The ups and downs of twitching

Well June flew past.

I was somewhat distracted by rare birds. June is not usually a very busy month for twitchers, but it is right at the end of spring migration and just occasionally there is some poor waif from the east heading in the wrong direction which comes from so far away that it takes quite some time to get here. A hot spell in early summer can bring more southerly overshoots to our shores too.

This June held so many surprises though that the twitching merits a whole blog post to itself.

The first weekend in June a lucky local birder discovered a Red-necked Stint poking around in the mud on his patch, the Blyth Estuary just North of Newcastle. I had only seen one of these in this country, many years ago and not very well in a misty and dusky gloom. So at 2am the next morning I headed up with a friend. The bird was still there, but distant on the other side of the estuary. As the tide turned it eventually flew closer and showed reasonably well to the crowd. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces. My friend and I decided to try the other side of the estuary as that's where the bird had been feeding previously at high tide. We drove round and walked out before setting ourselves up on the edge of the marsh. 

Lying in wait

Red-necked Stint on the left, Dunlin on the right

As the tide rose the waders came over to our side and over the next couple of hours we watched them get closer.. and closer... and CLOSER. The tide tiptoed across the mud pushing the waders ever nearer.

Quite a few other birders saw what we had done and came round and all the waders just paraded unconcerned right in front of us. At times the Red-necked Stint was within 20 feet of us. We just stayed put and admired. This was right up there with the best bird encounters I have ever had. The Red-necked Stint blew me away. 

This had been my first twitch for a while, so little did I expect what the rest of June was to bring.

Two days later there was news of s Dusky Warbler on Lundy, an island which lies in the Bristol Channel, accessed from the north Devon coast. Dusky Warbler is not a particularly notable scarce autumn vagrant, but at this time of year it sounded a bit odd. As the morning progressed, questions were being asked and photos and sound recordings sought. 

Then suddenly we had a SULPHUR-BELLIED WARBLER on our hands, a first for Britain and second for the whole of Europe!!!!!

The infrequent passenger service over to Lundy was fully booked, (for the next month!!) so there was a flurry of activity in a scramble to find charter boats to get us over.  I managed to secure a place on a boat on Thursday. Two days to wait. Then I upgraded to a boat first thing on Wednesday morning. I was much more comfortable with this. Then a phone call. "Can you get to Ilfracombe by 5.30pm today?" Well, that should be possible.

At 5.15 I pulled up at Ilfracombe quay after a fraught 5 hour drive. (I later discovered I had incurred a speeding penalty, my first in 7 years. It was nothing ridiculous.)

I had to watch as two earlier boats departed full of birders from further south. Finally at 6pm our contingency had arrived and we were off on a thankfully fast rib which sped us over a flat calm sea at 40+ knots. There were great views of dolphins on the way but we didn't have time to slow down. The earlier birders had by now seen the bird well but we had no idea what it would do as the sun disappeared from the valley it had found to its favour. 

An hour later we were hurriedly disembarking. Arrival at Lundy is quickly followed by the grim reality of a lung-bursting climb up from the jetty. We arrived at the top breathless, unable to hold binoculars steady or to run if the bird was relocated. It quickly became obvious that the bird had become very elusive and the trail may have gone cold. This was tense. There was not an option to stay on the island, even roughing it, as this is strictly not allowed. We had less than two hours before the rib had to depart.

The Sulphur-bellied Warbler had stopped singing and the trees it had been favouring were now becoming swathed in shade. Then the bird was called and a few brief views through binoculars were a big relief but, if I'm honest, a little underwhelming. The bird was quite distant and its salient features were very hard to pick out. We had definitely seen the right bird, but not very well. Then no further sign as the clock ticked. Along with a couple of others I headed back down the valley anticipating that the bird might follow the sun. Two friends were focussing in on a perched warbler sunbathing in the canopy but it wasn't the right one. Then, as I looked around trying to second guess what the bird might be up to, another warbler was flitting about in a closer sapling. The light wasn't great and it was hard to be sure, but this was a good candidate. As I got several nearby birders onto it, we gradually saw enough to confirm it was the bird. It quite quickly flitted into a deeper area of wood but by now most birders were onto it and between us we managed to keep track of it as it moved quickly through the trees. 

