Monthly Archives: February 2012

Beaky and the Nest Boxes

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I’m back home safe and sound from my winter walking adventure in Yorkshire and Cumbria.  It’ll take a few days more to sort through all the photos and come up with some wordsandwordsandwords.

In the meantime …..

A few weeks ago, I posted some photos of blue tits using the bird feeders at the Priory.  After first uploading those photos onto my PC, I noticed some rather unsettling details about some of the birds.

For example, this blue tit has some kind of feather baldness (?) around its right eye.  Its missing some of its facial colouration and its customary black stripe – not that it seems particularly bothered.

I also had some photos of a great tit which frankly, are too gruesome to publish.  The poor thing had a  nasty cancerous growth eating up one side of its head.  Horribly disfigured,  it was still feeding happily enough (hence my photos of it on the feeder) but I do wonder how long it can survive such an affliction.  As if life wasn’t difficult enough for these little birds.

And then there was this chap.  When I first saw it on the feeder, from a distance, I thought, “How odd.  It’s using a stick to feed.”

But when I studied it later on-screen, I realised that the ‘stick’ was actually its beak.

It still manages to feed -

… mostly.  Otherwise, it seems healthy enough – though again I wonder how long it might survive with an accoutrement that can’t really be of benefit.  Hang on.  Unless, unless  it’s a new species?  Previously unknown to science, living quietly here in the Sussex Weald.   In which case I hereby name it Marsden’s Tit!  I shall be world-famous!

Thankfully, most garden birds seem to be in …

Robin

…robust …

Nuthatch

… and hearty …

Long-tailed Tit

… good health.

I spent my first morning back at the Priory cleaning out the nest boxes.  I’ve made eleven of these: an owl box, a robin/fly-catcher box and nine tit boxes.

This box, up by the greenhouse, was used last year

After an unfortunate incident with a grey squirrel (beastly creatures) two years ago, I fitted all the boxes with metal plates to stop dratted twitchy-nosed rodents from enlarging the hole and feeding on eggs and baby birds.  They seem to work a treat.

Six boxes in this photo. Can you find them all?*

Of the nine tit boxes, six were used last year and the other three had evidence of roosting (feathers and droppings).  I moved one of the unused ones as it was badly sited and I’m hoping for a better take up rate this year.  The robin box still hasn’t been used.  Humpf.

I also clambered up a very tall ladder (terribly brave, me) to examine the owl box that mandarin ducks used last year.  Inside on a bed of soft moss …

… was a lone addled egg (which I absolutely did NOT throw into Margaret’s field).  I never did see any baby mandarins so who knows what happened to them or the other eggs.   Underneath the moss was about five inches of foul-smelling gunk and twigs – an old pigeon nest.  I obviously forgot to clean out it out  last year.  The whole bucket of stinky waste that I removed had probably made the box too shallow for tawny owls anyhow (it should be about 32 inches deep).  There are so many owl pellets in the garden at the moment (more than I’ve ever seen before) and an abundance of vole holes and tunnels.  So come on Tawnies – you’re at the Priory, there’s tons of food.  Now just use the flipping box would you?

* Sorry, I meant five.

I Am Just Going Outside …

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… and may be some time.  Once a year (when things in the garden are quiet), I escape for a week or two and walk.  I walk and think and then I walk some more.  This year I’m off to walk the Dales Way; 80 miles through the Yorkshire Dales starting at Ilkley and finishing on the banks of Windermere in the Lake District.  I’m then continuing for an extra four days, (and about another forty miles), through three of the finest valleys in Lakeland: Langdale, Wasdale and Borrowdale.

Looking south from the flanks of Skiddaw, The Lake District - February 2010

I’ve pre-booked all my accommodation (ten different B&B’s, pubs and hotels) so if I get held up because of  heavy snow, I’m sunk!   I’ve got crampons to deal with ice but any really thick snow and I shall just have to burrow into a ‘drift and sit it out.  Think of me then, won’t you; stuck in a snow-hole, sipping (medicinal) brandy, nibbling dried apricots.  Telling myself jokes.  Singing Piaf.  Sobbing.

