovely to walk round the lakes and even nicer to wake in the morning to the sound of geese honking.

We returned home on Monday, calling in at the RSPB reserve in Sandy where we checked out their binoculars in the shop. It made me realise that we need to get some new ones.

On Tuesday we were back to helping with the Old Surrey Downs Project but this time it was moving some cows which was a new experience for me. Cows and I don't usually get on too well...they chase me...but these seemed ok. I just wish I could understand what they are thinking when they stare at me. It is easy to read a horse's body language but cows seem to give nothing away which I find rather un-nerving. They will be conservation grazing a lovely area of chalk grassland in Chipstead, Surrey.

This is just a short post as I want to get back to the http://www.meadopenfarm.co.uk where they have 24hour lamb cams watching the lambing pens. It is addictive viewing. Yesterday we saw two sets of twins born. It is also very useful to see what happens as we will be involved with the project's own lambing this year. The barn is now all ready to go with the floor, walls and hurdles all cleaned and disinfected. Lambing is due to start on 16th March. The picture below shows Jack, the sheep dog, jumping the gate...I'm sure he has springs in his legs:))

Comings and Goings

With every walk there are now new wild flowers popping up everywhere. It is becoming hard to walk in the pony field as there are so many Orchids coming up, including a group of the very attractive Bee Orchids. They are growing quite close to the water trough so I wonder how long it will be before eight big hooves manage to squash them. We have tried to protect them by covering them with a tripod made of sticks but Tavey seemed to think we had put it there for him to scratch himself on:-)

Another of the 'comings' are the butterflies and moths. Now when we walk through the long grass and wild flowers in the field behind us, masses of Cinnabar Moths, Small Skippers, Blues and some others that I have yet to identify, fly up chasing each other around. Magical. There seem to be far more than in previous years which is surprising when we had such a long cold winter.

Something that worryingly seems to have gone though, are the Bees. We had loads in the early spring when all the Crocuses were 'a buzz' with them but I haven't seen any for several weeks.

Lastly and very sadly another thing that has gone is our lovely old cat, Lizzy, who had to be put to sleep yesterday. She was rather a 'one person cat' and I was that person. Right from being a kitten she would follow me around and sit with me so I will miss her such a lot. However, she was nearly twenty and, apart from losing her tail when a car ran over it, she has had had a really good long life and was loved very much, which is great considering she was born to a young stray and spent her first few weeks of life living under a bush in an old ladies garden. Now she is at rest with her brother and sister in our back garden where she loved to watch the world go by whilst basking in the sunshine.

Insect Takeover

The young birds in the garden now seem pretty self sufficient and it is all a lot quieter. The exception to this is the Magpie family and they are still going around like a group of hooligans hell bent on destroying the runner bean supports and the garden chairs by pulling at any loose thread. If one manages to get a bit of thread or anything else interesting they all chase it madly round and round the garden. They also desperately want to be like the smaller birds and eat from the feeders but they only manage to hold on for a couple of seconds during which time they gobble like mad...very amusing to watch.

Where the birds have quietened down the insects have taken over. The bumble bee's nest that the fox uncovered a few weeks back is thriving. The only problem being that it is right in the middle of the lawn. We also have a wasps nest that is in an unfortunate place; in the rockery, right next to the bridge that hides our filter box that needs cleaning just about every day. It puts me in mind of when I saw a wasp flying around the wildlife pond with a red spot on its back. I was very excited and convinced that we had some rare species in the garden but when my boys got back from school they informed me that they had marked the wasp with a little dollop of paint so they could monitor where it flew. I felt sure they were destined for jobs in wildlife conservation but both went into computing.

The other problem insects that we have are the grasshoppers and crickets. We have a fly curtain at the patio door that is made out of lots of little bits of bamboo on strings but when they blow together it makes a clickety noise that attracts the crickets and grasshoppers so we are forever having to turf the little hoppers out of our breakfast room. We will definitely have to buy a new fly curtain. This little chap hadn't got that far and was well camouflaged amongst the weeds in our lawn.