Sulphur-bellied Warbler, Lundy. (not my picture, I hope the photographer doesn't mind me using it)

I won't lie and say it was the most stunning of birds I've ever seen, and I only had one really good view as the sun caught it right and highlighted is sulphurity. But in terms of rarity and the excitement of an on the day island twitch it was right up there.

And that was it. Time to go. The boatman had fun racing another rib on the way back and, faced with a more adventurous group of punters than his usual tourist crowd, took the opportunity to weave the boat about a bit, even throwing in a couple of aquatic doughnuts!

It's not every day you drive to Devon at no notice, bounce across the water to an island, meet up with about 50 of your friends and then get involved in a high adrenaline race back to shore. But that's twitching for you.

I didn't travel all the way home that night. Instead I stopped off at Ham Wall in Somerset where I slept in the car until dawn. A River Warbler had taken up residence and, as I'd only ever seen three of this very rare warbler in Britain, it seemed rude not to pop in and see it. The mist hung thickly over the marsh but the River Warbler showed really well. River warblers are not much to look at for the non birder. The main attraction is their song which they blast out incessantly, a reeling trill delivered with head raised and mouth wide open. This nature reserve is an amazing place with some very rare birds but I didn't really have time to wait for the mist to lift as the previous day I had dropped everything and deserted the farm. I did hvae time to stop off closer to home for a singing Great Reed Warbler. Another reed-dwelling species, these have an incredibly loud song which they deliver from the top of a reed if it's not windy. Unfortunately a fresh breeze kept the bird out of sight more than I would have liked but it did show very well a few times.

River Warbler, Ham Wall

Great Reed Warbler, Besthorpe, Notts

I returned home after a truly unique warbler hat-trick.

There was no sign of the Sulphur-bellied Warbler that day so the haring about of the previous day had been worth it.

Little did I expect to be doing something very similar the next Tuesday, but that's what happened. This time it was an EGYPTIAN VULTURE on The Scilly Isles, the first in this country in over 150 years.

It was found on Monday, but there was no chance of a same day twitch this time. Again, all scheduled services were full. So another long drive down to the tip of Cornwall. 

Newlyn Harbour at sunrise before we caught our boat

This time there had been time to arrange teaming up with birders coming down the M5 from further North. There were three boats chartered across for the day. Ours was leaving first, at 7am, but was the slowest with a 2 1/2 hour crossing ahead of us. Positive news of the bird on the way had as hyped up. It was being watched perched in a tree, albeit from another island at a distance of 4km. The journey seemed interminable. As we approached the archipelago the bird was still there, but then bad news. The chopper arriving onto Tresco had flushed the bird. no-one had seen it go but it was no longer on the branch. But it was a fine morning and surely on such a day the vulture would be flying around and soaring. As long as it didn't thermal too high before we got there, we were still in with a very good chance.

By now the two later boats were passing us and it wasn't long before we again had positive news. They were watching the bird distantly sat in a tree. We were less than 10 minutes away. Nothing could go wrong. Birders on the other boats were celebrating and we would soon be too.

OH HOW WRONG! Another message. It's not it.

It took a while for that to sink in. The other birders had now been dropped off on Tresco and their boat met ours midchannel so we could transfer onto it to land. My knee had been in pain since the Lundy twitch so I left other birders to traipse across the island in search of the vulture. I climbed to a very handy viewpoint and spent the next few hours in the sun with a beautiful view across most of the Isles of Scilly. The only thing missing was a vulture.

We had a view over most of the archipelago

Constant scanning revealed nothing

Mid afternoon and it seemed the trail had gone cold. Surely a vulture would have shown itself by now. A band of dejected birders boarded the inter island boat back to St Mary's, the main island on Scilly. But just as we climbed up the slippery stone steps of Hugh Town quay, news came through that the vulture had literally flown over our heads during the boat journey. This seemed unlikely given the number of very alert birders on the boat.

