Hedgehog Poo

28th August 2016
Little chicks set loose into big wide world
The little chickens, destined for the table, were let out of their pen today to take their chances with the rest of the poultry. We were not too worried about them, for the chicken enclosure is very large and there is plenty of space for everyone. With there being eleven of them, it was unlikely any one individual would get picked on.

As we expected, they made themselves at home very quickly. They are confident little things.

The reason for them losing their protective barrier is that the Muscovy ducks (also destined for the table, maybe sooner rather than later if they don't start behaving) have been a real pain to put to bed for a few nights. So we have moved their house to a corner and set up the barriers to funnel them toward the door.

A Reed Warbler stops off for a visit
Fresh easterly winds today were accompanied by sporadic showers, so it wasn't a surprise to spot a couple of migrant birds on the farm. Best was a smart Reed Warbler hopping around the herb patch. A close encounter with a Barn Owl at chicken bedtime was a welcome surprise too.

29th August
Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit...
I've been attempting to catch rabbits for ages but, despite me trying to get into the rabbit's mind, they are never tempted by what I put in the traps. In fact, I'd given up baiting the traps and shut all the doors, hoping that maybe they would become familiar with the traps and no longer be so wary of them.
But yesterday I decided to set up a couple of traps right next to one of the rabbit burrows under the hollow ash tree.
This morning, bingo! I've not handled wild rabbits much and it kicked more strongly than I thought and managed to escape. Sorry, but I'm not sentimental about rabbits.

My six monthly hospital check is coming up soon and it's always a bit of a worry. This one is a bigger three yearly 'investigation' so I've been wandering around not getting much done for the last couple of days.
At least it's been a chance to step back and spend some time appreciating our achievements here on the smallholding. I've been carrying the camera around too.

One of our honey bees deep inside a pumpkin flower

One of the sunflowers that made it, much appreciated by the bumble bees

The pumpkin patch is coming

along nicely

I think this is a Lesser Stag Beetle,

accidentally disturbed when I moved a large log

30th August
Vermin!
Another rabbit caught, or the same one again. This time it didn't get so lucky as I managed to quickly dispatch it. Arthur may be a sweet little dog, but the terrier in him appreciates a bit of wild food. Whereas Boris just wanted to play with his new rather macabre furry toy, Arthur soon claimed it for himself and set about tucking in.
Other rodents have been busy on the farm too. It's a shame they can be so destructive. They are very welcome to live in the young woodland or the long grass areas, the dykes or the sheep field, if they could only stay away from the farmhouse end of the smallholding. I have been trapping plenty of field mice and voles in the polytunnel. There must be thousands of them around for me to catch so many.
I topped up the rat bait stations yesterday too and the bait was all gone today. It is important to hit them hard when they move out of the fields so they don't start breeding and get established.
I have some excellent bait stations where you can monitor the amount of bait taken without having to disturb anything.


Welcome wildlife
Other wildlife is much, much more welcome though, even the hobby which had a successful raid today snatching one of the young swallows from the air. The swallows in the chicken feed shed have a very late brood, but it shouldn't be too long before they fledge. There were five eggs but I don't think there are five chicks in there now.
It is amazing that they will be flying to Africa so soon after they have taken to the wing for the first time.



Hedgehog poo!
Down in the young woodland I came across a rather unfamiliar dropping today. About 4cm long, all shiny and black and blue. It was obviously mostly composed of beetle wing cases. Back in the house I consulted a book which confirmed what I thought, HEDGEHOG POO! Fantastic!





31st August
An early start and an unwelcome drive down to London for my hospital check-up. It is not the most comfortable of procedures but it has to be done.

Back on the farm I had to take it easy for the day. The flowers in the veg patch are coming good now.

In the stable, Priscilla is enjoying clucking over her two chicks. Priscilla has always spent most of her time down near the stables and I suspect her two offspring will be the same.

Farewell summer
Tomorrow it is September. Even worse than the demise of summer is the fact that I have to go back to work!

Rhubarb, Broodies, Basket-making and Twitching... and more

7th May

Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb.... Today Sue picked 14kg of Rhubarb and set about turning it into leather, ice-cream and stewed rhubarb. The rest she froze. Rhubarb is another of those crops which is ridiculously easy to grow but ridiculously expensive to buy. If you ignore the freezer, it is highly seasonal, which makes it special when it comes around each year.







