The King Is Dead ... Long Live The King!

Something sad happened today.

We lost Cocky, our gentle giant.

He was the leader of the gang, an attentive cockerel under whose reign peace and harmony broke out. His passing away will mark a time of change in the chicken pen.

A good cockerel has to be strong enough to look after his ladies and keep them from squabbling, but gentle too. Many is the time I've watched him find a nice juicy morsel and start clucking and dancing to let his ladies know of his find. He never took it for himself.

Even the guinea fowl saw him as their protector. He got on with everybody, except any young pretenders who he was always able to put in their place.


For the last few months he was the only cockerel in the main pen, but he has been showing signs of old age, roosting up early, last out in the mornings and his comb distinctly limp and lacking colour.

The signs were there, even the fact that only one of Elvis's eggs from his girls managed to produce a healthy chick. And that chick, though we didn't know it, is the last of Cocky's offspring.

We now need to find a replacement for him. The hope is that the Cream Legbar cockerel can take over - he is certainly gentle with his two females and even with the diminutive Polands who are in with him. But he always had the balls to stand up to Cocky, often duelling with him through the fence.
So now his time has come. Along with his group he will now be allowed in with the other poultry. There's bound to be a few settling in problems to start with, but hopefully by the spring all will be calm again...

until these little ones grow up, for at least two of them are cockerels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCiU54msTeo


Meanwhile, a thought for Cocky.

The Great Swede Debate (NOT The Great Turnip Debate)



 

Pickings straight from the veg plot.





Reading this blog, you might think that Sue and I lead a rather idyllic life. Well, we’ve worked hard to get to where we are and I don’t always write about the downsides. After all, who wants to read about those.

But, to tell you the truth, Sue and I have been having our problems lately. It’s the arguments. Constant arguments.  Always about the same thing.

I guess it stems from a difference in culture. Sue is a northerner. I am a southerner.

But, alas, it seems that our differences are irreconcilable.

The subject of our arguments?

These…

 

On the left, TURNIPS, with their hard, white flesh. These ones happen to be purple topped.

And on the right, a SWEDE, a winter vegetable with softer, orange flesh.

It’s not difficult.

White = turnip. Orange = swede.

And coming from Essex, a county where the inhabitants are fondly known as SWEDEBASHERS (a term developed, presumably, when Essex was slightly more rural and slightly less a suburb of London), I feel I am well qualified to judge this matter.

But no! Despite all my logic, Sue insists that there are turnips and, wait for it, white turnips!!! Yes, that’s right. Read that last sentence again. It’s not a typo. TURNIPS and WHITE TURNIPS.

Why use two different names for two different vegetables when you can completely complicate matters?

Not only that but the swede is, according to her, the turnip. And the turnip is the white turnip. Total craziness.

 

So a plea. Can someone please leave a comment on this blog telling Sue that she is wrong and I am right.

Please. For the sake of our relationship.

Elvis - A Mum Again!

On the last day of July 2013 Elvis had quite a surprise. For she hatched out some chicks with rather strange bills and rather odd habits, like constantly jumping into water and waddling around in a line.

 

 

For those of you not familiar with Elvis, she is our broody hen. She is a black Silkie and she was one of the hens we inherited when we moved in three years ago. Elvis has an incredibly strong maternal instinct. So much so that she rarely goes a few weeks between sending off one group of youngsters to fend for themselves and sitting tight on whatever eggs she can find.

At this stage, gathering eggs becomes a risky affair, as she will just sit tight and peck viciously at your hand. At all other times Elvis is a very affectionate hen.

We have now lost count of how many clutches of eggs Elvis has hatched, but after her surprise at delivering us six ducklings last time, Sue decided she could have some more chicken eggs to sit on. So she got a few of the blue Crested Cream Legbar eggs and a few eggs from the other hens. Sue gave her eleven eggs to sit on altogether.

By the end of week two, Elvis was somehow incubating seventeen eggs, so it was time to isolate her from the other hens. At this time of year, we are hardly getting any eggs from the chickens, so we could ill afford to lose half a dozen which were destined never to hatch.

Then it was just a case of waiting, and last Sunday as I locked the chickens away I could hear the tell tale high cheeps of newborn chicks. The next morning, Elvis had moved off the nest, leaving a very smelly poo (they always do this) alongside the unhatched eggs.

