Fea's Conquered

1st September 2016
Autumn is officially here. Things are starting to quieten down on the smallholding, which is a good thing as the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting windier and wetter.
Unfortunately I have to go back to work, not that I don't enjoy it, just that there are always other things to be doing.
I expect my life will be regularly interrupted by birding. At least I hope it will be, for this is set to be an active hurricane season which usually brings plenty of waifs and strays from across the water.

2nd September
With the weather charts showing a fairly strong system coming into the south-west hard on the heels of constant westerly and south-westerly winds, I decided to head down to Cornwall, taking the daytime drive option. Although the drive is more tedious and it wastes valuable daylight hours, it does guarantee a half-decent night's kip before a long day sat on the side of a cliff in the face of a gale and its attendant squalls.
I picked up Dan in Bristol and we arrived in Penzance just in time to check in to the Backpackers Lodge before heading out for an evening meal in The Dolphin, the pub directly opposite the quay where the Scillonian boat sails to the magical Isles of Scilly.

3rd September 2016 - A Day for The Notebook
An early start had us all set up and staring out to sea as the sun was coming up. Seawatching is a difficult skill to acquire and takes practice. I always find myself struggling to get onto other people's birds for the first hour or so until I get my eye in again. The birds are often very distant and frequently disappear behind the waves. It is unusual that you can see enough detail using binoculars so most searching is done through a telescope. The problem with this is that the sea is a very big place with very few landmarks. When somebody else calls out a good bird it can be very difficult to locate it for yourself.
Of course if it's a really good bird then this can be frustrating. If it's a really, really good bird then it's easy to panic when you've still not found it after about 20 seconds of desperately scanning the ocean.
The technique is to slowly move the telescope across the field of view and wait until the bird appears. Move too quickly and the bird could be behind the waves as you pass by it. Move too slowly and you'll only get one chance. If it flies under your field of view you'll miss it.
Strangely enough, distant birds are easier to get onto, for they can take twenty minutes or so to travel across the viewable ocean. Also the further you look out, the more sea you are viewing, even if the birds can be very distant indeed needing an experienced eye to identify.

Worse though are the birds which pass close inshore. They often get literally overlooked. I was recently seawatching at Pendeen in Cornwall when a Red-billed Tropicbird, a monster rarity, flew along the cliffs in front of fifty people and no-one saw it. The only reason we knew about it was that somebody sat elsewhere told us about it later. Fortunately I am one of the very lucky few who have seen this species in British waters.

The sea(bird)watching was good today. Any time you are hearing calls of "Large Shear" you know it is going to be a good day, for these amazing birds are totally unphased by the weather. Whatever it throws at them they simply glide and shear effortlessly low over the waves, hardly needing to flap their wings. A strong southwesterly blow is essential to ease them closer to land as they are pelagic birds. Squalls seem to help too. I think they just choose to skirt round them which sometimes lures them closer to land than usual.
This morning was a good day for "large shear(water)s" with about fifty Cory's Shearwaters, many coming unusually close to land and affording excellent views. There were Great Shearwaters too.

But what we were really hoping for was a Fea's Petrel (to be more accurate, a Fea's-type Petrel, for there is another very similar bird which could, in theory, occur here - but that is nit-picking). With a very limited population breeding on Cape Verde, it is remarkable that the occasional bird makes it into British waters and even more rarely gets seen from land. I had seen one previously from the west coast of Ireland, where they are possible to see with a lot of persistence. I spent over twenty days seawatching before finally glimpsing one near the horizon!

But from the English mainland Fea's Petrels are even harder to catch up with. There are just a few sightings every year. The best period for them is late August.
At the beginning of this year I decided I wanted to see one from land in England. I had two options. The whackiest was to start driving north if one ever got sighted from more than one point facing the North Sea, for very irregularly a rare seabird is tracked all the way up the coast.
The other was to head down to Cornwall every time the weather looked good during the summer holidays. I reasoned that Fea's Petrels often get seen when Cory's Shearwaters are in our waters. They don't associate with them at all, but maybe move under the same conditions.

One other thing about Fea's Petrels. They have a terrible habit of passing by when everything has quietened down on the seabird front and everybody has packed up and gone home.

Come midday the rain set in. Most people left but Dan and I and one other hardy Cornish soul battled on for another couple of hours. But there is usually a late morning and early afternoon lull in seabird passage. We got absolutely drenched and the lull brought no surprises, so we eventually gave up and returned to the car to blast the heating on and try to dry out a little.
Another thing about seawatching is that it is very difficult to leave while there is anybody left looking, for it just takes one moment for some mega rare bird to fly past. At least if nobody is left you are none the wiser!

