A Siberian Waif

Monday 4th December 2017
A Siberian waif
Today I found the rarest bird to grace the smallholding since I moved here. Even more satisfying was the fact that it was in the patch of young woodland that I planted when I moved in.
I was walking the circuit of the smallholding with the dogs when a bird started calling loudly behind me. The call was clear but certainly not that of any bird species I would expect to encounter on such a walk.
I located the bird straight away, a chiffchaff. This small plain warbler is a common summer migrant to this country and one whose song and call I am very familiar with. I see chiffchaffs on the farm mostly in the autumn when birds migrate through.
Increasingly chiffchaffs winter in this country, though mostly in the south. Early December is certainly a notable time for one to appear here, but there was something special about this one. For as soon as I laid eyes on it that strange call made sense. The bird was pretty much plain brown (paler below, but importantly no hints of yellow or olive-green), even plainer than our usual chiffchaffs. Chiffchaffs come in a range of dull colours, but one so plain and brown would certainly come from quite a way east. Paired with the distinctive call this bird was undoubtedly a Siberian Chiffchaff. I played the call on a phone app just to be sure and it matched 100%. The bird even appeared to call back. The Latin subspecies name for this type of chiffchaff is tristis, which means sad, presumably because the call is a drawn out, monotone plaintive one. Unfortunately not judged to be a full species in its own right, but I have only ever encountered a handful of these birds in my years of birding. I have seen plenty of brownish chiffchaffs, greyish ones too, ones with odd calls too, but very few which so clearly match all the criteria for a tristis.
How fantastic that such a small bird can have made it all the way from Siberia to my farm! It should be wintering in the Himalayas but presumably fancied a bit of a flatter landscape.

For non-birders, just so you know just how plain the bird is! Not my actual bird, but a dead ringer, this one in Doncaster in 2009.


I found the bird late afternoon and it was generally hanging about with two blue tits. I watched it for maybe half an hour, at which point it was time to give the chickens a few handfuls of grain to keep them going through the cold night. Darkness falls quickly at this time of year and presumably the bird went to roost somewhere nearby.
Interestingly, a Siberian Chiffchaff was also reported on the Yorkshire coast at almost exactly the time as I found mine and another was trapped and ringed on the Essex coast two days later.

Wednesday 6th December 2017
Tuesday was my six-monthly hospital visit to London, so I was unable to check if the bird was still present. Having been poked and prodded I stayed at home Wednesday and just mooched around the smallholding with the dogs. There was no sign of the Siberian Chiffchaff all day.

I did however come across this beaut of a mangel wurzel. I posted it onto the Smallholders Facebook page along with the message

I 💚 mangel wurzels

Not a hawfinch in sight

Saturday 28th October 2017
Not a hawfinch in sight

We've had some beautiful clear days recently and some amazing skies.
I've spent a lot of time outside trying to get hawfinch on my farm list. There's something of an unprecedented irruption of these giant-billed finches at the moment, but despite days working outside not a single one has flown over the farm while I've been looking.
There has however been a good arrival of winter thrushes with redwings and fieldfares streaming in across the fields in their hundreds. There have been impressive numbers of starlings and woodpigeons too. In amongst them I've had the odd good bird, a few redpolls, a couple of yellowhammers and quite a few skylarks. There have been more chaffinches than usual with arrivals from Scandinavia finding the old ash trees to their liking. But not a hint of a hawfinch. 
I have listened and listened and listened to recordings of hawfinch flight calls. Remembering bird calls is not a strength of mine, but as I work in the garden my ears are on constant alert for their weak call.

Job for the day was to build a shelter and dust bath for the chickens, though it took longer than  it should have due to a certain amount of sky staring!
The finished job is somewhat basic but it should do its job. I've used old polytunnel plastic which I scrounged so if the winds do their worst I can easily replace it.

Sunday 29th October 2017
An extra 3(!) hours in bed
The clocks went back overnight so I celebrated with an extra three hours in bed!
A little owl was clearly thrown by the change too as it spent most of the morning sat in full view sunning itself. I hear the little owls most days but very rarely see them outside of breeding season.

