November ???

Summer has gone and autumn has been glorious - very mild and not much rain. Now it's November when thoughts are turning to Christmas and wrapping up warm in front of a log fire, and the garden is still in full bloom!



The Dahlias proved to be a great success this summer. The deer have not touched them and it is great to have a big showy display in the new flowerbed. They have flowered all summer and are still flowering. These photos were taken this week - the first week of November!



For the last month we have been mowing the lawn and vowed that each would be the last cut of the year. Sadly, the grass is still growing and it will need yet another cut.

This has also been a great year for moles, unfortunately. There are molehills all over the garden. What a mess. Last year's wet winter and this year's good summer have obviously created the perfect conditions. Not only are they tunnelling under the lawns, they are also in the flowerbeds pushing out all the bulbs sown for the spring :(

The plants growing up the new archway have done very well and next year when they are fully established, I am sure it will look very impressive. Alongside the Dahlias, the Clematis climbing over the archway is still flowering like this one below.



There has not been much wildlife around other than a brief glimpse of the muntjacs, roe deer and hares. However, the squirrels have been hyperactive burying nuts and acorns in the grass.

I hope that winter will not be too harsh, but because of the wonderful autumn, at least it will be short!

A Beautiful Summer

I would hate to jinx the weather but this is turning out to be the best summer in many years. Just the right mix of rain and warmth to make the garden look really good and fine enough to be able to enjoy it.

It is very hot and sticky today and forecast to be even hotter tomorrow. I love it!

We have been making serious inroads into remodelling and replanting the garden. We have brought in some expert advice regarding the planting and maintenance and everything is looking very colourful. Mostly July is a very boring month when the spring flowers have finished and there is very little left to flower.

We were advised that deer don't seem to eat Dahlias so planted some in our new flowerbed. They look stunning (see above photo) and so far uneaten! We have also planted lots of Clematis on the pergola and the new archway. Again lots of summer colour.



Another addition to the flowerbeds this spring were the Alliums. Not a flower I had ever considered planting but these ones, Purple Sensation, were absolutely stunning. Thank you, Jane for suggesting them. We also planted Allium Christophii - not quite so colourful but massive blooms the size of footballs. We will definitely be planting more Alliums this autumn in the new flowerbeds.



There have not been so many butterflies this year, although the hot weather this week has brought more out - Peacocks, Comma, Fritillaries, etc. However, I have been spending time investigating the moths in the garden. I have occasionally been running a moth trap (a device with a bright light that attracts the moths and collects them in a container). It does not harm the moths and they are all released after I have identified and photographed them. The photo above shows one of the prettier ones, the aptly named Green Silver-lines.



We have not seen much of the deer this summer except for the Muntjacs which are always hanging around. However, last week I saw the first fawns of the season. Mrs Roe has twins again this year. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a photo of them all together.



Last weekend I was watching a fox eating windfall apples (sadly not many apples this year). He was a fine looking creature and I managed to get a quick photo.



Finally, this year has been good for woodpeckers. There have been numerous Great Spotted youngsters on the bird feeders and there has been a pair of young Green Woodpeckers with their mother regularly on the lawn and down by the pond. No photos unfortunately.

So a great summer so far for flowers, wildlife and weather. Long may it continue!

Spring in full swing

Once again it has been a long time since I posted and springtime is in full swing. We have been very busy working on the house and garden. The garden developments are very exciting - a new patio area by the pond and lots of new plantings. In addition, we have built an archway over a new pathway which will become a significant feature of the back garden.

The picture shows the new bridge that was built over the pond last year. I will post more photos of the new developments when the plants are more established.

Getting back to the wildlife - a sad story for Mr & Mrs Mallard. She laid 14 eggs in the bole of a tree by the pond. Unfortunately, the nest was not very good and all the eggs fell out! I guess one of the magpies had a real feast. Such a pity because it would have been lovely to have 14 ducklings in the pond. The couple are still together by the pond so maybe they will try again?




The bluebells have been lovely this year. They were very early and are now fading back already. They are such a spectacle it is sad to see them disappear so quickly.



The butterflies have been doing well this year, probably because we had a very dry spell in early April. I have seen orange tips, brimstone, peacocks, commas and lots of whites. The brimstone in the photo has really great camouflage against the primroses.



There is a baby muntjac at the moment sticking closely to its mother, but I have yet to see any roe deer fawns this year. They should be born around this time and I have no doubt we will catch a glimpse soon.