 

 

Unfortunately only four chicks successfully hatched. A further two were fully grown but hadn't managed to escape their shells. One of these was actually still alive, so Sue cracked the shell some more and placed it back under Elvis. But Elvis always knows the best thing to do and she had left this egg behind for a reason. Although it got out of the shell, it didn't survive much longer.

Usually we have a much better return for naturally incubated eggs, but I guess it's late in the season so some of the eggs may never have been fertilised in the first place. Also, Cocky is getting a little older now. We'll have to see how he performs next year.

As for those four cute little chicks, we have one archetypal pale yellow ball of fluff. Very cute! The other three are Crested Cream Legbars, the ones that lay blue eggs (the females, that is!). These are very unusual in that the chicks are autosexing. This means that there are clear plumage differences between the sexes.

The females are darker and have a dark stripe running down their back and behind their eyes. The males are lighter with a light dot on top of their head.

Unfortunately, I think we only have one Cream Legbar girl. But at least Elvis is all clucky again.



 

 

Lambs...Going, Going, Gone!

 

 

Back in the springtime, if anyone can remember that, four ragtag little lambs arrived on the farm. They were cades, the spares which have to be taken off their mums and hand-fed. One had a cough, one had a limp, one had a long tail.

 

 

But we looked after them and they enjoyed their time here and prospered on the lush grass.

 

They grew bigger and bigger and bigger, tastier and tastier and tastier!

 

And all the while they took care of a major headache for me, keeping the grass down and enriching it at the same time. They kept me company too when I needed some quiet time away from it all.



By the time they went, I'd got things well enough organised that I could strip graze them right up to the end of the land. In fact their last few weeks were planned to give the grass one last cut before the winter. A strip of electric fence runs right to the end of the land and I can segregate areas off this, gradually moving the sheep up and down the land. Not only does this mean that they get fresh grass every week or so, but it ensures that there won't be a build up of worms on the land either.


A rural view through the patio doors.

For the last few days the sheep were moved onto the back lawn, with the flowers and herbs carefully fenced off. What I didn't tell them was that the fence here was never connected to the mains. But they have learned to respect the fence, so much so that they won't even cross it when I lay it down on the ground to move it.
Not, that is, unless I have just stubbed my toe so badly that I can't even get my foot inside a shoe. Then, and only then, they decide to jump over and race excitedly away, up to the dyke, along a bit and back into the farmer's field next door! I had to hobble through long grass and over another dyke to round them up, not once but twice!

Anyway, back to the present. Last Sunday, before the Smallholders Club Harvest Lunch, the sheep were due to go on their final journey. I booked this in a couple of months ago. There's always a bit of guesswork involved in when they go off. The idea is that it coincides with when the grass stops growing and becomes less nutritious. As it was this year I could probably have kept them a while longer, but they had grown to pretty much their maximum weight.

 

The only money we have ever spent on feeding the sheep was one bag of pellet food and the only reason for this is that, being hand-reared, they blindly follow the bucket wherever they are led. And on Sunday that was straight into the livestock trailer. At the other end they followed the bucket straight off the trailer and straight into their waiting pen.

Compared to pigs, sheep are a delight to move.

I had managed to dig out the movement forms (quadruplicate!!!!) the day before. Unlike with pigs, where it's all up to date and online, you still have to press very hard on sheep movement forms to get down to the fourth carbon copy. 

And that was that until Thursday when I picked them up from Tan Rose, my butchers in Parson Drove, all boxed up and ready for the eight customers who'd bought half each.

 

Now half a lamb is nowhere near as much as half a pig. All that wool is most deceptive. I had told customers to expect about 10kg each, but in the end it was slightly under this so I dropped the price to reflect this. Although it doesn't look like an awful lot of meat for 65 quid, it still works out very reasonable compared to supermarket prices. Meat is not cheap these days, at least not if it has been humanely and responsibly reared.

 

 

Boxes of lamb waiting for their lucky customers

And there's the advantage of keeping sheep. They don't require a lot of input, as long as you have enough grassland for them, they're easy to handle and to fence in, and you can actually bring them in at cheaper than supermarket prices (with a small profit) without making any compromises over their care.

For that reason, we're really hoping to keep a few more next year.