We negotiated the flooded backroads of the Cornish peninsula back to Penzance, where we headed for the beach at Marazion where a smart juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpiper, fresh in from America, was performing well.
The rain and the wind had eased off by now.

Dan and I are persistent little blighters. We had gone to Cornwall to seawatch in the hope of striking lucky, maybe with a Fea's Petrel, maybe with something even rarer. It wouldn't matter if we didn't see anything in this league, for it is not often we get to go seawatching and see so many pelagic birds passing close to land.
So late afternoon we found ourselves sat back on the cliffs. At least we weren't getting soaked. There were only half a dozen of us there now to witness a reasonable passage of birds. Large Shears were still occasionally passing by. At about 5.50 one person left, wishing us all luck, but not too much! At 6 o'clock, apparently, somebody else left from a bit further up the coast.
At 6:04pm I was watching a Cory's Shearwater doing what shearwaters do best, shearing across the waves and steadily getting closer, when I heard some unusual noises from next to me.

Something like "woh, woh, woh" from Dan. I knew it was something good. Dan has younger, sharper eyes than me and if he's getting excited about a bird then it is very likely something good.
A couple of seconds later I was in that blind panic trying to find a FEA'S PETREL.
Worryingly, the bird was close in and already more than half way past. It had snuck under our scopes.
I pointed my telescope downwards, but I was seeing so little sea that the chances of getting on the bird were slim. In under a minute it would be round the corner and out of sight.
I decided to give it five more seconds and then switch to binoculars. But a that moment I just caught a bit of wing appear from behind a wave before losing it again. I was pretty sure it was the bird though, so I moved the scope slightly right, trying to anticipate the flight of the bird and suddenly there it was, majestically rolling from side to side as it sheared over the waves.

Not our bird, but the best picture I could find to approximate the type of view we got. 

Fea’s Petrel off Truro © Steve Arena

In reality it had only taken maybe five seconds to get the bird in view. I had got lucky. But it felt like five minutes. It was as close inshore as you could want a Fea's Petrel to be and was heading past at quite a speed. Watching seabirds is as much about overall impression and flight action as anything else, but this bird was close enough to afford the luxury of studying some of the plumage detail too in the short time we had to observe it. The underwing was very dark indeed, contrasting with a gleaming white belly. The upperwing and mantle (back) appeared a similar tone to the sea, just slightly darker, but it wasn't possible to make out too much detail with the views I got. Light conditions made it appear paler than usual. The mask and the bill are distinctive on this type of petrel. The first one I had seen in Ireland was so distant you could hardly even make out a head! But on this one the familiar head pattern was obvious. I knew too to look for a pale grey tail - at great distance this can make it look almost tailless from the upperside as it shears up into the air. But in reality it wasn't the plumage details that mattered. Gadfly petrels have a way of flying like no other and this was majestic to watch. In fact, their flight is closest to a "large shear" except they are nowhere near the size.

I had only been on the bird for maybe ten seconds when it flew under the only notable landmark in the sea off Porthgwarra, the Runnel Stone (actually a large buoy). It passed well inside this marker. Most seabirds pass just outside.
But one of the four people left was still not on the bird. With the bird being so close and passing by so quickly the Runnel Stone had come up out of the blue and by the time I called out that it was there it was past. Then all went quiet and we savoured our brief but close views of a Fea's Petrel passing the south-west tip of Cornwall.
After a total of less than a minute it was gone.
It was only at this point that we realised the fourth person had never got onto it. That just goes to show how easy it is to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity when you are seawatching. That's the appeal of it. You've got to be in the right place at the right time and looking in the right direction. If you get lucky, you see a bird which will be gone in a matter of minutes. But that's what puts the pressure on if someone else calls it out.

Sunday 4th September 2016
A good night's sleep and a switch to Pendeen this morning as the winds had switched to westerly. Pendeen is on the north coast of the peninsula and after a south-westerly blow all the birds which have been blown up towards the Bristol channel filter back down. Ideally a north-westerly wind keeps them near the shore as they pass by. A westerly is not bad either.

Seawatchers huddled up against the lighthouse wall at Pendeed

The offshore rocks at Pendeen at least give a reference point.