Then another message. A second sighting. Then nothing. We met up with birders who had been looking out over the channel from Hugh Town. No one knew anything about these sightings. Another couple of hours of forlorn scanning drew a blank. It was lovely to be on Scilly again, but this was the fourth trip in a row I had failed to see a bird which was apparently still on show with the quay in sight.

And that was it. A slightly less optimistic chug back to Penzance and a 6 hour drive home. 

Thems the highs and lows of twitching. What to make of the vulture sightings that day, well no-one can be sure but some  people were convinced they were watching the bird. 

Hopefully it won't be another 153 years till the next opportunity.

I leave the twitching tales there for now, but June had even more surprises up its sleeve including a very rare Least Tern near Dublin and the return of the Bempton Albatross.

The Bempton Albatross
Stuck in the wrong hemisphere
Read more in a future blog post

Swarmzzeee!

April was extremely dry and cold.

May was extremely wet, but the last week at least saw temperatures rising. 

This has made for an insanely busy half term for me here on the smallholding. The logjam of young plants is finally starting to clear and the garden is filling up, but my efforts have been somewhat disrupted by the honey bees who have been waiting for this weather to swarm.

In fact I have taken on the pseudonym SWARMZZEEE!

Since the first swarm which I mentioned in my last blog, we've had quite a few more, peaking at three in one day. Our plans to reduce the number of bee hives we keep have been well and truly scuppered. The smaller and medium swarms we offer to other beekeepers or we house them in a small hive known as a nucleus. As the old queen who left with the swarm continues to lay in the nucleus hive, we transfer the eggs into the original hive which is waiting for its new queen to hatch, undertake her mating flight and start laying.

The whole swarming phenomenon is amazing. It's like snow, I never tire of seeing it and just sit and watch in awe. We don't always see the whole process, but when I'm working in the garden I'll hear the bees being unusually noisy. A quick look will reveal many more bees than normal swirling around the hive and flying over the garden near the apiary. Gradually they'll start congregating on their chosen perch where the queen has landed and the tight swarm steadily grows as more and more bees settle. It's possible to get within feet of the swarm if you're brave enough (and ready to leg it if one gets too defensive!)

Once they are settled, they send out scouts in search of a permanent home. Sometimes they leave after a couple of hours, sometimes a couple of days. If we want to catch them, it's a matter of getting them into a nucleus or more usually a cardboard box. If they're hanging on a branch it's easy. You just give the branch a sharp shake so the swarm drops into the box. If they're on the trunk, you have to scoop them in.

If you've got the queen, the rest will head into the box. Some will position themselves at the entrance to the hive, point their abdomens into the air and vibrate their wings. They are fanning the pheromones from the queen as a signal to the other bees. It really is quite astonishing.

If you've missed the queen, they'll go back to the branch and you start the whole process again.

A couple of swarms this year have been absolutely massive, too good to give away. 

The long and the short of it is that we are now up to ten hives, all doing extremely well. With no honey to collect after a disappointing April and May, they are finally starting to make enough to share some with us.

A wet May has meant a larger than usual slug population in the veg plot. I need to encourage more ground beetles in. Until I manage this though, slug hunts are the order of the day. My motto is Show No Mercy! They really can do a lot of damage to tender young plants which I've spent ages raising. So I've developed a routine.

First I clear the ground and scrape off any mulch. I mow the surrounding grass short and clear the edges. This gives the slugs nowhere to hide. Ideally I leave it for a day in the sun. Basically I am removing the slug habitat. 

When the ground is ready for planting, the more vulnerable plants get a pair of woolly slippers made from scrap fleece. I'm using organic slug pellets too, though I only use these sparingly. I'd rather not.

Fortunately we are not short of scrap fleece. The sheep were sheared last week which is one of those annual events which marks the passing of the year. We had to bring them in for shearing as it was a day of heavy showers. For a few days afterwards they were quite cold but when the hot weather arrived they will have been thankful for the trim.

Insects have started appearing in the garden now too. I am seeing lots more butterflies, with orange-tips and brimstones predominant. If I notice anything different I like to take a snap and identify it. This glorious specimen is a red cardinal beetle I found. The variety of insect life never ceases to amaze me. If they were large animals they would be astonishing (and quite fearsome).

