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! 
photographing them, I was looking into the sun and there was a heat haze across the field – typical! I have never seen two hares together before and I was so surprised to see them. My attention was drawn away to the birds in the hedgerow, two robins that were hoping about having a slight territorial dispute and then to long-tailed tits in the top of the trees. Walking down the lower part of the copse towards the river I again spooked the roe deer. I hear them moving then normally see white bottoms bouncing off through the trees. I need to locate myself in the copse at some point to photograph them. My guess is there is normally two or three that run off. 
The river was full. It had obviously burst its banks recently as a patch of the field was a large puddle. I have never seen it that full before. It did look pretty with the sun shining and the neutral tones of the fields behind. Two swans flew over and later a cormorant. I heard a wren and a moorhen but didn’t see them. The holes that I have seen in the bank previously were fully submerged so if they were homes to any creature they were 100% flooded out. I was stood watching three goldfinch flitting between the trees, I turned round to find a hare metres from me. I slowly lifted the camera to take a photo but it was gone as soon as I moved a muscle, I hadn’t expected to see one right behind me! I estimate there were 3 to 4 hares in the field! As the river receded from its original flooded level it has dropped lots of plastic bottles along the rivers edge, I did think about trying to get them out, however, I was on my own and didn’t know how sturdy the bank was! I will take backup and fish them out next time I go. If the water level doesn’t rise again they look like they will remain wedged in the tree line.
Rather than walking round the field I walked back up the copse. Two wren were in the hedgerow and a blackbird was keeping a few meters ahead of me all the way along, I’d get close it would fly a little further along and the continued. I heard a bee, a queen buff-tailed bumble bee, it was buzzing along the side of the hedgerow.
January 30th – 31 mute swans were just on the other side of the fence, I didn’t have my camera so I took a quick photograph on my phone. I haven’t seen them that far up the field before. Hopefully they will be staying around for a little longer, I think they will still be there for as long as the crop is still sprouting. 
August 4th – The starlings are growing, and becoming noisier by the day. They are becoming rather bossy!
On May 10th I wanted to get some images of the Starlings taking food into the roof space. They were visiting fairly frequently and also removing faecal sacs. Then their behaviour changed, at first I wondered if it was my presence but I had stood and watched them before with no effect. One of the adults was taking food to the nest entrance, calling and then flying to the top of the roof calling again, this pattern continued for the next 20mins I continued to watch. Once it was getting dark I left but apparently the calling continued, I believe they were trying to call their young out of the nest.
I have also now noticed that there’s a Blue Tit nest under one of the tiles of the porch. The parents perch on the telephone wire before darting in to feed the chicks 🙂 While watching the Blue Tits I heard a lot of bees. Looking up I noticed a slightly broken fascia board and realised the bees were going inside – Tree bumblebee’s. I did mention it to my friend, he doesn’t mind bees so is letting them stay as long as they don’t cause any trouble! 
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! 