While Sue was doing that, I was undertaking a bit of DIY.
Every time a hen goes broody we have been putting eggs under her, either Ixworth chicken eggs (for meat birds eventually) or Muscovy ducks (again for meat).

The trouble is that we are running out of homes to place the young families. With this in mind I responded to a Facebook advert for a broody box - basically a small hen house with a simple run. When I went to collect it, I was able to get two at a discount price.
However, they weren't wonderfully built. But they did give me a useful starting point and I spend today pretty much dismantling and reassembling them, adding small design features to make them more functional.

As with all jobs, this took longer than expected, but I was pretty happy with the end result. As one of our hens hadn't moved out of the chicken house for two days, we immediately moved her into one of the nest boxes on top of ten Ixworth eggs and closed the door to allow her to settle down.





I then embarked on another job, to weed and rotavate the flower beds in preparation for sowing the annual mixes. I knew that a few nettles had crept in over winter, but as long as these don't establish a deep root system they are easily pulled out. What I hadn't bargained for was the encroachment of creeping buttercups. These have a compact root system which clings onto the soil with a vice-like grip, meaning they have to be individually dug up. A couple of hours later or more I was eventualy finished. It had turned into a very physical job but I'm sure it will be worth it when the beds are a riot of colour.

Other things that happened today, in no particular order:

Another day of hot weather and the strawberries will be ready.

 

Time to plant up the shop-bought

lemon grass. The roots have developed nicely.

Basket making homework

before our session tomorrow

Growing early mangetout in the poltunnel is paying handsome dividends

8th May

The day started very early as I aimed to be at Gibraltar Point (near Skegness) by sunrise to see an Alpine Accentor. These birds are very rare in Britain and the only one I've seen here was over ten years ago. So with news the evening before of one poking about on a feeder just an hour's drive away, I set the alarm for early. Unfortunately the bird didn't play ball, vanishing overnight, but it was good to see so many of my birding friends there.
The day warmed up nicely and by the time I rolled up back on the farm the temperature had soared into the high 20's (high 70s for the oldies out there)

I couldn't hang around though, for I was due back at the Green Backyard in Peterborough for the second of my basket-making sessions. Everyone was impressed with my homework and I continued weaving until I was ready to put a rim on. An unexpected bonus was a handle - I had presumed it would be too complicated.
I also got to bring home quite a few long willow cuttings so that I can grow more of my own basketry willow. I've put them in the water butt with the other willows which have well and truly rooted. The hormones from the others should help my new ones to root.

There was still time at the end of the day to get most of the lawns mowed... again. A brief rest to chat to our neighbour Don was interrupted when we spotted a Short-eared Owl quartering the farm. Don told me that he had seen two together recently. It is getting late in the year for them to be migrating, so with a bit of luck they will become a regular sight.

That wasn't it for wildlife today. For when I let the dogs out just before their bedtime, there just outside the patio door was a spiky visitor. The dogs just sniffed at it and wandered off. It's only the second hedgehog I've seen on the farm. The first was caught in a rabbit trap (and safely released) last year.




9th May
At midnight last night I picked up reports of a pelican in Cornwall. It had initially been identified as a White Pelican, a sure escape so of no particular interest to the twitching fraternity. But the midnight message had a photo of a Dalmatian Pelican - a potential wild vagrant to this country. It had been seen in three different places on the sea. I resisted the temptation to head down overnight. A seven hour drive for a bird which could be anywhere off Cornwall is the sort of crazy manoeuvre I used to pull but I now take a (slightly) more balanced approach.

I awoke late with a very thick head. Pager news. The pelican just flew over Lands End! All that stopped me going was the thick head. I went out into the veg plot and tried to forget about the pelican. It was another very hot day. I had planned to sow seeds ahead of forecast rain, but the soil was very dry and lumpy so I decided to delay. Everything needed water so I set about the task of topping up all the poultry drinkers, duck pools, sheep buckets... when... the pager started wailing. That PELICAN. Some great detective work had identified it as the same bird which had been in Poland the previous month. This bird certainly hadn't just hopped out of some Cornish zoo. Should I go now? I wouldn't arrive till late in the day and the bird hadn't exactly been pinned down to one place. I reluctantly decided to stay put, but changed my plans for the rest of the day. Nothing too strenuous, for an overnight drive to Cornwall was surely in the offing.

I carried on with the watering, giving everything in the polytunnel a good drenching as it might be a couple of days before it got watered again.