There were plenty of people in position as the day started pretty well with more large shears, though most were distant. Remarkably Dan had another possible Fea's Petrel, but it was ridiculously far away. I got onto the bird he was describing for just about three seconds and Fea's crossed my mind too, before Dan had called it, but  just couldn't get enough to make a shout. It was only as it was about to disappear out of sight that Dan felt he could shout it, though he had already called that he had an 'interesting' bird that looked like a large shearwater but was too small.
But this would have to remain as one that got away. Thank goodness I had seen the one the previous evening!
Even more astonishingly, not much later one of the Cornish stalwarts called Fea's again, but again he couldn't get enough on it to be completely sure and nobody else got on the bird.
That's seawatching for you.

Choppy seas - ideal!

As the early afternoon lull came upon us, we decided to head off via a Hudsonian Whimbrel (a long-staying American waif) in a nearby rocky cove. Then another detour to Davidstow Airfield on Cornwall's north coast, a huge disused airfield which sometimes attracts waders. Alas, today all it was attracting was quite a collection of weirdos who appeared to be stalking sheep and ponies!


By 5:40pm we were filling up with petrol near Taunton. I would soon be dropping Dan off in Bristol and would hopefully arrive home in The Fens before 10. That was until we got back in the car and it completely refused to start.
We had to push the car away from the petrol pumps and I called Breakdown Cover. I am no mechanic and neither is Dan. As we settled in for a long and frustrating wait, Dan searched his phone for a solution (Dan and his phone are completely inseparable, he is half human half phone). He asked me to lift the bonnet and there, in front of us, was a loose battery connector. Problem solved and thankfully on our way again.
I rolled back onto the farm at 9.30pm after a very satisfying weekend.

The next rarest seabird I need on my list is Little Shearwater. This is even harder to predict, but next weekend is bringing some pretty tasty weather into the south-west, so I could be heading that way again!

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!

A Cloud Tick

25th August 2016

Minipop ready for harvest

as soon as the tassles show

After my trips to Cornwall and Ireland, I needed to catch up on some harvesting. The Sweetcorn Minipop has harvested very well so far, but the later flush of cobs have grown differently, with larger kernels. They don't taste quite so sweet and the cores are slightly woodier, but as long as you catch them early they are still perfectly edible.






In contrast, the maincrop Sweetcorn has been very disappointing this year. Even in the polytunnel I only got about 0.5 cobs per plant. The cobs I did get, though, were huge and a real treat. Outside was a similar story. The plants never flourished and produced small, half pollenated cobs. It clearly wasn't the year for sweetcorn, not enough sun in May and June.

I've cleared all the corn from the tunnel now, which should let more light and moisture in for the crops I've underplanted.
I had lots more vegetables to harvest, but a tweet to 'get ready to hammer it to Spurn' had me heading off again. For the rumour quickly firmed up that a probable Yellow-breasted Bunting had been photographed there round about midday. Several hours had passed since then, but if I waited for further news it would be too late for me to get there.

Curlew Sandpiper at Frampton Marsh

So I started driving, but it wasn't long before a very rare Yellow-breasted Bunting turned back into a Corn Bunting, a British breeding bird. As I was close by, I considered it rude not to pop into Frampton Marsh, an excellent RSPB reserve just north of The Wash. I had great views of a Kingfisher and there were lots of waders, most notably large numbers of Curlew Sandpipers. I see these every summer when the waders pass through, but numbers this year have been exceptional affording good opportunities to really study the birds.


I was most impressed, however, by a strip of sunflowers underplanted with winter seed plants for the finches. I had tried to achieve something similar here on the farm, but sunflowers just can't seem to make it past the ravages of the slugs.







26th August 2016
Back into the polytunnel today as I spotted a few cucumbers hiding. In fact, more than a few!

The polytunnel tomatoes are doing brilliantly this year too. I've grown fewer plants but given them more space and more attention. This strategy has paid off as Sue today froze our 30th carton of tomatoes.
Some of the outdoor tomatoes seem to have made it past the blight too, particularly a variety known as Outdoor Girl which I am trying this year. We're having to pick them before they are fully ripe, otherwise the birds find them, but they ripen off nicely on the windowsill.

27th August 2016
Absolutely stunning views of a hobby today as it repeatedly swooped through the top paddock attempting to catch itself a swallow for lunch.
But it was totally eclipsed later in the day by a sky the like of which I've never seen. The weather was spooky, on the edge of a storm. The air was incredibly humid and still, but it felt as if something major was about to go down.
It was at this point that the Asperitas clouds appeared in the sky. I first noticed a strange inverted funnel looking like the precursor to an alien invasion. The sky then filled with clouds in strange wave formations. It was just like snorkelling under the sea and looking up at the surface.