The two young turkeys have finally vacated the old shed in the veg plot, along with just two young chicks. Unfortunately one was not strong enough to make it through the first night, so we now have two turkey hens looking after just one chick. I managed to lure them into a temporary set-up in the stables where they have settled in nicely.

Meanwhile the older clutches are growing fast. Here they are trying to establish the threat level of a lettuce.

Dark Clouds

Our weather seems to come in month-long blocks now. I guess it's something to do with how the jet-stream has been disrupted. After bone dry April we have May downpours. 

And gosh we have had some downpours! 

The First Swarm of the Year

Last week I had to go into self-isolation again so that I could go down to London and have one of my regular hospital check-ups. Due to Covid it was two years since my last visit so it was a relief to find nothing majorly wrong. The procedure did leave me a little wiped out though, so it was a week of pottering about in the garden.

When we arrived back from London Sue came across our first bee swarm of the season and it was an absolute monster! We were half  expecting it as we found queen cells in a few hives when we inspected them. Muggy May days seem to be when we get our swarms. Sue had just managed to take us down from ten hives to eight by amalgamating weaker hives, but this swarm needed a whole hive to itself.

In general the bees are doing very, very well at the moment, though it looks like we won't be getting much early honey as it's been a cool year so far.

Poultry News
The ducklings and chicks are growing fast, but they do make a mess! So when we can they go onto the lawn for the day. It won't be long before they need an accommodation upgrade. We're not quite sure where they'll go though as the stables are taken up by geese and turkeys. We'll sort something out.

The young turkeys are doing really well too. We lost one to a sad accident, but all the rest survive, fingers crossed, which is actually really hard to achieve with turkey poults. Quite a few are spoken for so we just need to keep hold of them until they are old enough to leave their mothers.

On The Plot

Out in the veg plot, we have hopefully had the last frost now. I'm moving young plants into the ground as quickly as possible. The only thing stopping me is the wet weather. All the onions are out, interspersed with beetroots as they make good companions. Brassica netting is up and I've planted out my collards, a new crop for this year. I'm busy earthing up potatoes as they appear. With no dig, I simply dump a forkful of compost on top of the emerging leaves.

Going Cheep

April's Showers Arrive Late

I wouldn't be English if I didn't open with the weather.

We've finally has some of this...

Rather a lot. In fact I've had a butt full of it. Water butts of course! I've managed to fill two IBC containers, that's 2000l of water collected. 

Frost-free?
Not only that, but following an overnight frost on the morning of 7th May, we now have a frost-free forecast through until 20th.

I've finally started moving some of the plants out of the conservatory. Chances of anything apart form a light frost are now very low.

Chicks, Ducklings and Poults

The week has been all about baby birds though, We suddenly have 53 extra little mouths to look after!

We bought in a score of ay old chicks. These are hubbards which grow at a medium pace and are well suited to free range life. They are meat birds but we don't place a huge priority on bringing them to weight as fast as possible. The fastest growing birds, as used in the poultry industry (and by unthinking smallholders), just grow too fast for my liking. They are genetic monsters which can easily become too heavy for their legs or hearts to carry them. On the other hand, some of the more traditional breeds really aren't economically viable, producing scrawny birds which take ages to get to weight. This is fine if you are in the privileged position to pay considerably more for your meat, but it is not a viable route.

So we strive for a happy medium, birds bred to grow faster than normal and to put on more breast meat, but which can still lead a happy and healthy (if short) life. The shortness of a meat bird's life always comes as a shock to those not in the know. A commercial meat chicken will have no more than  couple of months of life. 

Gut instinct is that we want our chickens to have a much longer life than that, but this is where reality kicks in. For no chicken bred for meat would go much past 6 months. For starters, it would be very expensive, but more than that any chicken older than that turns to rubber. Imagine eating one of those chicken dog toys!

There is obviously the option to go vegan, and I wouldn't criticise that choice at all. In fact I was a vegan for part of my life. For me the important factor is the quality of life an animal has while it is still alive and keeping our own livestock gives me complete control over that. 

