April 3rd – This morning in the garden there were two robins, long-tailed tits and the starlings were clicking up on the roof.
April 10th – some late afternoon sun brought out the bees and a 7-spot ladybird. Unfortunately I didn’t get very clear photos of the bees so not sure which ones they were! I still find them confusing.
April 11th – This evening I got a chance to take a short walk around the field. The male fallow deer were located out in the centre of the field, I think they are starting to get used to me as they don’t react too much now. I was hoping I would start to find some flowers in the field but its either too early or too many herbicides have been sprayed so they haven’t had a chance to develop yet. I did find a lone lesser celandine. In the garden there is a male goat willow tree, in the field down near next doors garden, is what I believe to be a female goat willow.
The birds that nest around the house have been much more visible around their nest sites, the jackdaws are in the chimneys and the starlings are taking nesting material into the roof 🙂
There was a bee checking out holes in the garden wall this evening, it has taken me a while to figure out, but I have finally narrowed it down to being a hairy-footed flower bee. The first one I have ever seen 🙂
April 15th – this morning I found my first brimstone moth, just sat on the wall outside the front door!
April 18th – Whilst tidying the raised bed I noticed all the small creatures starting to appear in the vegetation. The first one I spotted was apion frumentarium, next up was a tiny dark bush-cricket (Pholidoptera griseoaptera) and then a clover mite. My last discovery of the day was a phalangium opilio spider. I had never seen any of them before so this evening I had to do some research into what they all were!
Now I seem to have missed the nesting season this year! I don’t know how; has all just happened earlier this year? or have I just been occupied with growing plants and missed it? today I saw a starling take food into his nest! Tomorrow I aim to pay a little more attention and train my camera on the nest hole to see exactly what is going on.
April 19th – The starlings are 100% feeding in the nests at the back of the house, I watched both parents visit one after the other. They both had at least two items of food in their beaks.
There were more 7-spot ladybirds in the garden this afternoon and an orange-tip butterfly landed on the garlic mustard 🙂
April 20th – today I was concentrating on concreting the patio, however I couldn’t miss the common frog that hopped out of a hole underneath the raised bed and off across the patio. He had been disturb as I had put sand over the top of him as I was filling in a hole and I hadn’t seen him! I moved him up next to the small pond so he could hide under the plants.
April 21st – there was a moth on the window, a Lunar marbled brown (Drymonia ruficornis). I got out in the field for a walk this morning. I heard my first cuckoo of the year – it is so nice to know he has returned safely. I didn’t notice a lot of other birds, I don’t know if it was because I seemed to be noticing the insects or they just didn’t seem to be about. I did have a companion with me who does make more noise than me when walking so it could have been a factor! I did hear a woodpecker drumming.
Since I have been following #Wildflowerhour on Twitter my botanical skills have improved greatly. It is nice to be able to identify my finds without now having to spend hours trying to figure out what they are! I want to take note this year of what is growing in the field so that next year I might be able to add to the population by growing them from seed and planting them out. Today I identified, ground-ivy, red dead-nettle, cuckooflower and garlic mustard in the copse. I was pleased to see the amount of garlic mustard there was as I know in the copse it won’t be cut down when the crop is harvested, hopefully it also explains the orange-tips who were darting around close by. I need to go for a wander amongst it to see what else is growing in there!
The time I save not having to look up flowers is definitely spent on the insects and arachnids! After a lot of work identifying (I hope correctly) I found; Helophilus pendulus, Cucumber spider, Corizus hyoscyami, nomada sp. unknown, Nursery Web Spider, notostira elongata, Eupeodes sp. unknown, Pied Shieldbug (Tritomegas bicolor) on host plant white dead-nettle, Yellow Dung Fly (Scathophaga stercoraria), Flesh Fly (Sarcophaga carnaria), what I think is a pterostichus cupreus eating a harpalus affinis, Peacock butterfly and my first Dark-edged Bee-fly (Bombylius major) of the year!
When walking back up past the copse the fallow deer appeared in front of us. They decided that is was safe enough to run out of the copse and into the field stopping a safe distance away. I like these types of encounters 🙂
April 24th – I’m sure I saw a swallow this evening; I don’t think I was imagining it but it was only a fleeting glimpse. I happened to take a photo of the garlic mustard and only noticed afterwards that there is a orange-tip egg on it 🙂 I hope we have some more. It is nice to know that all I am trying to do with the garden is helping some of the garden visitors.
April 25th – The starling chicks at the front of the house have started calling – across the garden and the neighbouring house I think there are now three starling nests with calling chicks.
April 29th – The field was being sprayed when I got there this evening; I assume with pesticides. The male fallow deer who were resting in the middle of the field didn’t move until the machinery was two runs away from them. They ran off but then stopped short of the copse, they eventually disappeared. The starlings are still calling and I heard the cuckoo again this evening 🙂
February 24th – the trailcam was put out over night in the field, the plan was to try and find out what was using the holes in the field as home (I assume rabbits). Nothing came out of them, there were however a few visitors that passed by – fox, roe deer and possibly 2 badgers… or one that walked the same route a couple of times! 
February 25th – I decided seeing it was a sunny afternoon to head out in the field to look around. Now I don’t normally see any other humans at all, however it being a Sunday afternoon I saw three!! Which might explain why I saw less than the normal amount of wildlife! Note to self – only go on the weekend if its really early! Along the north hedge I saw more than normal (no other humans there!) 5 starlings, 2 house sparrow and a blue tit, there were other small birds flitting around but they were hard to see darting into the hedge so I can only assume they are more of the same. I know that there are tree sparrows in the area but I am yet to see any here. 
Walking along the river I saw 2 of the humans, 2 mute swans and I heard both a moorhen and robin. I still haven’t been able to have help to go and collect the litter, good news is its still there and hasn’t washed away! I’m still unsure if the ‘land’ its on is actually stable to stand on! 
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! 
For a change of scenery on Boxing Day I headed to 
This visit though was about Squirrels, Red Squirrels. After I had paid the landing fee on entrance to the Island I was talking to one of the grounds keepers who told me he had seen Squirrels around the church the day before. Of course I headed straight to the wood behind the church and 5 minutes later I was watching the first Red Squirrel of the day 🙂 If you plan to go and take photographs then I found the light was much better in the morning in this area. While looking out for the Squirrels I also managed to spot my first Treecreeper 🙂
I was a little happier on the boat on the way back and even kept my camera out to take a few pictures of Poole Harbour. Seeing I was at the coast it was fish and chips for dinner which I ate surrounded by rather cute Black-headed Gulls, who patiently waited at my feet to see if I was going to feed them. They wanted chips though and not the bird food I went and got for them from the car!
Day 1 – I arrived at 
After booking into the campsite I took a walk along the cliff top from the site. I didn’t get too far as there had been a fairly recent landslide and I wasn’t 100% confident about carrying on! I did however see a Puffin 🙂
A nice man pointed out to me that there was a Bridled Guillemot just along the cliff, I thanked him and went to look for it. I wasn’t entirely sure what a Bridled Guillemot was but he had told me that it had the white marking on its face, like it was wearing glasses. Guillemots all have this marking though most are black, Bridled shows up as white.
Day 3 – One great thing about camping is waking in the middle of the night and seeing the sunrise.
