A year ago this April was my first visit to my patch and my first blog about it. The year seems to have flown by far to fast!
Now daylight saving has occurred and Spring has finally arrived, my evenings are filled with visiting the patch or garden after work when time allows – the garden has been top of the list because I want to get the wildflower seeds in!
April 5th – The starlings and jackdaws were all collecting nesting material and flying up to the roof. I need to try and locate where they are all nesting in the roof. I’m sure the jackdaws are using the chimney and facia boards as they did last year but need to do more research on the exact location of the starlings.
April 9th – Two mute swans flew in to graze and a rook landed on the bird feeder. It’s the first rook I have seen land in the garden area. I am surprised that the mute swans are still about, although low in numbers now. Last year they didn’t stay as long, though it was a different crop in the field. I can only assume they will visit as long as there are shoots to graze on.
April 10th – I put the trailcam out last night after thinking I had identified hedgehog feceas in the garden, I was correct 🙂 There are also loads of baby snails in the garden; feasting on the cyclamen leaves.
April 12th – I went to put some food out for the hedgehog and discovered that he had already found some!
There are definitely jackdaws in the roof, you can clearly hear them chattering through the ceiling of one of the bedrooms 🙂 the occupant of the room isn’t so pleased about it! I wish I lived there, it would be lovely to wake up to them chattering every morning.
The trailcam footage from the garden showed that the hedgehog feeding station isn’t really working…
At least we now know that a fox is visiting the garden! It explains where the cat food dishes have been disappearing too!
April 19th – The deer were in the field first thing, barely noticeable in the rape.
April 20th – I took a short walk in the field this afternoon, to be honest it was a bit too warm to be doing so. The oil-seed rape has sprung up since the weather has improved which does mean it looks very pretty now. Along the field margins are many 
wildflowers; dead red-nettle, etc The stinging nettles which are now great in number are camouflaging the rabbit holes rather well! I know this as I managed to put my foot down one, thankfully it had been dug out at an angle and not a direct drop! I may have to tie ribbon to the hedgerow to mark out where they are! There were bee-flies, and numerous butterflies; brimstone, small tortoiseshell and peacock all of whom didn’t want to sit still for long enough for a photograph, when they did they kept their wings firmly shut! There were also some white butterflies in the distance but I couldn’t clearly identify them. I could hear the pheasant calling down the bottom of the field, he is quite vocal these days. In the hedgerow I could see house sparrows and blue tits, while woodpigeon’s and crow’s were flying over overhead. On my walk back I didn’t fancy my chances with the rabbit holes so walked along the track just the other side of the hedgerow, the deer were grazing in the next field over 🙂
April 24th – there was a toad in the garden.
April 25th – a starling took a leaf under the roof tiles, a different location to where I noticed them the other day.
April 30th – a jackdaw was sat in the tree with a beak full of fur! I heard my first cuckoo of the year 🙂
Over Easter I spent a morning in the garden tidying, there was a lot of leaf litter that had been left decomposing over Winter. When I lifted it there were a lot of creatures scurrying around. Although a lot of it was removed I also used some of it at the base of a basic log pile I started to create. I have put it in an old wooden plant pot so it can be moved if necessary. There was a lot of rubbish in the garden and turning over a car mat I found a centipede (Cryptops parisi), I was quite excited as I have never found one before! I moved it to the log pile for safety. 
March 1st – So today it snowed! Work decided to send us all home, which to me was a great idea especially seeing when I got to the patch there was a fieldfare in the garden 🙂
March 2nd – Today I focused on the garden birds, mainly because the bird bath needed defrosting five times! The fieldfare had been joined by two others which meant I had to start strategically distributing the apple to keep them from fighting too much and wasting energy. There was plenty of apple to go round and they eventually all sat guarding their own piece. There were also three robin’s, I noticed that one has a ring. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take photos of it from enough angles to get a clear picture of the code. I don’t know if it was a resident or just visiting in the cold, but I will be keeping an eye out for it again. 
March 3rd – So I finally found out who lives in the holes in the field – rabbits! I spotted them over the garden fence, they stand out easier against the snow! I went out looking for snow tracks and discovered that four of the holes belong to bunnies. Its nice to know they are there even though I generally don’t see them. I guess it does explain the regular visits by the foxes seeing there is an abundance of food near the hedgerow. Each time I go out into the field I have been breaking the ice on the water troughs to give the larger mammals somewhere else to drink from. I was surprised to see a song thrush in the field on my way back, its the first one I have seen in this location, the fieldfare were also out defending their food. In the afternoon a brown rat started to appear at the base of the bird feeder. I know there are rats around here but I hadn’t seen one venture into the garden before. He would put his nose under the fence, have a look around, dart out, grab some food and dash back into the field. I don’t blame him seeing there were two cats roaming around. One of which does catch mice and leave them as ‘gifts’ especially in the summer! As I was watching the rat a red kite flew low over the house and away over the field.
March 13th – It was a sunny evening so I took the chance to take a short walk in the field. As soon as I walked through the gate I saw what I thought was a female pheasant in the distance, since then, looking at the image I’ve discovered it was a red legged partridge. The first one I am 100% I have seen there (February’s sighting was more of a guess). Walking along the top edge there were lots of roe deer and cat prints in the mud and the occasional clear fox print. There were 9 mute swans down in the dip at the bottom of the field, they were just about visible. I spotted a balloon in the field, so of course I had to collect it. I had to carefully tiptoe through the crop to untangle it from the plant it had wrapped itself around. At least it was away from the mute swans as I would have hated one of them to have got tangled in it. In the copse there was a lot of chattering, I think it was starlings but I couldn’t see any of them. It was lovely to just stop and listen to them. On the way back I noticed some red dead-nettle flowering near the gateway. 
The middle of April I decided to take a closer look in one of the hedgerows, it didn’t go to plan. I had company on my walk that isn’t the type of company that goes with looking for birds – a cat! My friend lives in one of the houses adjacent to my patch and has a cat that lives outdoors. She’s very friendly and decided that coming for a walk with me was the way she would spend her evening. I didn’t expect her to walk all the way down the track and into a copse with me, then walk all the way back! If I stopped to look at something she stopped and waited for me! All I saw was a Robin at the top of a tree and a Rabbit who was quite a distance away thankfully! 