Asperitas clouds are, I have since learned, the newest named form of cloud, only officially going on the list in 2015. I don't think that means they've only just started occurring, but I've certainly never seen anything like them before.

They were accompanied by rolling thunder and occasional flashes of lightening, but despite their menacing appearance the rain did not come... Not till about half an hour later when the sky darkened ominously and the heavens opened. So much rain fell so quickly that it started coming through the porch ceiling. I quickly scurried outside to clear the gutter. While I was at it I linked hosepipes to all the water butt overflows to collect as much rainwater as possible.

If I ever see asperitas clouds again I'll get ready for the downpour.

A Royal Flush

24th August 2016
The routine for twitching birds in Ireland is pretty well rehearsed now. Trouble is, the last four times I've done it have ended in failure, dipping the bird.
I waited for a mate from Norfolk then left my house at 8.30pm for the drive westwards towards Holyhead port, picking up another two birding friends along the way.
The ferry departs at 02:30 and you can get a 24 hour ticket which is quite reasonable if you share the cost. I prefer to do it this way as it means I can just chuck all my stuff in the car and go.

It always seems slightly crazy that two companies run ferries on this route yet they choose to have virtually identical schedules, resulting in chaos at the port. Queues were particularly long tonight - we later found out that the road to Holyhead had been closed earlier in the day causing many vehicles to have to switch ferries. We hadn't pre-booked the ferry and it took a full ten minutes for the woman at the ticket booth to issue us a ticket. By this time the cones had been put across and we had an uncomfortable wait while it appeared everybody had forgotten all about us.

We finally received the go ahead and by three in the morning we were steaming out into the Irish Sea. We had secured some reasonably cosy seats in the old restaurant area with enough space to stretch out. Our wallets never stretch to a cabin, not for a three hour crossing. Besides, I was far too hyperactive to sleep much.
The crossing was dead smooth and I did manage to grab almost an hour's sleep, despite Neil's snoring, before we were driving off the other end into Dublin City... well, I say driving, it was more of a crawl as all the lorries from BOTH ferries got off before us.

By 7.30am we had news that the Royal Tern was still there. We were through Dublin and doing unmentionable speeds across Ireland towards the west coast. It was just before we reached Limerick that news came through the bird had been pushed off the beach by the rising tide - we always knew this was a likely scenario. We were a bit gutted, but there was still a fair chance the bird would reappear as the tide dropped again. Fortunately it was frequenting exactly the same area as an Elegant Tern I had seen three years ago, so we knew the places to check out.

The Elegant Tern has stuck it out for eleven days - that's about ten more days than any Royal Tern has ever stuck around for! I had previously had two near misses with Royal Tern but others making the journey were up to seven or eight attempts! Royal Terns have a nasty habit of spending the evening on a beach and buggering off out to sea overnight. You need to be close by when they're found.

As the day wore on we began to lose hope. Us twitchers are by nature a pretty determined and persistent bunch. We must, I guess, be fairly optimistic too, or we wouldn't try, but I always like to retain a healthy dose of pessimism. That way you get more pleasant surprises than ugly let-downs.
There were basically two parts of Beale Strand where the Royal Tern had chosen to hang out, but we knew of a further two parts of the estuary further east where terns liked to hang out, both at the end of very minor roads. So that was four places to keep checking. At least it kept us moving.

As we walked the length of Littor Stand for the third time we were now considering whether to leave in the next hour to get back for the evening ferry or whether to give it all day and catch the overnight. We were all still quite chipper all things considered. There would be another chance at Royal Tern. Maybe we'd need several more chances but in the end we would catch up with one, probably.
It was now three in the afternoon.

Then Dan got a call. IT'S THERE. West Beach.
We scuttled back to the car and covered the couple of miles along narrow country lanes at alarming speed. As we screeched into the car park we could see a line of twitchers on the beach. We left the car in the middle of the car park, grabbed our optics and ran off down the slipway and across the wide, sandy beach. My summer footwear was not well suited to running and bouncing between the salty puddles but right now it didn't matter.

Twitchers lined up on Beale Strand. I had to cut half the picture as Dan decided to moon the camera!

There were maybe twenty twitchers lined up, scopes pointing toward a group of gulls and terns on the sand at the water's edge. The worst thing that could happen now would be that they all fly up and I fail to pick up the Royal Tern as they all disappear into the distance. Though unlikely, this sort of thing does happen, so I aimed for someone else's scope for that first, vital view.
And there it was. A giant tern with a large orange/yellow carrot for a bill.

