Avian delights

Every year we look forward to the swallows returning to the farm. As April progresses the anticipation rises, until one day, usually while I've got my head down in the veg plot, the chattering song of a swallow interrupts the sounds I am used to.

This year the first one returned on 18th April.  And here it is.

Over the next few weeks the number of swallows on the farm will increase and they will start to construct their nests in the stables. But they are not the only birds nesting on the farm. In fact, that I know of, nearly forty species have bred on the farm. I don't actively search for the nests but this past week I've had a couple of close encounters. 

Whilst undertaking a major overhaul of my shed space, including replacement rooves to stop the rain accumulating and pouring through the roof, I came across a nest on a shelf. As surprised as me, a robin darted out.

Fortunately I was able to continue clearing out the shed, making as few visits as possible. It surprised me how long the babies, quite probably only a day old, were left alone. If they thought I was a robin bringing food, they opened their beaks in anticipation. If they cottoned on that I wasn't a robin, they sat tight, resembling an insignificant ball of fur. I look forward to the day the fledge.

And in another shed I came across another nest, this one less surprising as the same bird has nested there for the last three year, thanks to a slipped pane of glass allowing access through the window.
This one is a blackbird's nest. We seem to have a lot of blackbirds this year.

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

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.

May Daze

Come back Rain, all is forgiven

Hot sunny days and lockdown have meant that I don't particularly have to work around the weather or other commitments. I can relax a little more and still keep on top of things on the smallholding.

Having said that, our boom and bust weather patterns do make things more difficult. 7% of our usual May rainfall has necessitated watering in new plantings and watering where I sowed the carrots, one of only two crops which I now sow direct. The parsnips failed to come through this year, so did their replacements. Worse still, the water butts have run dry so I now have to use metered and treated water. At least hoeing has been easy.

The body and soul of the soil

I have steadily been moving last year's compost onto beds. The huge pile is now all gone, but the encouraging news is that I had enough to cover the majority of the 80 or so beds I have. 

It's amazing how much material we produce to feed the compost heaps. Hopefully I can persuade some to break down enough for a mid summer mulch. 

Bee-keeping Update

We have only had five swarms of bees this year so far. Three of them have been huge swarms. One we gave away, the other four we collected and created new hives. One of these disappeared again, so Sue is now left with NINE hives. Her ideal number is three!!!

It looks like a good honey year. Sue has already taken 60 jars of early honey. She is not one to rob the bees of too much and always leaves plenty for the girls. 

A welcome hair cut

The hot weather is hard on the sheep too, so it was a relief for them when the shearer came a few days back. Jason and his wife Chloe are really friendly and fantastic with the sheep. Not only do the sheep get rid of their uncomfortably hot fleeces, but they get their feet trimmed and a dose of Clik to protect against fly strike. It's also a chance for a health check by people who know much more than us and for us to ask any questions we have.

One of our ewes looks suspiciously fat. If she is pregnant, it will be a virgin birth as the three rams have been kept well away. I have my suspicions how it may have happened. We'll see if she really is pregnant and what the lamb looks like if there is one.

Rambo, our breeding ram, has lost a lot of weight and his stools are not solid. We have tried worm and fluke treatment but it has not made a lot of difference. Jason gave him a mineral drench (this is not as it sounds, but simply means given orally) and says that often cures unknown problems. Let's hope.

Respect your Elders

Another feature of this time of year is that the elders come into flower. This is the cue for Sue to make elderflower champagne. The process is very simple. Just dissolve sugar in water, est and juice lemons, add elderflowers.

Stir daily until it starts to bubble from the natural fermentation. Then bottle and burp.

Sue has also frozen about 50 heads. Don't worry, there are absolutely loads left for the birds and insects.

Birdlife on the Farm

These two swallows ended up inside the house.

One found the exit and I caught 

and released the other.

