November - dig this

1st November

Along with familiar footage of deer, badger, fox and grey squirrels, John and Clare were delighted to see some birds captured by the trail camera. Although John and Clare have seen Redwings most winters, this is the first time the birds have been caught on camera.

Jays are often heard and sometimes seen on Liddells, however this is the first movie footage to show one.

2nd November

An addition to life on Liddells has arrived. It is not as tall as expected and is not clad in bright colours. We do believe it is capable of work of great strength. Its feet are conspicuously free of curly hair.

Moving the stove out of the car boot, up the shepherds hut steps and into the hut took all of John and Clare’s combined strength.. It is made of cast iron. They worked their way through all the layers of packaging (see above) and John initially thought the instruction manual was missing, however found it cunningly concealed in the ash can. On Page 4 Clare found vital information. If only they’d known!

9-11th November

There are noticeably more blackbirds visible and audible on Liddells now. The overwintering birds from Scandinavia must have arrived.

John has almost finished laying the lino floor in the shepherds hut. As it is best cut when not too cold, he and Clare had to empty their kitchen and spread it out on that floor in order to have enough space to unroll and cut it almost to size.

John loves the Collective and Farmstock sales at the local Mart and has picked up many bargains there for Liddells - roofing sheets for sheds, fence posts, flat bed trailer, and more besides - having created a design for the bird-watching screen and hence a shopping list, he was prospecting even more purposefully than usual at the recent sale and discovered that not only was there plenty of the kind of timber that was needed, but also roofing sheets. He was successful at bidding and he and Clare then made three journeys with their little trailer to collect it all.

Load number 1 waiting to be stacked behind the bottom gate

12th November

John’s pool playing has unexpected dividends - two fellow players volunteered to help carry all the sale timber and roofing sheets to where they will be needed. This was no small undertaking - hauling wet and heavy boards and awkwardly-shaped sheets along several hundred yards of sodden and slippery ground and then over a stile. Clare thinks John must be such an asset to the pool team that they will do anything necessary to keep him playing.

The trail camera has captured the following footage. John thinks this is the roe buck that has been around for a while and that it has recently shed its antlers and may be scratching where they have been.

13th November

John made the final cuts to the lino in the shepherds hut and worked on the support for the stove.

A fox came closer to the trail camera than ever before. It looks as though it has either a thick winter coat or is pretty well fed.

14th November

John and Clare were particularly pleased to discover that along with the familiar footage of deer, badger, fox and squirrels, the camera had captured a Sparrowhawk perched in the Scrub. Sparrowhawks will eat anything they can manage, including squirrels, so this squirrel was lucky. It is just possible to see the barring on the Sparrowhawk’s tail.

18th November

The sheep have eaten all they can from the Top Grazing so have been moved to the Meadow for a few days.

Juno is going through a phase of interrupted sleep. John is teaching her to count sheep.

There has only ever been one badger captured at any time by the camera. This may be a lone animal for whom Liddells is within its patch. Clare read that badger territories are roughly hexagonally-shaped areas, each border touching that of a neighbou… — There has only ever been one badger captured at any time by the camera. This may be a lone animal for whom Liddells is within its patch. Clare read that badger territories are roughly hexagonally-shaped areas, each border touching that of a neighbour's range, such that they form a honeycomb mosaic. Each sett is roughly in the middle of the territory and badgers forage closest to the sett first, moving further away as they exhaust the food reserves. The hole that John and Clare found near the Meadow has not been further excavated so may have been made by a badger unearthing a bumblebee nest.

22nd November

Having discovered that there is no spring at the base of the Crag, which John and Clare had thought a possibility, and that the wet area there is due to drainage from the land above, plans for an even larger pond at the base of the Crag had to be scrapped since there would be insufficient water flow to maintain such a pond. However John and Clare took advice and realised they could extend and improve the big pond instead. An 8 ton digger with operator arrived today and Carl set about the work. By the end of the day, he had enlarged and landscaped the borders of the big pond, enlarged both roadside and crag ponds, created a new pond, opened some of the grips and improved the roadway east of the roadside pond. While supervising all this activity, John saw a Woodcock fly out of the Pit Wood so at least one has arrived for the winter. Clare marked out the site for the bird-watching screen and was pleased to note that the willows woven into a screen were showing plenty of signs of life.

23rd November

There had been substantial rain overnight so John and Clare went to check on the ponds and were delighted to see that they had already filled to their newer capacity.

The trail camera has captured footage of the roe buck again and here you can clearly see the remains of the pedicles where the antlers were attached.

24th November

Work began on the bird-watching screen. Clare dug holes for the first two posts and, with John’s help, put them in.

25 and 29th November

Work on the screen again - the second two posts in place, the subframe finished, the first floorboards fixed.

Liddells is saturated at present and not very appealing, however the rushes on the Wetland were covered in spiders’ webs and looked beautiful. Clare wondered if it might be possible to identify the kind of spider that would create this kind of web. The Natural History Museum came up trumps and Clare was able to recognise the webs she saw as sheet webs built by the spider family that includes the money spider. Coincidentally The Guardian’s Country Diary on Friday 29th was written by Susie White, who lives near Allendale, and she too commented on ‘the delicate hammocks of money spiders’.

30th November

Today was chosen by the Woodland Trust for their Big Climate Fight Back tree planting campaign. It just so happens that Clare’s friend Barbara had generously offered to give Clare trees to mark her recent birthday and they would only be ready at the end of this month. A plan was hatched: Barbara would come up from West Sussex in time to plant the trees on the 30th. The tree nursery’s delivery date was set back because the ground was so wet that they couldn’t lift the trees, then the haulage company’s scanner broke and they could give no assurance that the trees were loaded for delivery, however the tree gods and goddesses were obviously on The Woodland Trust’s side and the trees arrived on the 29th and were duly planted today. Clare had chosen a Hornbeam, a new species for Liddells. Barbara had generously bought two and a Rowan, so Barbara, Clare and John had a tree each to plant. Liddells was looking particularly beautiful in the heavy frost.