It was, of course, never in doubt that we would see the bird!

The poor thing had an injured leg, confirming that it was the same bird which had been seen a few days before further up the coast. It sat on the beach, occasionally lifting up to shift position in the flock. Often it was on its own. The line of twitchers edged forward for closer views. At one point the bird flew right along in front of us. That giant bill almost seemed to weigh down its head as those long, slender wings and surprisingly slow wingbeats took it gliding past us.

We shared about half an hour with the bird before it seemed right to leave it be. If we left now, we should be able to make the evening ferry.

And that's what happened. I managed another one hour's sleep on the ferry (would have been more but we had three very loud natterers sat near us) and rolled back onto the farm a few minutes before five in the morning. 32 hours. 2 nights. 2 hours sleep. 2 boats. 900 miles driving. 1 Royal Tern.
The list now stands on 517.

Storm Chasing

Arthur's thinking "You're not off again, are you?"

Sorry, but don't expect to read much about smallholding in this post, for I've been busy scooting around the country chasing rare birds again while the marvellous Sue has been looking after things on the farm.

19th August 2016
A day at the Birdfair
Every year the birding community gets together over three days at Rutland Water Birdfair. I tend to make it a rule not to go as it represents to me the commercial side of birding chasing the all too grey pound. On the other hand, lots of people I know work for such companies so it is a good chance to meet up with people from far and wide. It raises a lot of money for environmental charities too, though fifteen quid per person seems a bit steep for the privilege of going into a giant outdoor shop.

Anyway, there was a reason for going along today as I had decided it was time for a new pair of binoculars, my 50th birthday present from Sue. It would be a good chance to compare them side by side and hopefully to get a show bargain... or so I thought. As it happened service from all of the companies was pretty poor, especially considering the amounts being spent. Unfortunately all competition is eradicated with pre-Birdfair deals which mean that only certain exhibitors get to sell certain brands. The result is that, although everybody is in one place, the big companies concentrate their efforts on making as many sales as possible while providing as little personal service as possible.

Anyway, I am quite capable of choosing my own binoculars, but bearing in mind how much I was going to spend I drafted in a couple of mates to help me with the decision.
Overall I had a pretty good day, but I'm not sure I'll be going back for a good few years yet.

20th - 21st August
Seabirds galore
There's no better time to visit Cornwall than in a howling gale! So last night I travelled down to a cliff near Lands End where, at the crack of dawn, I set myself up huddled in the face of the wind and rain, scope pointing out to sea. Fortunately it was not my turn to drive this time, so I felt relatively fresh. The stiff breeze soon made me feel fresher.
For suitable summer gales only happen a couple of times a year. They bring seabirds, normally living a pelagic life far away from land, within view. Specifically they bring ideal conditions to see tubenoses, that's shearwaters, petrels and even an albatross if you get very, very lucky (and a few more verys).
I didn't take my brand new binoculars, since taking them out into  two days of salty sea squall would have been a baptism of fire for them, not that they shouldn't be able to cope easily with such conditions. Anyway, the birds come within sight of land but they don't exactly dance right in front of you, so most viewing is with a telescope at fairly long distance.

St Michael's Mount, Cornwall

I won't bore you with the detail, but during the morning, as well as ubiquitous gannets and fulmars which are regular fayre, we were lucky enough to see about 80 Cory's Shearwaters, a bird which breeds in colonies in The Canaries, Madeira and The Azores. I have probably only seen these birds about a dozen times so a relatively large passage is a privilege to see and a rare opportunity.

Come lunch time the winds swung round slightly and the procession of seabirds dried up. It was time to move to the north coast of the peninsula, where Pendeen offers slightly closer viewing and often more variety of seabirds. Here we had plenty of storm petrels, tiny little storm waifs which patter over the water. How such a delicate bird survives in such a wild environment is one of nature's wonders. There were Sooty and Great Shearwaters too, birds which breed in the Southern oceans before making a huge migration into the North Atlantic every year.

22nd August
More grandchicks for Elvis
Back on the farm and a recovery day after my Cornish exploits. Highlight of the day was undoubtedly two new chicks, hatched out by Priscilla, daughter of Elvis, who we allowed to sit on a few of the eggs she laid in the turkey stable.
We also finally got our TV aerial fixed after nearly six years. We now have the shiniest new aerial in The Fens and hundreds of useless channels not to watch.