The weather this half term has been amazing so we made the most of it with a walk along the river late afternoon. I was thrilled to see not one but two kingfishers. There is hardly anywhere for them to perch as the drainage board have cleared the banks, so I was surprised that even the one has stayed.

Monday 30th October 2017
A new swimming pool... for the ducks
More mowing, for the grass is still growing thick and fast.

Then I hand dug a new pond for the three ducks who now live in the spare veg patch. They have found my wildlife pond and wrecked it, so I am giving them a purpose built luxury pool. I will bar access to the wildlife pond with a willow weave barrier.
I would move the ducks, but they have an important job of slug clearance. Slugs have been a real problem this year so I am keen to turn the soil and expose them to the birds as much as possible this winter. In fact I managed to rotavate the cuttings area today. I dug up the privet cuttings which I started last winter. About half had made it through which was good. I have replanted them into the freshly turned soil and there is now space for this year's cuttings.


Tuesday 31st October
Halloween!
I'll spare you the usual rant about the waste of pumpkins. Or the one about since when was Halloween such a big celebration on this side of the Atlantic.

An even bigger carrot-billed monster bird

I had been gardening all day and not keeping my eye on any of my communication devices. So I was a little miffed when I came in for a bite to eat to discover there had been a Black Stork in Lincolnshire for over 2 hours earlier in the day. It had now flown off.

Not to worry, I would possibly have missed it anyway and it can take over 2 hours to get to North Lincolnshire from our little corner of the county.
It was at a place called Dunsby Fen and when I looked it up I was doubly miffed, for it was just the other side of Spalding, about 40 minutes away.

Then a message from a friend. Black Stork is back. I jumped in the car, not even pausing to leave Sue a note telling where I had gone - she would work it out - and sped across the bumpy fenland roads. Just over half an hour later I pulled up along a narrow country lane where two other cars were parked. I had a nice chat to two locals who told me every detail of how and where they had seen the bird and told me in which direction it had flown when last seen. Drat. There wasn't much time left and the bird could be anywhere now, with virtually nobody looking.

I decided to take a little drive around to work out the lie of the land. But just 100 yards down the road I passed a carload of birders who informed me that the bird was sat in a dead tree just around the corner. What a stroke of luck! I left a cloud of dust behind after hearing this unexpected piece of good news. It must have been less than a minute before I got to the only obvious dead tree in the area, but there was no Black Stork perched in it. Unbelievable. I scanned everywhere but to no avail. Shortly after, another couple of cars pulled up, birders who I knew. We were pretty much back to square one, though with a faint hope that the bird would fly back into the dead tree at some point.
But time was against up. The sun was going down and our chances of success were growing slimmer by the minute. Not one to give up, I headed off along a dyke in the hope of pulling a magic rabbit out of the hat.

Time to give up

By 9.15pm it was clear that we were on a loser, so I headed homeward hoping to get back to the smallholding maybe even before Sue got back from her band practice. She wouldn't even know I had been out! But she was home and had managed to work out the reason for my absence without any explanation. She knows me well.




But the story doesn't end there. I had a feeling the bird would be feeding back in its favoured spot the next day, but not wanting to get burned twice I resolved to wait for news before heading out. Besides, I wanted to visit a pond plant centre in mid Lincolnshire so figured I could combine the two into one trip.
I awoke earlyish the next morning to news that the Black Stork had left the dead tree (yes the same one it flew into last night - goodness knows what happened there) and was stood on the track. I completed the morning routines (chickens, polytunnel etc) before heading out, this time at a more leisurely pace. When I arrived there were a lot more vehicles than the previous night and 20 or so birders were stood on a small bridge with binoculars and cameras pointing down into the dyke. The bird must be showing well for nobody was even bothering to use a telescope.

I reached the bridge and there it was, a young Black Stork feeding by the weir as bold as brass, totally unconcerned by the group of admirers up on the bridge.

Spot the stork!