Hot on the heels of the chicks came the ducklings. Indeed it was a lot hotter on the heels than I had anticipated and it had me scrabbling around for somewhere to keep them. Again the ducklings are destined for the plate and will grow quickly. I searched around the smallholding for a suitable container in which to keep them. Finally I found the perfect solution, a large and strong plastic post office sorting box which we had been gifted and were using to store logs.

I fashioned a lid from strong metal mesh and suspended a heat lamp from the rafters in the garage. The poor little things were very sleepy and would just collapse asleep. A week on and they are almost unrecognisable. I am really pleased with how strong they are. If they feather up and the weather warms it won't be too long before they can enjoy free-ranging around the smallholding. For the moment they wouldn't survive the cold and wet, not to mention crows and rats!

Back to the chicks. Just a day old, they went straight into an old gerbil cage we scrounged off a friend. Here they had warmth, food and drink and safety. But their rate of growth is phenomenal and it doesn't take long before the smell  becomes somewhat noxious.

So already, after just a week, their accommodation has been considerably upgraded. We managed to scrounge another post office sorting box so they have moved into the garage alongside the ducklings.

As if that weren't enough to keep us busy, the turkey hen who was siting on eggs under a pile of sticks by the roadside paddock has hatched out al her eggs. I returned home from work to see her leading nine poults (baby turkeys) through he long grass.

I quickly sprang into action scooping the fluffy little balls into my coat pockets while mum did her best to fend me off, flying up at my face with claws outstretched. This is a dangerous lifestyle! 

We had prepared a stable in anticipation so I led mum towards it as she followed the calls of her babies. Again it is much safer for them to be reared indoors until they can fly up onto a perch.

There's more! A week later the other hen who was sitting on the straw bales hatched out her own clutch. Interestingly these chicks look completely different. One mum is a Norfolk Black, one a Bronze, but dad is a mix. However, the poults seem to have taken on the genes of their mums. We had no idea how many eggs she was on so I was pleasantly pleased to fin myself scooping up a dozen baby birds. Just one didn't make it out of its egg. Mum will be a very good parent. I can tell by the tenacity with which she sat for four weeks and by the tenacity she showed in jumping onto my back several times to defend her young.

Pegleg's Veg

Meanwhile in the veg plot some plants have finally started to be transplanted outside. Broad beans, onions, turnips and radishes are the first out. None of thee mind the cold too much, but I've been waiting ages for rain to wet the soil.

In the polytunnel, Florence fennel I sowed last July is just now coming good. Its the first time I've had success with this crop.

I've also been busy creating a new area to attract and feed wild finches and buntings. In general they won't come too near the house but we have really good numbers of Yellowhammers on the holding this year. To attract them I've sown some of the mixed seed we feed the birds into an area bordering the sheep paddocks and orchard. It's already working as there are regularly several birds feeding there, though they are showing a remarkable ignorance of farming. Each seed they eat could potentially have produced many hundreds later in the year!

One For Sorrow

Now for some sad news on the nature front. Having watched the pair of long-tailed tits busily constructing their delightful nest, I went outside to see a pile of feathers on the floor. Something, I suspect  magpie, had found the nest and pecked a hole in the top. The long-tailed tits have abandoned, leaving their tiny eggs in the nest. Nature can be so harsh.

Nature's Undertakers

One of my favourite jobs is turning the compost. It is a thriving city of minibeasts beavering away. Last week I unearthed a large beetle, maybe an inch long, with notable orange blobs o its antennae. A minute later there was another. They scuttled a bit too quickly to get any decent pics.

I looked them up and they are black sexton beetles, nature's undertakers. They sniff out small dead animals then dig underneath them until the corpse is buried. These two had sniffed out a dead rat! Smallholding's not always as glamorous as it seems.

Spring Unsprung!

The Growing Year Stalls
An extended period of high pressure has resulted in a gloriously sky blue ceiling under which to work almost every day and starry, starry nights. But the high has mostly been positioned so as to drag in a chill airflow from northerly climes.