23rd August
Here we go again!
Remember my tales about Royal Tern in my last post?
Well it's back, just down the coast. And this times plans are afoot to go for it. I'll be leaving at 8.30 tonight, picking up people in the Midlands and arriving in Holyhead in time for the 2:40am ferry.
We should be on site in South-West Ireland by about 9 tomorrow morning. Hopefully the bird won't do another vanishing act overnight, though the past record of Royal Terns indicates otherwise...
I hope to be back on he evening ferry, mission accomplished.

Creamed Honey and a Freezer Spreadsheet

13th August 2016
Preparing for winter
Sue was with the West Norfolk Bee-keepers today, focusing on preparations for winter! Taking the advice of people with years and years of experience, she is going to combine the two weaker colonies. Between them they probably have one laying queen and hopefully they will unite and get strong enough to make it through the winter. After a difficult year, if we can get two colonies through the winter it will be considered a satisfactory outcome.

Outdoor Toms a Losing Battle with Blight
While Sue was busy doing that, I was doing my best to save a few outdoor tomatoes. Despite my best efforts to remove leaves and whole plants if necessary at the first signs of blight, I continue to have to chop the plants smaller and smaller. Blight just keeps creeping steadily forward. I'm taking tomatoes off the plants as soon as they show any signs of blush and ripening them on the kitchen windowsill. This saves them from the unwanted attentions of mice and the turkeys too! Growing tomatoes outside is a bit of a lottery. Several years ago we had pounds and pounds of outdoor tomatoes, but since then we have had very little harvest. I really must get the greenhouse up this winter so I can grow the vast majority indoors from now on.

Sow Thistles for the Sheep
Once I'd done this I moved the sheep down to the very bottom section of field where the grass is waist high and the sow thistles grow thick. The sheep love sow thistle, even if it means their fleece gets wallpapered with the prickly stems and leaves. They will knock it back in no time.
One didn't want to go and was a complete pain. At least it gave me some exercise.

Freezer Spreadsheet
Best job of the day though went to Sue, who compiled a list of all the food in our many freezers. I then put this on a spreadsheet. Now this may sound more than a bit OCD, but it's easy to lose food at the bottom of the freezers. Despite pickling, dehydrating, vacuum-packing and making preserves, many of our fruit and vegetables and most of our meat still ends up going into the freezer. At this time of year there is more going in than coming out, despite our best efforts. The spreadsheet means we can keep track of what's in there and make sure our cooking is planned around using up the oldest food first.

14th August 2016
Creaming Honey
The first honey of the year is always rape honey. It sets absolutely concrete solid. This year Sue siphoned it into large buckets with a plan to turn it into creamed honey, a much more versatile product. To achieve this, the set honey needs to be very gently warmed, so as not to destroy all its health-giving properties. The dehydrator works perfectly for this. Then it is just a matter of attaching the honey creamer to the drill and agitating for at least five minutes.

Softened rape honey

The resulting product tasted delicious. We're just hoping that it has worked and it does not reset.

15th August 2016
An Excursion into the Modern World
A trip into Wisbech. I don't get off the farm very much and a couple of pieces of modern technology caught my attention. Firstly, new gizmos at the pedestrian crossings and secondly a machine in the bank which automatically reads cheques, adds them up and issues a receipt including a copy of the cheques. It seems the modern world advances a little more each time I leave it for a while!
One thing about living in a fairly remote setting is that you can't pop into town every time you need one thing, otherwise the petrol cost would often be significantly more than the cost of whatever you are buying. So we tend to save up a list of things to do in town.
We were also meeting up with someone near Wisbech to sell all of this year's honey! (we just kept a couple of jars back for ourselves). Unfortunately Sue only collected about 50 jars this year as only one hive was consistent enough to collect from.

16th August 2016
Most of the day was spent making the place look spick and span for tomorrow's gathering of the Grow Your Own group. The grass got a cut as did my hair, for the first time in a long while. It has gone from a weedy patch of overgrown grass and sow thistles to a neatly mown lawn, without the lines - I'm talking about my hair. I don't really do things in half measures.