Apologies for mediocre quality images, but I was just using my phone held up to the binoculars and telescope

 In fact, the bird was so unconcerned by human presence that at one point it actually perched on my finger 😀

Swifts, Harbingers of Summer

If one bird really says summer to me it's the swift, just about the last of our summer visitors to appear.
A party of four were scything through the air over the sheep paddock this morning, my first of the year. Despite a day which struggled above 10 degrees with a chilling northerly wind, the swifts still screamed "SUMMER".
It's amazing how quickly the seasons pass. For I am now sowing the tender vegetables, the sweetcorn and beans and with that the rush of sowing comes to an end so soon after it started. There are still a few lesser crops to sow and some succession sowing to be done, but for the next month the emphasis is on getting seedlings into the outdoor beds and keeping those beds weed free.
So, in honour of the swift, I present "Swifts" by Ted Hughes

Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts
Materialize at the tip of a long scream
Of needle. ‘Look! They’re back! Look!’ And they’re gone
On a steep

Controlled scream of skid
Round the house-end and away under the cherries. Gone.
Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three or four together,
Gnat-whisp frail, and hover-searching, and listening

For air-chills – are they too early? With a bowing
Power-thrust to left, then to right, then a flicker they
Tilt into a slide, a tremble for balance,
Then a lashing down disappearance

Behind elms.
They’ve made it again,
Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s
Still waking refreshed, our summer’s
Still all to come --
And here they are, here they are again
Erupting across yard stones
Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,
Speedway goggles, international mobsters --

A bolas of three or four wire screams
Jockeying across each other
On their switchback wheel of death.
They swat past, hard-fletched

Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,
And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring,
Their lunatic limber scramming frenzy
And their whirling blades

Sparkle out into blue --
Not ours any more.
Rats ransacked their nests so now they shun us.
Round luckier houses now
They crowd their evening dirt-track meetings,

Racing their discords, screaming as if speed-burned,
Head-height, clipping the doorway
With their leaden velocity and their butterfly lightness,
Their too much power, their arrow-thwack into the eaves.

Every year a first-fling, nearly flying
Misfit flopped in our yard,
Groggily somersaulting to get airborne.
He bat-crawled on his tiny useless feet, tangling his flails

Like a broken toy, and shrieking thinly
Till I tossed him up — then suddenly he flowed away under
His bowed shoulders of enormous swimming power,
Slid away along levels wobbling

On the fine wire they have reduced life to,
And crashed among the raspberries.
Then followed fiery hospital hours
In a kitchen. The moustached goblin savage

Nested in a scarf. The bright blank
Blind, like an angel, to my meat-crumbs and flies.
Then eyelids resting. Wasted clingers curled.
The inevitable balsa death.
Finally burial
For the husk
Of my little Apollo --

The charred scream
Folded in its huge power.

Sorry for the sad ending, but that description in the first half of the poem just captures the swift so evocatively.
Before we know it they'll have screamed, careered, fed and bred and be speeding their way south again, taking summer with them

Weekend plans ambushed by Red-winged Blackbird

Hooray!
It's a long bank holiday weekend. Midweek rain means that I can finally get on with planting the Maincrop potatoes and sowing vegetable seeds.
I spent Friday evening rotavating the beds and was up for an early start on Saturday. This weekend should see me catch up with all my jobs. The vegetable beds are starting to fill up outside and the polytunnel is full of seedlings waiting to be planted out when we are safe from frost and chilly weather.

Midnight, Saturday.
I pick up four other birders in a car park just outside Carlisle. It's taken me four hours to drive here and there are only seven hours to go.

You may have spotted a slight gap in the timeline here and just maybe a little change of plans for the weekend.
For just as I was burying the seed potatoes early afternoon, news came through of a RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD on North Ronaldsay, the northernmost of the Orkney Isles.

There has never been a wild Red-winged Blackbird in this country, or even on this side of the Atlantic. To be honest, I didn't even know what it looked like, never having been to North America.