If any of you are interested, for a £20 deposit before February I will hold the price of half a lamb next year. You can look forward to a box full of succulently juicy lamb. The advantage for me is that I should, hopefully, be able to buy in enough lambs to keep my grass well managed in the knowledge that they will have somewhere to go at the end of the year.

And here's what you'll get.



What you get for your money:
One leg, cut into two joints, two shoulder joints, three or four bags of delicious chops,
a belly roll, a couple of other bits and pieces and a bag of bones for the dog.
Also a share of the offal - liver, heart, kidney, lungs.
 

Strawberry Popcorn - A load of poppycock??

What's inside?

If you remember, earlier this year I planted some sweetcorn plants in the polytunnel. The result was that they grew, and grew, and grew, until they reached the sky. Well, the roof of the polytunnel anyway.
The reason I was growing this sweetdorn in the polytunnel was that I didn't want it cross-pollinating with my supersweet F1 variety which I grow outdoors.

 

This particularly corn crop was grown for an entirely different purpose - to make us self-sufficient in popcorn! Yes, that's right. Popcorn!
Not only that, but it looks very pretty when harvested too.

Well, how's your maths?
Take 200 seeds. Lose half through non-germination - too cold early in the year. Lose another third which just don't take very well. A quarter fall victim to climbing mice, which have come in after the fields were harvested and eaten the cobs before they had a chance to dry on the plant. About 15% of those saved and placed safely to dry on the crop bars of the polytunnel, also get munched by mice which scale the tomato plants to reach them. (Luckily I noticed a little pile of husks on the floor before it was too late).

The mice got to this one first.

How are you doing so far? I'm down to about 43.  But each plant had a couple of cobs or more, so I was still quite excited when I went to peel back the papery coverings today.

The first couple looked very good indeed. Like giant raspberries, each kernel a delicious deep red colour.

But the maths goes on.
For many of them don't seem to have developed. I guess that they didn't get pollinated properly.


















In the end, my total harvest amounted to this...

Still, it looks pretty, doesn't take up too much polytunnel space, and I can only do better next year, can't I! Lessons have been learned.

Despite, or inspite of, the trail of losses, I just couldn't wait to try one though.

I checked back to the website where I purchased them from and, as I thought, it said to simply pop the whole cob into the microwave to enjoy gorgeous, fluffy popcorn with a hint of a strawberry flavour.
Being one to think ahead, I had this vision of a microwave splattered with popcorn shooting everywhere, so I placed one small cob into a plastic bowl and put a plate on top to keep it from escaping. It was only 30 seconds before I could hear that tell-tale popping sound and the smell of popcorn started to waft into the air. I had a peek and, although some kernels had split, there was no explosive fluffing up yet. So I put the lot back in, this time risking taking the lid off. I left it a while, but the microwave filled with smoke and the smell wafting through the air was now one of a distinct burning nature.

But the cob just looked like this...

All I can think is that the cobs need more time to dry out.

But, to be honest, how much more can a man take?

Not every crop has to be totally functional. I value beauty in the veg garden too and a couple of novelty crops each year never go amiss. Sometimes they give a very pleasant surprise, but often I discover just why they've not entered the mainstream of growing  in the UK yet.


I'll try microwaving another cob in a couple of weeks, but it'll have to do something pretty spectacular to earn its place on next year's growing list.

At least I have some interesting table decorations for Christmas though.

Getting the bees ready for winter

Winter is truly on its way now. I've not seen a swallow for over a week and their chattering has been replaced by the thin calls of flocks of redwings sounding lost as they come in off the North Sea. More harbingers of winter, a flock of 30 Pink-footed Geese honked noisily as they flew over late in the evening last Sunday. These won't settle in the fields here, but will remain closer to the coast. The fields do, however, hold small flocks of golden plovers and lapwings (peewits to some), occasionally panicked into the air by a prospecting peregrine. Skylarks chase each other overhead and winter flocks of goldfinches bounce around. Yes, the birds are telling me that winter approaches.

But potentially the best bird of the last week has, frustratingly, remained unidentified. For last night, on the way back from locking away the chickens, the silhouette of an owl broke the skyline. It was no barn owl, too large and too long-winged. It was certainly either a Short-eared or a Long-eared owl, both of which have been coming in over the North Sea in the past week. I'll be on the look out for the next few days. If it's a Short-eared, I'll probably see it hunting over the fields late one afternoon. But if it's a Long-eared, which would be a new bird for the farm, it will be much more strictly nocturnal.

