March - Liddells-lew and hide-lew

1st March

Clare and John wish to begin with an apology. On 22nd February you will have read that John ‘has mastered the art of enlarging and cropping’ his photographs. Missing from this sentence was ‘thanks to teaching from his patient and forbearing step-daughter’. OK now Mathilda?

Here is further evidence of the excellence of Mathilda’s tuition.

Clare has long had a wish to see hare’s boxing and when she saw the next bit of trail camera footage she became really exited that she might see this phenomenon on Liddells.

Then another first ever trail camera capture.

3rd March

Today a thrush was singing in the Scrub, Clare saw a Yellowhammer from the hide, two Mallards flew off the big pond and there were bees flying around three of the hives.

4th March

John enlisted help from Dave G (and Wilf) again. Together they cut logs for seats and cleared much of the quarry area in the NE Strip.

5th March

A Woodpecker was drumming in the Pit Wood - Watts that you ask? Was it by the light of the Moon? What a Starr!

Clare has noticed that on much of the trail camera footage, animals seem to prefer a west-east route through, sometimes appearing more than once in the same evening, going in the same direction, but not coming back the other way. Either there are several different animals or their routes are circular.

Clare learned today from the excellent book she is reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, that seeing the face in the beech tree (December blog post) is due to pareidolia - an adaptation that makes people see people in all things. Clare prefers her explanation that she has a tree guardian.

6th March

Thanks to both Mathilda and Sue B, Clare has enjoyed reading Uncommon Ground by Dominick Tyler, a visual glossary of the British landscape. Among several words and phrases stored away for future use, Clare found two with immediate relevance.

7th March

8th March

Just days after John said no rats had been seen on Liddells, the trail camera proved otherwise.

9th March

A long overdue task, dealing with overhanging branches on the northern boundary, was on today’s to-do list. Fortunately Clare and John found George Clouston, tree surgeon and arborist, the perfect person to tackle this, and watched him work in awe of his skills. As did Juno. George so obviously loves his work and is especially attentive to how he can protect and enhance habitat for wildlife. He’s also a mighty fine tree climber. Clare and John found it slightly alarming to note that his risk assessment noted ‘helicopter landing options are extensive’. George said that one of the worst risks was not amputation but encountering a wild bees’ nest. They don’t take to chainsaws.

George made coronet cuts (see below) and specific bore holes after he had cut branches, to create habitat.

‘When trees are damaged in nature it’s usually due to some catastrophic event (i.e. severe wind storm). Branches damaged in this way have wood fibres break and tear, while bark is pulled away from limbs and jagged stubs are left behind. In the aftermath all manner of fungi and arthropods make a home in the tattered remains. Fungi feed on the newly exposed wood, insects eat the fungi, birds eat the insects, and so on.

In landscapes, trees eventually mature to where their risk of failure reaches a threshold that some mitigating action must take place. For conservation arborists, this is where retrenchment pruning comes in. By using coronet cuts to mimic naturally damaged limbs after reduction pruning, conservation arborists invite the natural order of things to take place.’

10th March

This cat has appeared on the trail camera before. This time it made the same trip at 21.06, 22.07 and 03.27. Was it going round in circles.

14th March

John and Clare were delighted that growth from Liddells contributed to another wedding.

15th March

The first frogspawn has appeared although some has already gone brown and sunk which is possibly because it has been laid too early and suffered from the cold.

16th March

Today’s OED Word of the Day is house-lew: shelter of a home. Enough said.

After quite a while with no sightings, a roe doe has been caught on the trail camera. It might be last year’s kid. While working in the Pit Wood, John found a particularly charming patch of Scarlet Elf Cap Fungus. Perhaps the trail camera will capture images of a scarlet elf.

17th March

Clare and John set about making fewer mountains out of the molehills on the Top Grazing, top of the Crag and the Meadow. They had thought there would be between one and two hundred. There were slightly more than that, to say nothing of the ones elsewhere on the land that remain unconquered. Small ones were included in the count as it seemed only right and proper to make mountains out of some molehills. Here’s a challenge to our readers - including the ones John and Clare found over the next four days that they’d missed, guess how many there were. The answer is at the end of this blogpost together with a further guesstimate challenge.

After John had finished with his hoe/got bored/decided Clare was winning in the molehill demolition stakes/was suffering from strimmer withdrawal symptoms, he went off to start strimming a path down which a quad bike could go with a trailer to extract all the timber George had felled. Imagine Clare’s surprise when she went to help John later and found him apparently praying to the woodland floor. With sinking heart she knew what had happened. We suspect regular readers will too and will know why, which John appeared to have forgotten. No need to scroll to the end of the blog post. The answer is, of course (Clare typed through gritted teeth), that he had lost one of his hearing aids. Again. A third time (teeth gritting harder as telling the story retraumatises the typist). Thankfully for Clare’s sanity and John’s survival (there was an idle strimmer lying close by), John found the very small and surprisingly faded leaflike in colour, object. Clare is considering her response: confiscating the strimmer; putting the strimmer on Ebay; putting John on Ebay.

Fortunately Clare’s spirits were lifted by hearing the first Chiffchaffs of the year and by seeing the first Celandine in flower.