Swallows are now swooping in and out of the stables, robins, blackbirds and starlings are already feeding young. Blue tits and great tits are busy collecting food for young families. A pair of pied wagtails loiter around the stables and often fly out of there as I approach. A couple of years back they nested under some pallets by the polytunnel. Woodpigeons, chaffinches and goldfinches breed in good numbers here and we have a thriving colony of house sparrows. Further down the land there are meadow pipits nesting in the rough grass and skylarks rise high to blast out their song. Wrens sing loudly and are dotted all about the smallholding. We have thrushes breeding on the smallholding too, both mistle thrushes and song thrush. But they are outcompeted in the song stakes by our blackcap which hasn't shut up for weeks now. I saw the male carrying food into a bush in the front garden yesterday.

Above: The rewilded front garden

Below: Native hedgerows as they should look, planted by me 7 years ago.

The Little Owls are incredibly secretive at this time of year. I rarely even hear them. Excitingly though, tawny owls have moved in and I hear them almost nightly. They may have driven the barn owls out though.

Finally we have summer migrant warblers back. Our first singing sedge warbler and whitethroat appeared earlier this week. We had a reed warbler singing from the hedge for a couple of weeks, but it needs to move on and find the right habitat. 

I've probably forgotten a few of our breeding species, but every year we seem to get more and more which is a fantastic result of all the work I've put into creating a nature friendly smallholding.

It's a Rat Trap

One species not so welcome on the farm is rats. The traps are working well and at the moment I am catching young ones. The traps are not live traps but are very secure in terms of not catching non-target species. I leave the dead rats on a post and something takes them.

A few weeks back I was just checking and resetting the traps when one of our geese got trapped inside the brassica netting. In my rush to free it, I misplaced the rat trap (not set to spring) and have been searching for it ever since. Well yesterday I found it as it go mangled by the mower blades. It fought hard though, so I now need to get the blade mechanism fixed.

Poultry News

On the subject of the geese, they are still laying and we are still trying to steal their eggs. However, one is now permanently settled on the nest so we'll leave it to fate whether or not we get goslings this year. 

The glut of goose eggs means Sue keeps busy making cakes. We freeze these and they are an extremely good way of storing a surplus of eggs. Goose eggs make the best sponge.

In other poultry news, one of our turkey hens managed to hatch out three healthy poults. We put them in the poultry cage as protection against crows and they are all doing well. The other hen is desperate to sit on eggs but the crows keep finding her eggs. Hopefully she'll find a good spot somewhere in the veg plot or soft fruit patch before it's too late. We are happy to leave this up to fate again.

We have two Silkie hens sitting on Muscovy duck eggs and now one of the Muscovy ducks herself has made a nest in the corner of the chicken house and is sitting. Hopefully we'll end up with a few ducklings. Two of our Muscovy girls are now missing in action. We don;t know if they've been taken by something, moved away or are secretly rearing clutches in some forgotten part of the smallholding.

Clearing the seedling log jam.

Planting out beans. The climbing structures are made from coppiced willow rods

which the sheep strip for me.

With the last frost gone (a really late one would be a bit disastrous) I have been busy clearing the logjam of young plants in the polytunnel. I have moved most of them to benches outside as temperatures have stayed in double figures day and night for quite a while now. 

Corn, beans, tomatoes, courgettes and squashes have all gone into the ground outside. We had a couple of very windy days which was a challenge for the newly planted beans, but on the whole I've never had young plants settle in so well. They usually suffer a setback for a week or so but not this year.

The Rewards

At the other end of this process, we are already starting to get some decent harvests, particularly from the polytunnel which is yielding delicious new potatoes, carrots and mangetout. Once these are harvested their space will be required for tomatoes, peppers, melons and cucumbers. In fact, they are already underplanted. Outdoors we have now stopped harvesting the rhubarb but we have a couple more weeks of asparagus left. The gooseberry bushes are bursting to overflowing and we'll very soon be thinning out the early picking for the sharp gooseberries. The rest are left on to sweeten. 

We have salad leaves coming out of our ears. We have so many different types of salad leaf and can always spice them up even more with edible flowers or herbs such as fennel or oregano.

So, that's about all for now. As you can see, we're always busy on the smallholding. 

Stay safe.

Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.