All these signs of a change in the seasons mean that we need to start preparing. Winter won't wait for us.

Sue pretty much takes care of the bees these days, ably supported by Elaine, her bee buddy. I stand at a distance, taking the occasional photo and, once in a while, making a run for it when one of the guard bees finds me and starts battering me on the head.

We still have three colonies going, which is a great improvement on the one which came through last winter.
They withstood the wasp onslaught, helped by me finding the wasps nest - a tiny hole in the ground over in the goose paddock, but a hole through which a steady stream of striped assassins were emerging and flying straight over to the bee hives to battle and plunder.

Somehow, despite us taking very little honey from the bees this year, they managed to get very low on honey (maybe not helped by the wasps). To this end Sue has been feeding them with sugar syrup. The local shops must wonder what on earth is going on as Sue has been regularly emptying their shelves of sugar!

 

But they've been doing a grand job turning Sue's sweet offerings into winter stores, safely stowed away and enclosed in a myriad of hexagonal storage jars. Where they've stored it in the supers, Sue has been moving it down to the main brood box where they'll huddle together through the winter, so that it will be readily accessible during more difficult times ahead.

Last weekend our helpful expert, Elaine, visited to help Sue make a detailed inspection of the hives before they are closed down for the winter. What we had thought was the strongest hive, the original one in the middle, is in fact the weakest! Why? Because there is too much drone brood. Useless blokes!
The bees which are active and flying now are not those which will take the queen through the winter. No, it is the current brood which will have the job of keeping her warm and trying to survive the winter. So a hive full of drone brood is not much use.

Hopefully there'll be enough females born to carry the colony through. Bad news for the queen though, as in the spring she will need to be replaced.

For the meantime, Sue will move the frame feeders out of the brood section of the hives but continue to feed the bees using top feeders. This is so that she doesn't have to expose the bees to the cold when she tops up the food. It won't be long now until the bees huddle together, but with temperatures still remaining high for the time of year, we'll see the bees out and hunting at least this weekend and quite possibly for a while longer yet. Fortunately there's a lot of ivy climbing up the ash trees, which will be providing an important late season supply of forage for the bees.

So let's hope for a normal winter. Not too warm, not too wet, not too cold and not too long. Come to think of it, when's the last time we had a normal winter?

MEGA!! Hooley brings seabirds to the farm.

I like to spend time with the sheep. That maybe sounds wrong, but what I mean is that I can just sit and take a moment or two watching them graze.

It was while I was doing this last week that I got a new mammal for the farm - I'm heading towards twenty species now, and that's without knowing how to identify any of the bats.
Completely out of context a grey squirrel went bounding across the grass, quite some way from any large trees. Presumably it was one of this year's young push out by its parents and searching for a new territory. Like foxes and muntjacs, I have to say I hope I don't see it too often.

But this post is about a couple of very special birds which I was lucky enough to see yesterday. It's been rather windy here of late, and that's something of an understatement.
Finally the leaves have started coming off the trees. Finally autumn has arrived. Only a few days since the thermometer in my car hit 25 degrees!

A hint of autumn colour

I was most frustrated to have to be at work on Thursday. For I knew that strong gales from the North would be blowing birds into The Wash and hopefully inland towards my farm. But I could only manage half an hour of daylight on the farm, during which I managed to see a couple of flyover bramblings. It really was blowing a hooley!


A small tree does its best to catch out
unwary motorists speeding round the corner.

Daisy prepares her house for the winter

 

The plan for Friday was to bird North Norfolk, but I was battling a thick head and decided to stay on the farm. And what a good decision that turned out to be. The winds switched more easterly and squalls swept through all day. But in between I made sure I was outside, taking the opportunity to move the sheep to some new grazing.
All the while a constant stream of gulls were battling north into the wind, sweeping low over the fields. But I wasn't quite prepared for the sight which met my eyes late afternoon. I was conscious of the possibility of a skua species flying over and that's what I was hoping for. All of a sudden, from nowhere, I became aware of two large, dark birds sweeping low over the neighbouring field, really not very far from me. I instantly knew what they were. Pointed at both ends and long, pointed wings, they had the distinctive shape of a pair of juvenile GANNETS!!!
They cut the corner of my land, making slow progress into a strong headwind. I sprinted all the way back to the farmhouse to get the telescope so I could track their progress further, over the back fields towards South Holland Main Drain.