The other birds are having more success than the mallard ducks. There is a pair of long-tailed tits nesting in the berberis on the front lawn and a pair of great tits busily feeding their brood in the nesting box on the pergola. Lots of new life. I love springtime!

Wildlife of Africa

I have finally completed my new web site - Wildlife of Africa.

I have been fascinated by Africa for many years. It is a spectacular continent, teeming with wildlife and home to some of the most majestic animals on the planet.

I decided to put together a web site similar in style to English Country Garden to maintain a record of the animals, birds, flowers and trees that I have seen and photographed. I have researched each and tried to include some useful information.

You can visit the web site at www.wildlife-of-africa.com. I would appreciate any feedback and also would love to be informed of any inaccuracies.

I will be adding to it frequently because I still have photographs that have not yet been included/researched. We are also planning another trip later this year.

I hope you enjoy it.

Rain, Wind and More Rain

I have not posted for a long time mostly because there has been little to say about the wildlife or the garden. However, it has been a miserable winter - storm after storm coming in from the Atlantic depositing huge quantities of rain.

We are lucky to live at the top of a hill so have not suffered the terrible floods like so many others in the country. Absolutely devastating for them.

We have had some awful winds and have lost 5 trees already this winter.

Last Friday’s storm was the worst I have seen since the hurricane of 1987. It started in earnest around lunchtime and howled and poured until the early hours of Saturday morning. It is a complete miracle that our power stayed on. I had candles and torches distributed all over the house and filled the flask to make sure we had a hot drink in the morning but luckily we did not need them.

The photo above shows one of the trees that came down - a massive silver birch.

On the positive side, we have had no snow and the temperatures have been reasonably warm.



Spring is most definitely on its way. We have snowdrops, daffodils, primroses and crocuses in bloom but the ground is so sodden that it is like a quagmire trying to get close for photographs.

This photo is a beautiful double snowdrop. I am not sure which variety because we did not plant it but looking closely it is quite exquisite.



The animals have been quite elusive this winter although I have caught glimpses of a baby muntjac with its mother.

There are lots of birds around including this poor little robin. I am not sure what is wrong with it. It's head is almost completely bald. It has possibly been in a fight (robins are very territorial) or maybe it is something like mites.

My bird feeder was another casualty of the storm, so I have ordered a posh new one. We are making some big changes to the garden so hopefully I will have more photos when everything starts to grow again in the spring.

A Trip of Hares

We have had a lot of hares in the garden all summer but yesterday afternoon there were six of them right outside the conservatory! Too good an opportunity to miss, so I got the camera out and got a bit carried away.

Hares are one of my favourite creatures and they seem to be thriving these days, which is very good news. I think they like the combination of fields in front of our house, woods to the side, lots of luscious lawn grass and windfall apples.






I was wondering what is the collective noun for a group of hares? So, I looked it up and there are lots of them - husk, flick, drove, down, leash, mute, trace, and probably my favourite, a trip of hares.

I am hoping next spring to get some photos of them "boxing".





For late October, the weather has been unseasonably warm. I am happy about this because the grass seed that we planted by the pond is coming through nicely. However, on Monday we had a very bad storm, predicted well in advance by the Met Office. It was forecast to be the worst storm since the hurricane in 1987 when we lost six big trees and had no electricity for a whole week.

I am happy to say that although very wild, it was not as bad as 1987. We lost part of our electricity supply for a day and a half, but suffered no other damage. Surprisingly, there were no trees uprooted, just quite a few branches down.

The clocks went back last weekend, so sadly, the darkness of winter is closing in :(

A Fruitful Autumn

It is a long time since I have posted due to other commitments, but this year has certainly been interesting.

We started with a dreadful spring followed by a summer that was better than average, temperature-wise. Autumn has been fairly changeable but certainly not cold. We have had no frosts here yet and probably less than average rainfall.

However, the conditions have obviously been just right to produce a massive harvest of fruit, nuts and berries. The apple trees are groaning under the weight of fruit. I have stashed bags full of blackberries in the freezer. The oak trees are laden with acorns and the horse chestnuts have more conkers than I have ever seen before.

Of course, this is all good news for the animals who are constantly present under the apples trees gorging themselves on windfalls.

The photo above shows a couple of roe deer.  The photo below shows a muntjac and even the hares have been getting in on the act along with crows, jackdaws and jays.