Sometime during the afternoon I looked in on Elvis, for this was the first due date for the eggs she had been sitting on, and this is what I saw.

Yes. I know it's got a strange bill for a chicken. Elvis has been sitting on Muscovy duck eggs! It's not the first time she has hatched out ducklings and she doesn't seen quite so surprised this time.

At 8 in the evening I headed off to Sandy, Bedfordshire, to pick up a birding friend before embarking on the trip to Cornwall...

A secret swallow nest

Next to the chicken pen I have a shed to keep all the chicken food dry. Well, a couple of years ago someone smashed the window from the inside. It was a bit like one of those Jonathan Creek mysteries.
Eventually the mystery was solved. A hen, attempting to accumulate a secret stash of eggs, had gone and got herself locked in overnight. Goodness knows quite how, but she had then smashed her way out.

I attempted to fix the window with a spare pane of glass, but on the very last nail the pane broke in two. Ever since then, that window has consisted of two overlapping broken sheets of glass, which has created a narrow gap along the top.

Why am I telling you about this?
Well not long ago I found a tiny broken eggshell on the floor of said shed. It was so delicate that when I picked it up it simply turned to powder in my big, clumsy hands. I looked up to see where the egg had come from and there, just above the shed door, was a swallow nest! We go in that shed twice a day to get chicken food, yet an enterprising swallow had managed to build a nest, lay eggs, incubate them and hatch them without us even noticing!
You'll see from the swallow facts at the bottom of this page that the female swallow must have been sitting, unnoticed, for over 2 weeks, let alone managing to construct a mud nest without me noticing.


I left the nest in peace.

The next time I looked at the nest, a few days later, I could just see the crown feathers of its young occupants. As I held up the phone to take a picture, they all opened their gapes. They did this three times.

14th July

19th July

Over the next couple of weeks I kept an eye on the nest. I didn't want to disturb it, but the swallows had built it just a couple of inches above head height over a door which we have to access every time we feed the chickens.

21st July

The swallowlets grew at an amazing rate. You could usually only see three faces, but I can assure you there were four squeezed into that tiny nest. They learned after that first time and always remained absolutely motionless and silent whenever I was around.

26th July

27th July

 

Then yesterday a very excited Sue returned from feeding the chickens. She had just witnessed a young swallow's first flight, describing how it perched on the broken pane of glass torn between escaping Sue and launching into the big wide world. Eventually it fluttered its wings and stepped into the air, before flying out over the soft fruit patch to explore Swallow Farm from the air.

This morning, here is what I found in the chicken shed.



29th July

The whole family had fledged. They left the guinea fowl feathers which lined their nest, but there was no sign of the swallow family. I looked over the veg patch, where swallow families dart and chatter at this time of year. There are several nests in the stables, and with two or three clutches a year that adds up to quite a lot of swallows by late summer. They congregate over the farm, sometimes attracting the unwanted attention of a hobby. As I stared up, I wondered which ones were the chicken shed family.

I'll leave you with a few facts, taken from www.garden-birds.co.uk

Nesting

Both adults build a nest from mud and plant fibres against a beam or shelf in buildings or a ledge on cliffs. Existing nests are often refurbished, and there are instances where nests have been reused for nearly 50 years.
The eggs of the Swallow are about 20 mm by 14 mm in size, and are smooth, glossy, and white with reddish speckles. The duties of incubating the eggs are performed by the female. The newly-hatched young are fed by both adults, who catch insects on-the-wing and collect them in their throats before returning to the nest. Once fledged, the youngsters receive in-flight food from their parents.

Breeding Data

Breeding Starts	Number of Clutches	Number of Eggs	Incubation (days)	Fledge (days)
April-May	2-3	3-8	14-16	17-24

Prickly subjects

The rabbits are back. Not many (yet), but one is in the soft fruit patch and one is making the occasional scraping in the flower borders. I'm sure there are in reality a lot more than two, or there will be soon.
As I let Boris out for his early morning constitutional this morning, a faint mist masked the rising sun and hung low over the fields. A barn owl flew from the hollow ash tree and a bunny hopped across the lawn. Boris watched it, but was more interested in facing out the guinea fowl. He did evenutally go bounding through the long grass in the general direction of rabbit. Gerry, on the other hand, went straight into stalking mode.