I was absolutely chuffed. It was never impossible that, one day, I would get gannet for the farm list, but it was far from probable.

 

Greedy for more, I set up the scope in the lee of the tractor and spent the remaining hours of the day watching over the fields for more seabirds. Apart from the usual evening flight of gulls, which was more spectacular today than normal, there was nothing more of note. It turns out that quite a few inland gannets were seen elsewhere on the same day, all making their way back towards the sea after being blown overland the day before.

It all makes me wonder what I might have seen had I been able to spend all day Thursday on the lookout.

An unconventional seawatch!
 

Thick-billed Pork Burgers

Gratuitous use of the oil painting setting on my photo software.

If you don't want to see graphic images of a butchery nature, please close your eyes and scroll down enough to get past the next picture!  (Seriously)

GOARY, but strangely fascinating.
If you're going to eat an animal,
I firmly believe you should be able to look it in the face.

The title of this post reflects the total panic which reigned last Friday.

In fact this post is a strange mixture of butchery, burger-making and birding. A strange mixture which I have chosen to make my life.

For two weekends ago our last piglet went off, leaving us with just Daisy.

Trailer in position, ready for loading

 

Daisy: The survivor

I was planning on keeping this one till after Christmas, mainly because of shortage of freezer space. But when someone expressed an interest in buying half of her for bacon / gammons / hams, I decided that I could just about manage the other half. She was growing very quickly anyway. Could be something to do with a certain lady upping the pigs' rations without telling me! Anyway, she (the piglet, not my lady!) spent her last month on a diet, topped up with oodles of apple pulp from our cider making activities. At this time of year we get many donations of windfalls for the pigs - all most welcome.

So, back to that total panic on Friday. As usual I had picked up the pig from my butchers on Thursday afternoon. Half had gone off to a happy customer and the rest was for me to sort out. We still had quite a lot of pork joints left in the freezers, which really were bulging with the summer's harvest, so I decided to get the majority of our half pig turned into mince. This gave me the opportunity to ask the butcher to take out the whole tenderloin - something of a luxury.

And so it was that, on Friday morning, I set about the task of turning half a pig into pork burgers. I had an ambitious plan to make at least half a dozen varieties, and an even more ambitious plan to somehow find room in the freezers!

I set about peeling, chopping, cooking, measuring, mixing and shaping. First came Red Pepper, Chili and Tomato burgers, then Curried Potato burgers. All the ingredients (bar some of the spices) came from the garden. Fortunately, I think, I tried one of the chillis before committing them into the mixture. Just the tiniest piece had my tongue tingling for the next hour!
Everything took time, but I carried on through the morning and by lunchtime I had knocked out a batch of Thai style pork burgers too.

Red Pepper, Chilli and Tomato pork burgers

I was doing OK, though I was a bit worried about the tiny amount of space left in the freezers. I would surely need to take an hour out of burger making just to reorganise the freezers and make some space. I started the next batch - Fennel, Apple and Coriander - when suddenly, and most inconveniently, the pager wailed into action.

THICK-BILLED WARBLER

... on Shetland Mainland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was it. My industrious day at home was turned upside down. The phone started ringing and I went into blind panic, running around like a headless chicken. I hastily worked out my options and booked a flight from Aberdeen. My phone was then pretty much non-stop for the next couple of hours - all while I was now desperately attempting to get the last two batches of burgers made. This might have been a little bit easier if it weren't for the fact that I have to go outside to get any form of acceptable signal here.

I don't quite know how I did it, but by the evening the burgers were done, in the freezers and I was getting ready to drive to York, where I would meet up with a fellow birder and head northwards towards Aberdeen airport, via Tebay where we would pick up another two mad souls.

I should say that Sue and I were due to be entertaining on Saturday evening. Fortunately everybody we know has come to expect this type of spontaneous behaviour from me at this time of year.

If all went to plan, while Sue was cooking and entertaining I would be getting on the overnight ferry from Shetland back to Aberdeen, hopefully having seen the bird.