The original tweeted image from the finder

So the plan was:
Drive overnight to Gill's Bay (just left of John O'Groats).
Catch the Sunday morning ferry over to Orkney.
Fly from Orkney Mainland over to North Ronaldsay (last 5 seats secured on the scheduled flight at 5 in the evening, but efforts being made to secure a special charter flight to get us across quicker)
See the bird.
Stay overnight in North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory.
Fly off North Ronaldsay 8 o'clock Monday morning.
Get the 11.30am boat back to mainland Scotland (second on the standby list. If not, the 4.30 later in the afternoon.
Drive back 600 miles, via Carlisle.
Arrive home about midnight Monday, hopefully.

So that's the Bank Holiday taken care of!

The never ending Average Speed cameras through Scotland did their best to bore me to sleep through the night and by Inverness I was starting to regret the early start on Saturday morning. I had driven for nine hours straight so was relieved to get a couple of hours sleep while Dan drove the last couple of hours into the hinterland.

This was to be my sixth visit to The Orkney Isles and the boat across the Pentland Firth is only a one hour hop from the Northern tip of Scotland. There were several car loads of birders doing the same thing as us, all the usual faces who turn up at such events.
We were the fourth car off the ferry. We had managed to secure a charter plane from Kirkwall airport but we had enough time spare to stop off and admire a stunning summer-plumaged White-billed Diver, only my fourth ever of this species and definitely the smartest. It was barely 10m offshore.

From there it was on to the airport and straight through onto the Loganair plane, a sturdy Islander aircraft which had us in the air and flying over the assorted low lying islands that comprise the Orkney archipelago.

We came in  for a smooth landing about midday and were met by the Observatory staff ready to take us to the bird in their Land Rover.

I went in the open back and was quickly reminded that some of the Orkney Isles make The Fens feel like a sheltered valley. There was most certainly a chilly easterly breeze.
A few minutes later we were dropped by a farmhouse where there was already a small gathering of birders who had taken the quicker but more expensive route flying from down south.
The bird was still present and was feeding in a distant iris bed. It was never viewable while it did this.

As each new group of birders arrived, one of the observatory staff would gently work through the iris bed and the bird would fly high into the air before heading over to a derelict outhouse, often choosing to land on or behind a squadron of orange-red gas cylinders. Initial views were brief but sufficient to establish its identity (I had by now seen images and had a chance to do some research).

The red gas bottles, so attractive to the Red-winged Blackbird

The bird quickly hopped down behind the gas cylinders where it was totally hidden from view. After about five minutes it flew up over the building and into a small iris bed behind a wall, again out of view. Another ten minutes and it then flew up onto wires before heading back to its favourite iris bed.
Somehow the bird managed to look a lot bigger in flight than it did when perched.


We then had a longish wait until the next plane load of birders came in and the whole cycle was repeated. This way the Observatory staff managed to keep disturbance to the bird to an absolute minimum but everybody who had made the long pilgrimage got to see it.

By late afternoon those who had flown from down south had headed back off in their small planes. We huddled in a garage opening taking shelter from the biting wind and were eventually rewarded with some more prolonged views.
I am no bird photographer, but did manage a record shot. Excuse the quality.

There was time for a little more birding on the island, which included inching our way along a lane past a very attentive bull and getting a shock as I accidentally flushed a greylag goose off its nest.

A typical Orkney beach, this one next to the observatory

I took advantage of a lift back to the observatory as the adventure was starting to catch up with me. I wandered around outside admiring the North Ronaldsay sheep with their incredibly cute and fluffy lambs.

North Ronaldsay sheep and their lambs feed by the observatory building

The North Ron bird observatory is an incredibly welcoming place and we enjoyed a drink of Orkney Ale in the bar before our evening meal of... you've guessed it... North Ronaldsay mutton. Sue and I are spoilt for native breed hogget and mutton, but it was still a delicious and very welcome hot meal. Today's influx of birders made for a great evening in the observatory, but by 10pm I was fast asleep in my bunk. I didn't stir until someone's alarm woke me up at 7am. We had an hour to wake up, pack, tuck into a hearty breakfast and get to the airfield.
Breakfast was delicious - proper bacon, proper sausages and lovely eggs - just like being back on the smallholding.
Check-in at North Ronaldsay airfield is not quite so stressful as other airports these days. We carried our bags out to the plane, climbed onto the plane and strapped in for the return journey.
There was time for a little exploration on Mainland Orkney, though news of a possible Ruby-crowned Kinglet on Cape Clear Island, off the south-west coast of Ireland, had us hastily considering a fairly major diversion to our route home. Unfortunately it came to nothing.