Anyway, those cute little bunnies are in fact pesky little blighters which cause untold damage. So the rabbit traps have come back out. I've only ever caught one baby rabbit in a rabbit trap, but I live in hope. So you can imagine my surprise yesterday morning (Boris got me up at 4:10am!) when I noticed that something had caused the rabbit trap door to close. With my eyes still bleary and the early morning light dim, I went over to investigate and there was indeed a creature inside the trap.



trapped

But it wasn't what I expected. Rather too prickly. For I had caught a hedgehog! The first ever hedgehog for our garden. Fantastic news!




released

Now onto the second prickly matter. Gooseberries.

This year the gooseberry bushes are raining gooseberries

I got to wondering who put the goose into gooseberry, but Wikipedia gave no good reason. I did however find two interesting facts.
The French for gooseberry, groseille a maquereau, translates as mackerel berry, which seems even more off the wall than gooseberry. Though come to think of it, aren't gooseberries supposed to be good with oily fish? Perhaps, once upon a time, they were considered a good accompaniment to goose.

The second fact?
"Gooseberry bush" was 19th-century slang for pubic hair and from this comes the saying that babies are "Born under a gooseberry bush."

That thought will make the task of gooseberry picking even more toilsome than it already is. For gooseberry bushes are armed with vicious thorns. However well they are pruned into the traditional open goblet shape, the berries themselves do a very good job of hiding and are often best located by feel, which requires a very gentle and tactile approach. One false move and your fingertip is impaled.

But the annual task of picking the berries is still a joy. For gooseberries remain something of a luxury in this country and are not widely available. Presumably they are not mechanically harvestable. So to be able to go into our garden and harvest a plentiful supply is something to be celebrated. Our nine bushes are now in their fourth year and are producing very well, especially now that I have learned to prune them properly. On top of this, I took cuttings last year to multiply them and the new bushes have produced a few berries already. So here's to a prickly future!



Boris relaxes under a gooseberry bush

Stoatily Surprised

This happened a couple of weeks ago, but that amazing storm we had a while back blew up my broadband router! Well, that's a bit melodramatic, but it stopped working anyway, along with both my neighbours.
Anyway, it was a fun storm and I now have a new router.

So, as usual I head down to the chicken enclosure to do the afternoon feed and collect eggs from the various locations where the chickens choose to lay. It's always a surprise which chicken house will have the most eggs. Some days a particular house may have no eggs and the next almost all of the eggs. No rhyme or reason.
I open up the flap to the nest box of the big house, where the Indian Game hen has been sitting for quite some time now looking after each days offerings until I pluck them from under her warm belly. She never pecks me and often tries to snuggle back down to sit on my hand! But today she has moved to a different nest box, still in the same house. The reason for this soon becomes evident.

To my surprise, to say the least, a young stoat is staring up at me! This is very bad news, for not only would a stoat in with the chickens be bad news for the eggs, it would be bad news for the chickens too.
I love stoats and weasels. They're beautiful and amazing predators. I see more weasels on my land than stoats and have often wondered why they don't seem to have developed a penchant for my chicken eggs. For a ruthless predator, they can be remarkably blind to my presence. This stoat too was just staring straight at me, despite the fact that I was only a couple of feet away. My first instinct was to grab it but self preservation prevailed. I like my fingers just the way they are.
So instead I grabbed my phone cam - I always have one mind on the blog, it is a great way of capturing events and progress on the farm for posterity. By now it was becoming apparent that something was amiss with this stoat. It had flies buzzing around it and seemed to have multiple puncture wounds. It was clearly a young one, closer to the size of a weasel than a stoat, and it seemed to be looking for somewhere to nestle down.  The fact that Indian Game hen was still in the chicken house confirmed that something was up.

I opted to shoo the poor creature out of the chicken house, hoping that it would bounce off and leave the enclosure by the same route it came in. The enclosure is completely fenced to a foot underground, but over the years various tunnels have managed to get round my defences. I think the moles follow the fence line and the rats use their tunnels as a starting point.
Back to the stoat. I poked and prodded it towards the fenceline. It clearly wasn't well. But it did one and a half sides of the fence before disappearing down a hole. It never came out the other side and the hole didn't seem to go very deep, but for now the injured stoat was hunkered down out of reach. I left it alone.

