Nature notes

Today has been one of those days that makes me realise just how much I love living in the countryside. It was such a glorious morning, sun shining, not a breath of wind and the birds twittering away. I took Chrissie out for her usual early morning walk, along the burnside, up the farm road. I've noticed over the last couple of days that the fish are visible again up at the little bridge, I spend hours in the summer just watching them dart about in the pool under the bridge. There are little dippers darting around from stones to banking, just a flash of white breast as they disappear, and yellow pied wagtails bobbing about too.

I often hear woodpeckers both pecking away in the surrounding trees and making the distinctive chitting noise that is their call. As I was wondering back along to the cottage this morning I could hear a real birdie ding-dong going on in the trees, I thought as soon as I get close it'll fly away. But to my amazement here were two beautiful Great Spotted woodpeckers flitting about in the tree up above me, totally unaware of me and an audience of finches, blue tits, coal tits and others spectating! Wether it was a male and a female flirting or two males fighting over a tree I'm not sure but it was certainly entertaining!

Living the life we lead now constantly takes me back to my childhood, I was a real little nature boffin, always out pottering in the garden, bringing in poorly birds and animals to try and nurse them back to health. I was always in my element when we had pet lambs to feed, I often got up in the morning to find a lamb in the bottom oven of the Rayburn thawing out! Today I went back to being about eight years old again, I had come across a drying up puddle of tadpoles, a writhing mass of black jelly about to bake in the sun. So I returned with my bucket to rescue the tadpoles, putting some into our neighbours pond and some into my makeshift pond, a big blue plastic trug with rocks in the bottom and some pond weed will be gathered tomorrow for them to feed on. Fingers crossed they all turn into little frogs, but they'll need to stay out of the way of the chickens as they have a bit of a liking for fresh frog! Why is it that a supposedly grown up 30 year old can turn into a child for the day so easily? hmmmm......

I'm also going to let you into a little secret I have with my ducks, although I don't think they know that I know...............

One of the female apricot call ducks has gone off and made herself a little nest just up from the ford at the bottom of our garden. As of tonight there are 9 eggs in the nest and she has started to line it with feathers! It's close enough to the water so she can go and wet her feathers to keep the eggs moist while incubating them. The only problem is we don't want to leave her out overnight or she'll end up fox fodder. So, the plan is, once she starts to sit on them we will try moving her and the nest into our little broody coop, but to be honest I'm really not sure if she'll like us disturbing her and it may well put her off. If this is the case we've got a couple of broody hens waiting in the wings to take over, one of the French Cuckoo Marans and a Blue Laced Wyandotte. Hatching little duckings would be superb so watch this space........

I ended the evening planting some more seeds in the greenhouse, lettuce and rocket into some old guttering that we found behind the stables, another one of Sarah Ravens ideas!

Ooh, we also had our first customer today, a lovely lady who lives up the road from us on the next estate, she came and bought two dozen eggs! I managed to contain my excitement and refrained from asking if I could take a photo of her for on the blog, I am thankful for having a little bit of sanity every now and then.......................

L xx