Either that (which I don’t much fancy) or else picture me sat  in front of a roaring pub fire, with a pint.  For days on end.  More likely.

Back in a while, hopefully.  Bye then.

A River Runs By It

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I scampered over to the northern edge of the Priory grounds the other day.  (I do quite a bit of scampering when no-one’s about).  Here, a small river forms the boundary to the estate.  In summer it can dry up almost entirely, leaving just a broken line of deep, shady pools; in winter it can be a raging torrent, threatening to burst its banks and flood the house itself.  (For some  reason the builders of the Priory chose to erect it on land that floods, rather than higher up on the sides of the valley.  Maybe the topography of the land was different five hundred years ago, though that is unlikely; maybe more extensive woodland held onto rainwater for longer, only slowly releasing  it into the river.  Maybe whoever built it just wasn’t very bright).

The river is low at the moment

In the north-western corner of the grounds a public footpath crosses a tumbledown, brick footbridge.  This was the main route from the Priory to the nearby village of Weydon Priors (not its real name), before the age of the motor-car.  Nowadays, the path is used only by dog-walkers* and ramblers, and I use the arch of this bridge as a gauge to check on how high the river level is;  should I blithely carry on with gardening duties or do I need to run about in a blind, shrieking panic because the house is in danger of flooding?

Leaning over the post and rail fence, I noticed that a branch had got wedged into the bridge arch and that around it a dam of leaves and twigs was forming.  With the through-flow impeded like this, the blockage will only increase.  Couple that with  heavy rainfall  and the bridge could soon act like a dam itself causing the water level to rise very quickly.  There was only one thing to do.  It was time.  Yes, it was time to pull on my waders.

Ta-daaah.

Resembling nothing so much as a giant romper suit, I use the waders when doing wet mucky jobs and to get out to the islands in the ponds.  Thankfully, I am one of those rare people  who can wear waders without looking preposterous.

Doh!

Half an hours work and I was able to clear the branch and all that leaf and twig.  Reminded me of playing in streams and building dams when I was a kid.  (I love my job).

Some of the trees that line the river are (a bit) Amazonian in size.  These mighty ash and oak can make me to do a double-take – they’re so flaming big.  It does worry me how the river, when in full spate, washes deeply away at their roots.  A couple of these giants have come crashing down already; luckily when there has been no-one about.

For now the river is running clear again.  If we get heavy rain over several days, and the fields about the Priory become saturated, the run off will swell the river and its level will swiftly begin to rise.  And I will need to keep a close eye on it.  Though truth be told, once the river gets to a certain level, and water starts running back up the ditches into the estate, there is precious little I can do about it.  Waders or no.  The house has flooded before and, one day, it most certainly will again.

It’s just a matter of time.

* My first experience of The Priory was walking my dogs along the same footpath, trying to peer through the beech hedge (not that I’m nosy); wondering about its history and who lived there and what the inside of the house might be like.  It is odd now to think back on a time when The Priory wasn’t part of my life and I didn’t know it intimately.

A Year Of Blogging

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The Anxious Gardener is one year old!  Hardly seems possible – but it is.  During the dark and cold days of January 2011, I began to think idly about starting a blog.  Didn’t know why particularly … still don’t.  But I did think that it might help my brain from atrophying (jury’s still out on that one) and also, I wanted to share the beauty of the Priory with others.  And so, after scratching my head and reading a handful of gardening blogs, I played around a little with blogger, scratched my head a little more and before I really knew what I was doing, I published my first post on 4th February 2011.

And what an amazing and (at times infuriating and maddening but generally) hugely enjoyable process it has been.  It didn’t even occur to me, when I started, that it would be so hugely time-consuming  or that I would ‘virtual-meet’ such a wealth of lovely people – from all over the globe.  Indeed, if I take only one experience away with me from this whole blogging malarkey, it would be this; that there is such a surprising number of very nice people about.  Read the newspapers, watch the news, commute, make obscene gestures at a crowd of football supporters  … and well, you’d never guess how damn decent the vast majority of people are.