Twenty minutes later I return to check things out and there, back in the nest box... yes, you've guessed. This time it really does seem to be nestling right into the straw. I fetch a bucket to catch it in, but it won't fit through the opening, so instead again I prod the stoat out of the chicken pen and then plonk the bucket down over it. The only available lid is a rather oversized bin lid and in my effort to slide it under the bucket, the stoat squirms out. I try again, but now the stoat is slithering through the long grass and I just can't get the bucket over it. Then, all of a sudden, it heads down a hole that I didn't even know was there.
And that is that. Never to be seen again, despite constant checks over the next few days.

My best guess is that this young stoat was inexperienced. Kicked out of its parents' territory, it wandered until it found what it thought was a perfect hunting ground, full of chickens, ducks, eggs and even the occasional rabbit and rodent. But the poultry had not welcomed it and had been brave enough to tackle it. I'm guessing here that the guinea fowl may well have something to do with this as they really are very defensive and pretty fearless, operating as a team (unlike the chickens) and able to dispel all predators. Indian Game hen may well have taken part too, for she is a tough old hen. The other day she even chased Boris! (My fast growing puppy, if you're not a regular visitor)

I'll leave you with the Facebook conversation which ensued on the Fenland Smallholders site. I especially like the bit about sucking out brains!!!

John Pegden‎

Fenland Smallholders Club

25 June ·

Not what I expected to find in the nest box! I chased it out but 20 minutes later found it back in there. I think it's a young one and the chickens or guinea fowl have wounded it badly. Buzzing with flies. Seemed more intent on snuggling into the straw than stealing eggs. I eventually lost it down a hole having failed to capture it in a bucket..

 

 we have 3 of them out the back too

25 June at 22:18 · Like

 

 That will take more than your eggs! I'm pretty sure I have one that took 4 cockerels and even a Turkey!

25 June at 22:19 · Like

 

 Generally very welcome (catch rabbits and rodents) but not so in the chicken pen. Anyway, pretty sure this one is fairly badly injured and pretty sure it was the poultry what done it!

25 June at 22:22 · Like

 

 if it stays around your chickens it will eventually suck their brains out while they sleep - ok for catching rats and rabbits but NOT with your poultry - we had one once which eventually wiped out 2 dozen laying hens. they pretend to be sick and then 'dance' to the chickens to mesmerize them and then strike - nasty vicious little beasts!!!

28 June at 00:20 · Like

 

 Yes I know what amazing predators they can be. Which is obviously not good when it comes to chickens. But if pretending to be sick includes real wounds and an entourage of flies then hats off to the stoat!

28 June at 05:13 · Like

Swifts, Swallows, Yellow Wagtails, Grey Partridges, Little Owls and a Hawk Moth

Getting any work done outside today has been a trial. At times the showers have been so frequent that someone forgot the dry spells in between.

But as I was unloading bagfuls of horse muck I was delighted to note a trio of Swifts scything through the air. It was only yesterday that I saw my first of the year along the North Norfolk coast - a very successful journey in search of lambs - more later. Swifts are the last birds to arrive back from their wintering quarters. They arrive en masse and suddenly the skies seem full of screaming devilbirds. True masters of the air, they only land to nest, even mating on the wing.
And so they wheeled over the veg plot, briefly mingling with the Swallows which are ever-present now that they are building their nests in the stables. These two species mean that summer is on its way, not that you'd know it right now.















Another harbinger of summer comes in the form of the delightful, always busy Yellow Wagtail. Most summers a pair nests in the crops and spend much of their time in the pig enclosure. Occasionally they encounter Swallows collecting mud for their nests.
One summer visitor we've not heard back yet is the cuckoo. One usually turns up most years for a few days, but they're having a hard time of things at the moment and numbers are falling.

With all this talk of summer's visitors, I mustn't forget some of the farm's regulars. The Little Owls have been more showy of late. They probably have young to feed and so are forced to be active during daylight hours. If I get up really early in the morning, they too can be seen using the posts around Daisy's enclosure as hunting perches.
More surprising, about a week ago, was a sudden announcement by several grey partridges, conspicuously calling and chasing each other about for a whole afternoon and evening. I guess it was males full of bravado, but goodness knows where they came from after an absence of well over a year. And true to form, I've only had two brief encounters with them since. Still, it's very nice to know they are still about. Quite a rare bird these days.

And finally, summer brings other surprises too. The spring seems to have been a good one for butterflies, with tortoiseshells, brimstones and orangetips in good numbers, but this creature is no butterfly. It spent a day perched on one of our window frames. It is a Poplar Hawk Moth. Not rare at all, but still very nice to see.