18th-21st March

The first of the Daffodils are out in the Top Strip. On 20th Clare tackled the Liddells equivalent of painting the Forth Road Bridge by starting to weed the path in the Top Strip. She started at the east end and made it all the way to the flat length at the start of the west end. Watch out for reports on progress. On 21st, after a particularly buttercuppy stretch, which slowed progress, Clare went for a wander, wondering whether there would be Primroses out in the Pit Wood. She was not disappointed.

23rd March

John and Clare both woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so went for, if not a dawn chorus visit, at least a pre-breakfast one. On the way Clare asked John what was keeping him awake and he made an ornithological slip of the unconscious, ‘CORVID anxiety’, he claimed. Unless of course the crows are after him. It was frosty at Liddells so too cold for much bird-singing, however Pheasant, Red-legged Partridge, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Thrush, Blackbird, Robin, Wren, Dunnock, Great tit, Blue tit, Coal tit, Long-tailed tit, Rook, Goldfinch, Wood pigeon (making display flights) and Chiffchaff were all audible. Clare was particularly pleased to hear several Chiffchaffs as, after hearing them last week, they had been decidedly silent.

24th March

Another 12 metres of path in the Top Strip are now weed free. Clare saw a first Peacock Butterfly near the big pond. John made a bench for one of the willow arbours. John and Clare tend to take lunch up to Liddells to eat in the hide while bird-watching. They have noticed that one of the several male pheasants who have learned that food appears on the ground shortly after the picnickers arrive, has a habit of talking with his mouth full. None of the others do this. The trail camera captured a pair of male pheasants vying for territory.

25th March

Another few weed free metres in the Top Strip - Clare is regretting her habit of starting at the easier east end. Since there is always something else more appealing than weeding, the west end often doesn’t quite get the same attention and consequently is much weedier. Clare keeps telling herself that the sense of achievement will be worth the effort. John did preparation work for more benches and saw a Small Tortoiseshell on his way. The weather was so warm Clare decided to open the hives for the first time this year. As she suspected, one of the hives had not survived. It had been a small colony going into the winter and this is probably the reason since there was no evidence of disease. Two of the colonies are thriving; these queens must have started laying a while ago as there is capped brood (after 3 days eggs hatch into larvae, after 6 more days the cells are capped and the larvae become pupae and 12 days later the new bee emerges). Clare is uncertain about the fourth colony - there were very few bees and she couldn’t see a queen. The bees were good-tempered, which suggests there might a queen. There could have been a few eggs however Clare wasn’t entirely sure - sometimes the sun can produce a glint in the bottom of a polished cell which can then look like an egg. She’ll have another look in a week or so. Her records show that this is nearly a month earlier than she has ever opened hives before.

26th March

The recent hurricanes managed to dislodge one of Juno’s swing supports so John and Clare repaired it today, or rather John did the repair while Clare footed the ladder and handed him things. They then had lunch in the hide (does this habit mean they are hidebound), and watched a Blue tit going in and out of the nesting box nearby. It spent about 5-10 seconds inside each time and made dozens of visits in the time it took to eat a sandwich or two. Clare had a quick peep in and there was a substantial amount of nesting material in place. Unfortunately the trail camera, carefully placed to record this activity, ran out of batteries before the bird began. New batteries will be inserted asap. Clare spotted the first daisies out on Liddells today. and noticed that lots of the wild garlic Sue R donated last year is coming up in the Pit Wood. She also weeded another ten metres of path in the Top Strip and reckons there are just under forty metres left.

Walking home Clare heard the first skylarks of the year singing.

27th March

John and Clare stayed away from Liddells today so that Hal, Beth and Juno could have their daily ‘park’ exercise there. Clare set an i-spy challenge in which Juno was entirely successful, finding frogspawn, feather and fir cone. She helped top up the feeders, making sure the bird food was tasty, entertained Hal and Beth with the story of Goldiblocks (sic), enjoyed the newly repaired swing and began rehearsals for an iconic movie scene with co-star Beth, direction and cinematography Hal.

28th - 30th April

Clare decided that she wanted to get the path-weeding finished by the end of this month’s blog. With this endeavour in mind, and after only a short stretch completed on 28th, the next day she worked till cockshut: twilight (OED Word of the Day 29th March) achieving a wondrous nineteen metres. On Monday, in a push for the end, she finished, however was so engrossed in measuring her achievement (140 metres), she forgot to provide photographic evidence. During the pacing she noticed that sycamore seedlings were sprouting in the refreshed seed bed she had inadvertently provided. Heigh-ho. Back to the east end.

While John was getting materials ready to build more seats, he watched a pair of Tree creepers on an oak near the Orchard, and saw a Chiffchaff close by. Clare heard the first Blackcap of the year singing.

There is nesting material in at least two of the bird boxes, however the trail camera has failed to capture any of this activity. More adjustments needed. To the camera not the birds or boxes.

31st March

Hal and Juno had another Liddells day today. Mathilda came up with the excellent idea, having seen ‘Little Women’, that Juno, Clare and John could have a box on Liddells where they could leave messages. For today, Clare left bug hotel building instructions, some straws and string. Hal and Juno undertook the activity with some speed and considerable effectiveness. While Clare was typing up the answer to the molehill challenge (see below), Juno, at Liddells at the time, and apparently through some telepathic communication system, announced that there are no moles on Liddells because they are shopping for peas. Well that explains it.

This is Hal’s last photo of the day. Clare and John are wondering what he saw…

And the answer to the molehill count - 1343!

Next question - how many moles does it take to create 1343 molehills? (John and Clare do not have the answer to this one.)