Royal Tern Dip still hurts
It seems that every day I get the ride-on mower out, there is a MEGA bird to interrupt proceedings. Today's news was of a Royal Tern on the west coast of Ireland. I have bad memories of Royal Tern. There has only been one record since I have been seriously twitching. It appeared at several sites in North Wales on 15th June 2009, ending up sat on Black Rock Sands beach from 8:47pm until dark, last reported at 10:32pm. I turned up in the very early hours of the morning and slept in the car. In the morning it was gone, only to reappear four days later off Llandudno beach, where it flew up and down, occasionally disappearing round the corner for short periods, from 3:25pm till 6pm, five minutes before I arrived! When I turned up I was told "It's just gone round the corner, but don't worry, it's done that a few times. It'll be back soon." Well it didn't come back. Apart from one brief apparent sighting late in the evening, that was it. Gone. That dip hurt.

So, back to today's sighting. Should I get in the car and head for the ferry to Ireland, letting down the whole Grow Your Own group, or should I be patient and see what the bird gets up to in the next day or two? Had it been this side of the water, I would have been straight in the car without hesitation, but as it was I decided to hang on. After all, I had just spent the whole day getting the place looking nice for my visitors.
The rest of the evening was a nervy one though.

17th August 2016
Well, the Royal Tern was briefly seen for a couple of minutes early in the morning and then disappeared. I wouldn't have seen it had I gone last night, so I got lucky on this occasion.

Back on the farm, there were six buzzards in the air at once today, making use of the sunny weather and the light breeze to soar and hunt the freshly harvested fields.
There were four Grey Partridges (aka English Partridges) in the field at the back of me today. These are getting very scarce indeed now, just another of our farmland birds which is in steep decline.

Grow Your Own group
In the evening I had the Grow Your Own group round. The discussion subject for today was Flowers In The Veg Garden. Top Of The Crops was Potatoes. For this, we focus on one crop, looking at how to grow it, best varieties, pests and diseases and what to do with it when it is harvested. Everybody is encouraged to bring along a dish to share and I was trying my hand at Bombay Potatoes. They turned out very nice indeed and I will certainly be making them again. I'll probably make a big batch and freeze some ... if there is ever spare space in the freezers! Others brought along an Irish Colcannon type dish, a potato, ham and cheese bake and there was even a cake which contained potatoes. All very tasty and a great evening was had by all. We even managed to sit outside and my redcurrant and raspberry sparkling cordial was enjoyed by all.

18th August 2016
Rain At Last!
A rest day today but the rain was very, very welcome indeed, much needed outside. The wind that came with it was not quite so welcome.

Smart new dogs

10th August 2016

Boris, like a certain one of his owners, likes to be scruffy and likes getting dirty. His favourite activity (not shared by his owner) is to find a nice juicy patch of goose poo and to roll around in it, or even better a dead animal.
Arthur, despite being younger, is more refined, but he is cursed by wiry hair with a fair scattering of grey which makes him look much older than he really is.

But today, for the first time ever, Sue took them off to the groomers. At midday she returned to the farm with two new dogs.

They had clearly enjoyed their pampering session, though Boris was a little befuddled by his new hairstyle. Hopefully he will feel more comfortable in the hot weather though. Arthur was clearly most pleased with his new look and spent the day parading around admiring himself.

Boris asked me not to publish this picture

While the boys were away I ventured into one of the brassica patches. It was getting a bit weedy, though the pot marigolds and hyssop which I planted in between the greens were looking good. It wasn't the weeds that prompted me there, for I've been ignoring those for a while now. It was instead the sight of a calabrese head almost in flower. I walk past these everyday and should have been keeping a closer eye. Fortunately most of the other plants had good tight heads on which I harvested. I must remember next year that, unlike many of the other brassicas, calabrese is quick to mature and to give a crop.

11th August 2016
A massive weeding session today.

12th August 2016
A big step for the older group of Ixworth chicks today as they moved into a pen down with the rest of the chickens. There will be lots of new things for them to see and do and they will have to cope overnight without the heat lamp. They have plenty of feathers now and night time temperatures are not low so everything should be fine.
Sue took honey off the bees. It may be the last honey of the year as she needs to begin varroa treatment soon and the bees need to be left with enough honey for themselves in addition to what we steal from them.

Broad Beans Sleeping In A Blankety Bed...

August has been busy and at the same time not busy. Busy because there's been harvesting and weeding and mowing to be done, plus I've been trying to catch up on a few jobs like creosoting and mending chicken houses. Not busy because it's the holidays and I don't have to work every spare minute just to keep on top of things. It's been dry so the weeds and grass have slowed their growth. At the same time, some of the warm weather vegetable crops like the beans and squashes have really started to thrive. I've had the onions out drying too.