And that last phrase most certainly could not be taken for granted. For, of the four previous Thick-billed Warblers to be found in Britain, none had been twitchable on the second day. Add to that the fact that I'd already made two unsuccessful trips to Ireland during the previous week, and you will see why us twitchers sometimes get a little twitchy!

I had intended this blog post to be exclusively about burger making, but as usual my best laid plans have been interrupted by a bird. So here's my account of the twitch. I'm afraid there are no photos - I wanted to avoid having to check any luggage onto the plane so the camera had to stay at home.

I won't describe the drive up to Aberdeen - it takes a long time but I was at least able to get a bit of sleep. I did my fair share of staying awake to keep the driver going too.
We arrived at the multi-storey car park at the ferry terminal at about 6.30am. The plan was to get a taxi from there to the airport, which we had booked en route, so that we would be able to get straight off the ferry and into the car when we returned. However, £45 for parking just over 24 hours seemed like a rip off so we cancelled the taxi ( for which they seemed to have no record of the booking anyway!) and drove to the airport car park. The one small benefit of booking last minute is that you always have to buy the expensive (but exchangeable) tickets, which gives the perfect opportunity to lower the tone in the executive lounge! I hit the espresso coffee machine and the cakes while Danny Boy started his celebrations a little early!
But this was nothing compared to when the north-eastern twitchers arrived. They did their best to recoup their air fare in cakes, biscuits and miniature drinks cans! It was very good to see so many familiar faces. It's a funny old game is twitching. You meet the same group of people from all over the country, but you never know where or when you will all meet up next. It is usually on a plane or a boat though.
Everybody was excited, though I have to admit I was slightly in fear of a third major dip in a row. So it was with relief that we received a phone call before boarding the plane that the bird was still present.
The night before it had been seen by quite a few birders already on Shetland, but apparently most views had only been of the bird in flight. Although Thick-billed Warbler is large and distinctive as far as little brown jobs go, it's still not ideal to see any lbj only in flight. We also knew that the bird was skulking in an oat crop and that no access to the crop was being allowed. So we most certainly were not counting our chickens... or our TBWs for that matter!

As we landed it was a race to get off the plane, through the airport and into our hire car, before Dan raced the few miles to Geosetter. We left the car parked as sensibly as we could and approached the field where maybe thirty or forty birders were already looking to get views of the bird.
For maybe an hour or so there was nothing. This sure would be a major hit to take if we had made it all the way here and failed to see the bird, especially knowing that it was in the field in front of us. We had been told in no uncertain terms that the farmer would not allow anyone to access the field so, having waited patiently, Plan B was put into action. As soon as the drizzle stopped and the sun almost came out, a recording of Thick-billed Warbler was played and OOOMF!! It wasn't long at all before the bird briefly flew above the oats towards its perceived fellow lost soul. It was fairly obvious what it was - it couldn't really be anything else, but a better view would most certainly be appreciated.

We then stood for a further 90 minutes with nothing to entertain us apart from an occasional flight over the oat crop by a blackcap and a couple of diminutive yellow-browed warblers flitting around. This really was very frustrating indeed.

But then the rather brash, self-appointed organiser of twitches on Shetland appeared having spoken to the farmer. He had permission for two people to walk through the field.
An anticipatory crowd headed up to the far end of the field and waited with bated breath. It wasn't too long before the quarry was flushed out and again made a short flight over the crop.
This happened a few more times, until I had what I refer to as a 'jigsaw tick'. I had seen enough bits of the bird on my various views to piece the whole thing together. The bird did at one stage leave the field, only to dive into the thick willow growth which filled the adjacent burn. Unfortunately the crowd was too twitchy and 'edged' forward too impatiently, which resulted in the bird heading straight back into the field!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, with patience we eventually got extended views of the Thick-billed Warbler in flight and in the binoculars. The stubby, thick bill, the open facial expression and beady eye and the long, graduated tail all combined to make it a most distinctive bird, even with only flight views.
It would have been nice to explore a little more of Shetland and to see some more of its birds, but this bird was a skulker which had led us a merry dance all day and before we knew it we had to head back to the ferry terminal in Lerwick. There was just time to burn my tongue on a hastily consumed fish and chips in the harbour before we boarded the ferry and began washing our meal down with a few celebratory drinks. Some were thirstier than others, Dan!!!

So that was it, from burgers in a fenland farmhouse kitchen to a thick-billed warbler in a far-flung corner of Britain.