We managed to squeeze onto the late morning ferry and were soon speeding back towards England. The bank holiday traffic was nowhere near as bad as expected. Twelve hours after disembarking the ferry I pulled up back on the farm.

1300 miles. 2 planes. 2 ferries. 1 first for Britain RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD.
The twitching year is under way. Who knows where it will take me next.

While I was away, 4 turkeys were born but the pregnant ewe still refuses to give birth. Next weekend I will catch up with my planting... Or maybe not. You never know what might come up 😉

A Springtime Catch-Up

No blog posts for a while. I won't apologise. It's not through laziness but through business.
It really is all go on the smallholding at this time of year. Dawn till dusk working the soil, sowing seeds, mowing lawns. Then there are baby animals imminent and chicks galore waiting to hatch. Plus all the routine work.
So instead of my usual day by day post, here's a catch up across the smallholding.

Firstly, the weather. April has been warm and sunny, a perfect start to the growing season. We could do with one night of rain now though!

The 'Family'

Gerry has caught his first rabbit of the year and is now catching at least one daily. He sometimes brings one back for the dogs, particularly Arthur our young jackadackadoodle. It was just such a gift that caused the first ever brief fight between him and Boris who has finally realised that fresh rabbit is actually quite a tasty treat. They quickly made up.

I'm sorry if anybody reading this is feeling sorry for the cute little bunny-wunnies, but I find it hard to feel sympathy for an animal which takes great delight in digging up my freshly planted garden shrubs and flowers. Besides, it saves on the animal feed bills.

Boris and Arthur have been enjoying the life of Riley lately. I discovered a supplier of knuckle bones who sell a whole sack full for under a tenner. These should keep the dogs busy for quite some time.

Most delightfully, a year and a half into his life, Arthur has finally realised how much fun it is playing with a ball. He bounces around with sheer joy at his new discovery.

Poultry
The farm fowl are all back outside now, albeit with a few restrictions in place. The geese make regular trips back into the stables to lay. They are sharing two nests this year.
We collected the first 60 eggs or so as they are Sue's favourite egg for eating and we managed to sell quite a few of them, which will have gone a long way to offsetting the costs of feeding the geese while they were imprisoned inside.

Caught in the act by The Silver Stag

The turkeys are laying too. Again we collected the first couple of dozen eggs, but the hens quickly started sitting for long periods. Currently two nests are set up next to each other and two birds seem to have settled on them. I will be very happy if they hatch any young. We would like to keep about six for meat, but any more than that should be fairly easy to sell as chicks to fellow smallholders wanting to rear them.
In the same pen, the Muscovy Ducks are creating a sizeable clutch of eggs too. Last year, letting the duck hatch out her own eggs proved unsuccessful whereas Elvis, our broody hen, managed to rear all of her ten successfully. So that is the plan again this year. I would like to get two batches hatched out over the year as the Muscovy Ducks are the tastiest of birds, as well as being rather charming inhabitants of the poultry pen.
Last but not least we have started the cycle of hatching out chicks. These are collected from our trio of Ixworths and will be raised for the table. The first hatching only delivered eight healthy chicks, which was a bit disappointing. We have started collecting the eggs for the second batch in the incubator. Hopefully this lot will do better.

The chickens were absolutely delighted to go back outside. I herded them down the land to their pen and they instantly set about dust bathing and scratching around. Their egg production has gone right up again too and it is lovely to have them attending to my every move as I dig in the veg garden.