To celebrate my twelve months of blogging, I thought I would re-visit some of my photos;  a few of my favourites, showing a range of subjects from the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 2011.  (Winter is a little too recent to re-visit just yet)!  Most have appeared on the AG before; but not all:

Perennial Sweet Pea - Lathyrus latifolius, June 2011

Ladybird on Alchemilla mollis, May 2011

View of the Long Borders from the west pond, April 2011

Red Admiral Butterfly - Vanessa atalanta, July 2011

Poppy with puppy Dora, August 2011

A different poppy; Opium poppy - Papaver somniferum, June 2011

Honeysuckle, May 2011

Arum lily - Zantedeschia, June 2011

Mandarin duck (very annoyingly) using the tawny owl box, April 2011

Hosta leaves and Forget-me-nots, May 2011

Grass Snake, September 2011

Daffodils and Snowflakes, April 2011

Echinops and visitor, July 2011

View of the Priory Gardens, September 2011

The Vegetable Beds, May 2011

Above The Old Forge, June 2011

Helenium, June 2011

Mixed hedging - The Priory/Margaret's Field Boundaries, April 2011

Hummingbird Hawk Moth, June 2011

Blackthorn in flower, April 2011

The Priory Drive running through Margaret's Wood, April 2011

Dragonfly, September 2011

Auricula, February 2011

One of the Kidney Beds, July 2011

Grass vetchling - Lathyrus nissolia, June 2011

(Vampire?) Hedgehog at The Old Forge, July 2011

The Priory Meadow, May 2011

California Poppy - Eschscholzia californica, September 2011

Who knows how long The Anxious Gardener might last (I certainly don’t) but, while it does, I would like to thank you and everyone else who visits and reads and, by doing so, encourages me to carry on.  Thank you.  Very much.

Desuckering Alders and Pollarding Willows

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At this time of year, I have to remove all the suckering growth from the alders and the willows that ring the ponds and line the ditches.  The suckers grow from the base of each of the alders …

… in the Priory gardens but they also grow from the stumps of felled trees.  These stumps are too close to the banks of the ponds to be removed by a stump grinder and even if I used a chemical stump killer (which I wouldn’t) it would be dodgy to use it so close to the water’s edge (there are fish in the ponds).  So the stumps remain and I cut off all their re-growth once or twice a year.  Some have, with this repeated removal, given up the ghost and I suspect the rest will too, in time.  Might be a long time but then I’m a very patient, anxious gardener.

Last year, I decided to leave some sucker growth uncut to see how it would develop.  And some of it I pruned; taking out weak spindly growth and pollarding the bigger, stronger stems.  One of my first posts was about this (see ‘Suckerin’ Succotash’).

This alder was one such that I pollarded last year (took off all the top and side growth leaving the central stems).  And the stems that I left have all matured a little and are a tad thicker than in March 2011.

I decided to do the same this year; a quick going over with the secateurs and just a framework of stems is left.

I rather like these ‘cages’ and so have repeated the process with several other alder and willow stumps on this, the far north-east corner of the east pond.

This is another one that I pollarded last year.

A few minutes work and the stems are cleaned back to the central leaders.  If they end up looking a little too odd, a little too weird I can easily remove them.

This willow has probably been the most succesful.  You can see clearly where I cut it back to last year and where the new growth has sprouted from.

A few minutes work (of faster-than-the-eye-can-follow and all-a-blur secateur work) and it’s reduced to a clutch of pollarded stems.

I will continue to pollard these stems each year and they will, in time, begin to swell and gnarl.  I do like the ‘cages’ these pollarded trees produce.  But what to use them for?  What to put in them?  In last years post, I thought that they might be used to imprison passing villagers.  Not to harm them, you understand  – just to give me someone to chat to.  It also occurred to me that they might be perfect for the fattening of children – for the pot.  Problem is:

a) I doubt this is legal

b) It is certainly immoral

c) There isn’t the demand anymore

d) Fat children are two a penny.

e) I don’t live in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ land.

And then it hit me.  The Priory Ghost!  (See ‘A Christmas Eve Ghost Story‘).  That’ll teach ‘im.  Running about the gardens and scaring people.  Ha!  Get out of that, pal!