7th August 2016
Mowing today. It's so much easier if I can keep on top of it, but it still takes a good couple of hours.
Before I could mow I had to collect up the potatoes which had been laid out on the surface to dry before storage.

I was in a good mood today for Sue was due back from a little break in Italy. Apparently if she hadn't been there just at the right time this tower would have toppled over.

8th August 2016

Harvest.
Broad beans- time for all the broad beans to come out. The harvest is good but the plants are looking a real mess now.
I've grown them from saved beans for a couple of years now, Bunyard's Exhibition originally from a mixed pack of beans from Poundland! They've now given me three years of good harvests, so not bad value really. This year we got 6 large freezer bags full, once podded.
Unfortunately you used to get 30 beans for your £1 (plus some less useful dwarf and climbing beans and some peas). Now you only get 10.
Anyway, it's time for some new seed stock now, so I may change variety.
Climbing French beans
They've been a bit slow to get going this year, but we finally took a first small harvest of climbing French beans. The tastiest beans are the Cobras, but the seedlings were deformed this year and I almost abandoned them. In the end, I just threw the healthiest few plants into the ground and stuck a cane next to them. They are doing fine now and we'll probably get a decent harvest. Next year I'll invest in some new seed though.
I do like a waxy yellow French bean too and hunted high and low for a climbing variety. I eventually came across Kentucky Yellow Wax. Again, it's not been the most vigorous of plants but it has just started to crop. Hopefully the plants will thicken up and we'll get a bumper harvest by the end of the year.
Courgettes
The courgette crop used to be an officially classified threat to the human race! But last year I was struck by mosaic virus and courgettes are proving a real struggle to grow now. One of the forgotten principles of organic growing is to find the right variety for your conditions. Although more expensive, Courgette Defender has survived where others have failed and is now starting to give us a crop.
Sweetcorn Minipop
Sweetcorn Minipop, despite being grown just for its baby cobs, is a handsome and vigorous plant. Today we took the first harvest from the outdoor plants. 78 baby corn cobs. This variety has grown just as well outside as in the polytunnel, so next year I'll use the tunnel space for something else, probably more standard sweetcorn, which has been a little disappointing this year. I'm sure the cool weather hasn't helped, but even in the polytunnel the crop has been slim, though the cobs which have been produced are plump and delicious. Next year I'll have a change of variety though.

Pea trial not good
I find growing peas hardly worthwhile. Lots of effort protecting the crop and constructing a climbing frame for at best modest harvests. Add to that the destruction caused by pea moth larvae and I abandoned all peas apart from mangetout for a few years.
But this year I decided to grow an old traditional climbing pea in the hope that it would crop over a longer period. I purchased a pack of Champion Of England from RealSeeds.co.uk. They weren't cheap but would hopefully be worth the expense and I could save the seed from year to year. I sowed it at the back end of April to avoid the attentions of the Pea Moth.
So far so good. The plants germinated fairly well and started producing some very tasty peas. Up till this week I'd taken a few handfuls. It is important to keep harvesting peas so they keep producing, so today I expected to take my first significant harvest. How wrong I was! The plants had gone over already. All I could do was to leave the few pods there were to collect the seeds and have another go next year. What a disappointment.

9th August 2016

Our new neighbours had their hay baled today. It's good to see the hay not going to waste. They have a couple of rescue Dartmoor ponies which have not moved in yet. It will be nice to have some animals in the field.

Hay cut...

and baled.

As the baler chomped up and down the field, I chomped my way through the task of podding all the broad beans we harvested yesterday. If I see another broad bean!









It was a momentous day for the youngest batch of Ixworth chicks as they came outside for the first time. They'll go back into their cage with the electric broody overnight, but with the weather warm they hardly ever seek out the warmth it provides now.

The older chicks chilling out

Let there be light
For the past three months we've had no lights in the kitchen! Every time we turn them on they trip the switch. We have a good electrician, but he often needs several phone calls before pinning him down. So somehow we've just kept putting it off. We did call him a week ago, but our call has not been returned. We've finally trained ourselves not to switch on the light.
Anyway this morning we had a builder round to give us a quote for some other work. He gave us the number of a different electrician. At 5 this afternoon I came in from the garden to discover a very tall young man fixing the kitchen lights. He wasn't even stood on a chair. Even I can't reach the kitchen ceiling without climbing up on something.
We now have kitchen lights and it is amazing! The place is so bright. But we still hesitate before hitting the switch. We also now have a new electrician who has the decency to return our phone calls and doesn't make endless promises.