Last years ram lambs tucking into a nice piece of willow

Just going by their tummies,

it's looking like a 3-2-1-0 again this year.

Sheep
We have brought the four Shetland ewes down to the stables in readiness for lambing, which was due anytime from Friday onwards. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
Rambo has settled in with the three wethers (last year's male lambs, no longer 'intact') but he likes to show them who is boss occasionally. There are enough of them to share the hassle and they have enough space to escape it.


Yesterday we went to a sheep day run by Mick at CSSG. We had a fantastic day and it was great to finally be properly shown some of the techniques which we have so far just been using common sense to achieve. We haven't been doing anything dreadfully wrong, but I know I will be more confident from now onwards.

Bees
Sue's department. She is very happy with how the two colonies are faring at the moment. They have come through the winter strongly and the queens are laying well. One hive already has a super over the brood box where the bees can make honey for us. The second hive should have enough brood in to extend upwards this week.
All around us the rape is in flower. There seems to be more this year than ever. Probably something to do with subsidies and not a lot to do with need. This means that the bees will be well fed but their honey will need taking off and processing quickly before it sets like concrete.
At least we now have the tools to cream the honey which stops it setting solid.

Fruit and Veg
Fruit
Pruning is finished, moved, new bushes and canes are planted and mulched, blackberries are tied in to new supports and the raspberry beds have had an overhaul. Mr Rotavator has done a brilliant job tidying up the strawberry beds. Leaves are unfurling and buds are bursting. We should get bumper crops of everything this year.
The fruit trees are coming into blossom and the weather has been good for pollination.
We have already harvested mountains of rhubarb and we managed to sell a fair amount which made a small contribution to the coffers. We don't charge much, but I would rather people enjoyed it than it went to waste every year. Rhubarb plants are dead easy to grow, even easier to propagate and they shade out all weeds. The perfect crop!

We have had both mowers out and they are both still working. The veg patch starts to reveal its plan once the top is taken off the winter grass growth and the beds are cleared and worked.













Veg plot
The soil is warming up and drying rapidly. Working it is a delight at the moment and I have been working hard to get all the weeds out and prepare the beds for planting. Broad beans, early potatoes, parsnip seeds, garlic and onion sets are in the ground already. In the next week there'll be a lot more crops being sown.

The garlic is doing well.

I have now sown parsnips down the rows.

These two crops always do very well together and

the garlic is out before the parsnips take over the space

If we don't get any rain very soon I'll have to consider watering just so that the young seedlings don't wither and die before they can get their roots deep enough.

Polytunnel
The early potatoes in the polytunnel will be ready soon and the mangetout are rapidly growing. I am anticipating the first flowers and pods very soon. My second sowing of carrots has germinated well, unlike the first and my turnip rows are already shading out the weeds.
The polytunnel is full of seed trays at this time of year, young plants being raised either to go in the tunnel beds or to go outside later.
Today I start making my rosemary oil which I am hoping will be my chief weapon of destruction when it comes to spider mites this year.

Birdlife on the farm
Our winter visitors have all but moved on now and we are still awaiting the arrival of most of our summer visitors. Every evening I anticipate the chattering of swallows in the skies above the veg patch but as yet they are still not back.
Our resident birds are taking full advantage of the early start that braving the English winter gives them. The Little Owls are back in the hollow Ash tree again and the Pied Wagtails are back under the pallets. Crows, Woodpigeons, Blue and Great Tits are all nesting in the Ash trees while Blackbirds, Stock Doves, Song Thrushes and Robins hide away in the ivy which clambers up the trees.
A pair of Linnets has appeared and I am very pleased to see Greenfinches occasionally visiting the feeders, though the Tree Sparrows are not around so far this year.
It's been a good spring for Reed Buntings and Yellowhammers which continue to frequent the feeders, both near the house and the feeding station I have set up down in the young woodland.

The Great Escape

Monday 6th March 2017
One slight whiff of freedom today and everybody decided to make a run for it!

The turkeys enjoying being back outside.

I still haven't thought of a name for the silver stag. Any ideas?