For the garden it's been a bit of a worry. With the end of April fast approaching, it's been anything but April showers, with just 18% of expected rainfall countrywide and virtually zero here. We did however get a few quite heavy snow flurries earlier in the month. At least we no longer have flooded paddocks and muddy chicken pens! On the flip side we have cracks in the ground, the water butts are empty and all growth is on hold, as is all outdoor sowing.

Frost patterns on the car rooves have been a regular feature this April

We've had a ridiculous number of frosty nights too which is resulting in a traffic jam of young plants building up. The conservatory is filling up. Come mid May there'll be a mad spell of moving plants along the chain and into the veg plot. 

No-Dig Benefits
I am growing a considerable number of perennial flowers and shrubs from seed this year. It's been an experiment in stratification, the process whereby seeds need to go through a period of cold (either naturally outside through winter, or simulated in the fridge). Now that I have pretty much stopped using the rotavator (we had some good times though), I can revert to my original vision of a veg plot filled with flowers and herbs. No-dig makes it far easier to leave plants in situ and work around them. The other benefit of no-dig which I am discovering is how the soil retains its structure and moisture, even during this extended period of dry weather we are experiencing.

Now that lockdown is easing, I've shown several visitors round the veg plot and they've been astonished at the quality of what is essentially a clay soil. No longer the choice between wet and sticky or dry and crusty, turning concrete. We used to have short periods in between these two states when the soil was delightful to work. Now, beneath the surface mulch of compost, straw or even selective weed growth, the soil is like that all the time. It's full of life too as the army of minibeast workers has returned to aerate the soil and turn debris into plant nourishment.

Magic Honey
It's been a busy few weeks with the bees too. Sue has become very knowledgeable, though she wouldn't admit it, and I have started to get more involved and have become her apprentice. When the weather was hot (a distant memory), we seized the opportunity to inspect all the hives. About half are dong really well indeed. One is exceptional, though so full that we need to try and deter them from swarming. The others are building up, but two are very lazy and always have been.

So we decided to amalgamate these two. It is better to have fewer strong hives than more weak ones. We managed to find and mark four queens too which should make life a little easier for future inspections.

All we need now is some warm weather again and a little rain to get things going and the honey will start flowing.

Meanwhile Sue has been selling off all last year's honey cheaply. With lockdown it has been very difficult to sell and there is no point having loads of it sitting around, even if it does last forever. We have also started producing magic honey which tops itself up and sometimes even overflows its jar. This is the creamed honey and what's happened is that the extra aeration has increased the overall moisture levels, allowing the honey to start fermenting. It still tastes absolutely fine but you need to be a bit more careful selling it.

It's also been a perfect excuse for Sue to have a go at making mead. The first batch is ready and has proved very drinkable indeed!

I'm a Fungi Guy

Mushroom dowels

A new experiment this year is dipping my toe into the world of mushroom growing. I'm starting with an easy one which should grow in the veg beds and forest garden quite easily, just needing straw and woodchip to get going, both of which are easily sourced in the countryside. At the moment they are just impregnated wooden dowels sitting in the fridge until the last frost has passed. More on this as it happens.

Amazing Nature

As usual, nature carries on its patterns. The first swallows are back in the stables, a big moment in the year. They were late this year, held up b the switch to northerly winds. Bee flies are very much in evidence again this spring. I love the way they hover with their proboscis poking out in front of them.

Best of all though is a long-tailed tit nest just outside our living room window.  Incredibly they construct it using moss, lichen, feathers and spider cocoons. Without question it's got to be the best nest of any British bird. It's only the second I've ever seen and the first was when I was much younger and one of thee experiences that first led me to being so enthralled by birds.

A Reorganisation
Finally, I have moved the old greenhouse frame from in front of the polytunnel. It's beyond rescue in terms of replacing the polycarbonate panels, but it could certainly be netted.

I am looking to put it to good use and am on the hunt for a new project (as if I haven;t got enough already!)

The space it vacated is to become my tree nursery area. Whenever I find a self-seeded sapling growing where I don't particularly want it, if I can I repot it. I am considering a bit of guerilla planting at some point!