The recent rain has also brought out the fungi - various types of inkcaps, parasols, honey fungus, boletes and sulphur tuft. Here are a few photos.

The Hare's Foot Inkcaps are intriguing. They are very delicate, open up like a flower and only last a few hours.










We have been very busy with some long overdue reorganisation of the garden. We have had the pond dredged and tidied up and it is quite transformed with a new bridge and waterfall. The banks of the pond were quite steeply sloping which made it difficult to get close. We have reduced the slopes and hopefully next year I will be able to get better photos of some of the pond life.

It was very frustrating this summer. There were huge numbers of dragonflies but I was unable to get any photos.

We are also planning to create new flowerbeds around the pond but we will not be planting until the spring.

Look out for better pond photos next year!

We have also been reorganising the flowerbeds around the house. They had become rather overgrown and untidy.

We have created a fern garden below the kitchen window in a spot that does not get a lot of sun and is usually quite damp.

We have planted Hellebores for winter colour and hundreds of new spring bulbs. I really cannot wait to see the results next spring. I will be sure to post some photos.

The garden reorganisation does not stop there and we will be working outwards from the house to get the other flowerbeds in better shape next spring.

Let's hope that the winter will be kind to us.

Summer with a Vengeance

Since last posting, summer arrived with a vengeance. Until this weekend we have had virtually no rain for weeks. The temperature went up and stayed up, some days over 30 degrees centigrade, which is not a regular occurrence in this country.

We missed the thunder storms that have been moving across the country and the lawn is quite brown.

This is the first extended hot and dry period that we have had for quite a few years and there are some wildlife benefits - the butterflies have been out in force! Much has been written about the plight of butterflies and moths which have struggled for survival in the last few summers with the adverse weather. Hopefully, this year will see them bounce back. There are hundreds of them in the garden at the moment and I have been taking a few photos.

There are a lot of whites, both large and small. The photo above shows a small white.


There are also dozens of Gatekeepers, shown above. They love bramble blossom and can be identified by the two white pupils in the eye spot.

The next is a Small Tortoiseshell taken in the conservatory. Not a very interesting background to the photo but I included it because it shows the detail on the wings so nicely. I have not seen any Tortoiseshells for several years so it was a welcome visitor. No photos, but I have also seen Peacocks, Red Admirals, Brimstones and Commas.

Other news in the garden - the jackdaws that I mentioned in the last post seem to have disappeared to be replaced by a family of crows. Interesting that I did not see both in the garden at the same time.

We have a cherry tree that each year bears fruit. However, as soon as the berries start to ripen, the birds come along and strip the whole tree. The berries usually disappear within 24 hours. But not this year. For some reason the birds are not eating the cherries and I don't understand why. Too many other things to eat perhaps? Something wrong with the berries? This is the first time in more than 25 years that we have lived here. Very strange. Photographic evidence below.


Plenty of apples on the trees this year, too. Last year there were no apples or pears at all.

Finally, I have not had time to get any decent photos of the roses which are doing very well this summer. But, I thought I would include this quick snap of one of the roses just outside our kitchen door. We just planted it last year and it is very pretty.



Fingers crossed that the summer weather continues!

Twins Again!

Each year in May we usually see the new born roe deer fawns. This year, however, I was beginning to wonder if there were any until just a couple of days ago when Mum brought them into the garden. They are quite big already but still have their spots. I guess they were born in early May and Mum has kept them well hidden. They were very frisky - full of energy. I hope they will be back so that we can watch their progress.

Summer, if we can call it summer, is very disappointing. We had a week of good weather in early June but since then it has been cold, changeable and dreary. We have even had the central heating on some days :(

The usual flowers are out in the garden but this year we have a good crop of roses. We have planted climbers growing up the walls of the house to try to deter the deer from eating them. So far, the deer have not found them. Fingers crossed. When I have time, I will try to photograph some of them because the individual blooms are quite exquisite.

It is the silly season again. Last week, I was in my office when there was a bang on the window. I went outside to find a young Nuthatch which had flown into the window. It was okay, just a bit stunned so I took the opportunity to grab a photo. It flew off happily after a few minutes.





We have a new addition to the birds on our feeders.




We always have Jays around in the garden but normally they are very shy. It is only recently that this one has taken to feeding on the feeder.

Another newcomer (or should I say newcomers because there are dozens of them) in the garden this year are the Jackdaws. I mentioned that they were nesting in the barn owl box and they obviously had a very successful brood. They must have invited all their friends because they are hanging around the the garden all day and there must be fifty or more. They are very noisy and not one of my favouriote birds but I will try to get some photos.