For finally the day has come around for some of the poultry to return to the great outdoors. I hadn't quite decided whether to try to drive the turkeys down the land in a group or to catch them individually and carry them. In the end my mind was made up for me as the two young hens were engaged in all-out last-hen-stands warfare when I went in to feed the chickens. I reached up, grabbed two legs and pulled both birds down from the top of the wall before carrying them ignominiously upside down all the way down the garden to their new pen.
Instead of being pleased with their new treat, they just carried on squabbling. I hoped that the extra space would help them to settle down, or that they would just get tired of fighting. They are both destined for the table, but it would be a real shame if this had to happen on their first day of freedom in three months.
Since I had now started the job, I caught the other two turkeys and carried them down too. They at least had the good grace to be a bit more excited about their new surroundings.

On a roll, I decided to move the three waddly ducks (as opposed to the Muscovies). This was easier, as I just herded them up the land to their new pen. They too were audibly and visibly excited to be back in the fresh air with grass under their feet.

While I was that way, I checked to see if yesterday's Stonechat was still around and to my delight there it was perching up on the fence posts from where it would dive into the grass before swooping back up to the next post in the line. I got far better views than yesterday of this first for the smallholding.

Stonechat territory

Since I was down the bottom of the land, I decided to move the sheep to the next paddocks. All I have to do is take down a small gateway of electric fence and they follow the bucket through to their new area and dive straight for the fresh new grass. I took the opportunity to top up their hay, water and beet nuts. It was at this point that I glanced around to realise that Arthur had disappeared. Learning from his escapade last week, Boris and I headed straight toward the dyke at the bottom of the land. Arthur couldn't have been gone longer than three minutes, so if he had gone that way we would surely see him running up the fence line or crossing next door's land.
Fortunately there was no sign. Arthur must have taken himself back to the farmhouse. I continued along the dyke with Boris, keen to check out a distant black object (I thought it might be a coot, but it turned out to be a black bin bag!). I raised my binoculars to check out the wild swans by the river and a wiry black terrier ran through my field of vision and kept going along the riverbank. It was Arthur and he was moving at some lick!
Boris and I ran after him as I called his name at the top of my voice, but Arthur just kept on running away from us. Goodness knows where he was going. I was now out of puff and had to slow to a walk. By the time we reached the river bank Arthur was a couple of hundred yards away but fortunately he heard me and stopped. He just sat there and made me walk all the way along to get him.
I was very cross and marched him all the way back to the farmhouse, barking at him. I had only left one gate slightly ajar for a couple of minutes and he had taken his chance to slip off. Lesson learned. From now on every gate gets firmly closed, even if I am working right next to it.
To add insult to injury, when I finally arrived back at the house my phone had turned itself Spanish, all the menus, all the messages! It took quite some time to turn it back to English as navigating the menus was somewhat tricky!

With that little escape effort thwarted, I let the geese out into the veg patch to trim the grass for me. They greeted the sight of the open sky with hoots and honks of delight. Letting them out onto the grass will save on the cost of feeding them while they were inside and I can move their water too as they spill it everywhere and it makes the straw bedding sodden.

I moved some sheep hurdles out of the chickens' stable too, to set up a run for the geese so I can keep the chickens extra biosecure. It was while I was doing this that I came back round the corner to find all the chickens, all twenty of them, merrily strutting across the yard, clucking with delight! The next ten minutes were spent in a comical chicken chase. It's not easy rounding up chickens when there is one person and about four ways the chickens can go. Fortunately they tend to stick close to Cocky The Cockerel, especially when they are curiously exploring new areas, so I focused on him and most of his hens eventually followed him back into the stable.

And finally, after a very eventful day, a nature note. Sue's bees have been flying for about a week now, only when the sun comes out and warms the hive, but today I saw my first bumble bee of the year.
With some of the birds out, bees buzzing and skylarks singing, it really does feel as if Spring is finally starting to nudge Winter out of the back door.

One of Sue's honeybees, clearly finding pollen somewhere.

The catkins are out and they love them.