Let's hope that summer it still going to arrive properly and that I have some decent weather to get outdoors with my camera.

A Very Late Spring

It has been a long time since I last posted. Too many things happening at home. However, I have still been watching and photographing the happenings in the garden, even though there has not been any opportunity to post them.

Finally some semblance of spring has arrived - weeks late. The bluebells are out and should reach their peak by next week. This is the most wonderful time in the garden but everything is suffering from the unseasonal weather. A short interlude of warm weather in the last week has changed to howling gales, blowing unpollinated blossom from the trees.



The daffodils put on a nice show this year and also the primroses - thousands of them!



The Cherry Laurel is covered in blooms.



I managed to get some nice shots of the ash tree flowers this year. When you look close, they are absolutely fascinating and easy to recognise with their black buds.



The roe deer have been moulting in the last few weeks and look very scruffy. These photos were taken in late March when there was still some snow on the ground. There are two roe bucks that have very impressive antlers this year. Of course, the antlers on a roe never grow particularly big, like the red deer, for example, but they do give an indication of age. The photo below shows the velvet hanging off the antlers.



Another very exciting sighting recently is the stoat! Sadly no photos yet, but we have seen it a couple of times in the front garden.

The hares are also doing well. There were five of them in the field over the garden fence this morning.

Next to look out for are the baby roe deer which should, hopefully, be born around now. We usually see them out with their mother at the end of May.

The birds are frantic with their nesting. A pair of Jackdaws have taken up residence in the Barn Owl box :( I would prefer Barn Owls!

The Blackbirds are doing really well this year.

Another odd sighting - one Saturday afternoon, in broad daylight, a bat was flying around the back garden.

I am hoping that we will get a reasonable summer this year so that the wildlife can get back to some semblance of normality. Fingers crossed again!

What happened to Spring?

It's officially springtime but I am not sure that Mother Nature realises this! What a long winter this has been and there is no let up.

We had a couple of inches of snow (5 cms) in the last 24 hours. That is very little compared to some parts of the UK and we had little disruption. However, the plants and trees still think it's winter. There are no traces of green on the trees.



The animals and birds are also confused. The cock pheasants are following the females around the garden displaying their beautiful colours. The females are not interested. Today's snow dampened this guy's ardour.





Some of the plants are soldiering on despite the weather. The snowdrops have almost finished flowering and these crocuses were making the most of some of the rare sunshine a couple of weeks ago.



Springtime is my favourite time of year. It is Easter next week. Can we please have some decent weather to get out in the garden and enjoy it?

Big Garden Birdwatch

This weekend, the Big Garden Birdwatch is taking place in the UK. Hopefully thousands of people will be taking part by counting the birds spotted during the period of an hour, any time during the weekend. The results are submitted to the RSPB and provide useful feedback about the health of the UK bird population.

I did my hour this morning, just watching the birds I saw in the garden from the comfort of my house!

The day dawned bright and sunny and the rain during the night has washed away most of the snow. There were plenty of birds and animals around making the most of the better weather.

Here is my count:

• 2 x blackbirds
• 3 x blue tits
• 1 x carrion crow
• 2 x coal tits
• 1 x dunnock
• 1 x great spotted woodpecker
• 3 x great tits
• 9 x long-tailed tits
• 2 x magpies
• 2 x marsh tits
• 1 x nuthatch
• 6 x pheasants
• 2 x robin
• 2 x stock doves
• 11 x wood pigeons
• 1 x wren.

That is 16 different species in total and does not include the green woodpecker who came along a bit later and the sparrowhawk who was sitting on top of the bird feeder this afternoon!






It was good to see the sun today after a couple of weeks of very dull dreary and cold weather.

I have been putting food out for the animals and birds while the snow has been on the ground. One afternoon last week there were 5 muntjacs on the back lawn vying for the food! The guy above was one of them and was very aggressive towards another male who tried to get in on the act. He was a bit more condescending to the females and youngster.

A New Baby!

The snow is still here and it's cold and miserable, but my spirits were lifted this afternoon when one of the Muntjacs brought her new baby to visit!






This little cutie is probably only 2 - 3 weeks old. It is tiny and complete with spots and was keeping close to Mum.






I hope there is enough food to keep it alive in this bitter weather.





Hopefully more photographs when it becomes a bit more adventurous!