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Hidden danger

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  They are here at last. I first heard them overhead and then I saw them high in the sky. The sand martins are back from Africa and by the excited twittering at every turn they seem pleased to be here and now hopefully our dreary wet weather is over. Twisting and turning they dive into the cliffs showing their sparkling white undersides. The holiday makers walked the sands with their dogs, perhaps unaware that above their heads in the soft clay cliffs a whole different and important world of nature was taking place as it always does. But not everyone who knows they are there welcomes them. There is another side to the story. The birds’ little tunnels in the soft clay make the already eroding cliffs more vulnerable to falling away into the sea. And now I have seen pictures of some cliffs with fine netting over them to stop the birds nesting. Where will the birds go now? And where did they go in our recent storm? It was hard to find any shelter. The waves were whipped up so high th
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Ghosts

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They were there as soon as I opened the curtains this morning. They looked so perfect with their clean black and white markings and yet I know why they are there and it’s not a perfect reason. Magpies will be looking for young baby blackbirds and robins to eat. The robins in the potting shed are doing well. They have chosen a basket high up on the shelf to nest in and even though Mr T accidentally knocked it the other day they are sitting tight. If I stand and wait, I see the robin flying close to the ground like an arrow and then in through the open door of the potting shed. Our blackbird is also nesting nearby in the holly hedge. I have seen her bringing in long threads of hay and grasses. I know it is the same one because she has a white collar around her neck like a vicar. But this collar is not removeable it is made up of white feathers. I have seen this effect here before but usually one wing feather is white. Last month a white magpie was seen in Wales. There does not seem t
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Stuck in the mud

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  It is now officially spring. We have moved past the equinox and so our days are longer than our nights. I have not noticed yet, but I believe it is true. And as if to welcome our much-awaited season a big yellow butterfly flapped across our border in front of the house yesterday. It was a brimstone out from its hibernation. it is a good sign and as if to confirm spring is here a chiffchaff began its light monotonous melody. It has travelled back all the way from North Africa to breed here and is singing its repetitive song from the top of our silver birch tree. Not such a good sign though is the wet weather we have been having and we have not been able to get into our gardens to do the springtime jobs. My friend has a large garden and decided to get on with mowing her big lawn with her tractor mower. Then she got stuck and after several attempts to get out of the bog she rang us. We went to help. I am not strong enough to help physically but have plenty of advice. You see I gre
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Recycling

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  It has happened again. I had hoped that we would have stopped doing this. At the end of our little road there is a gateway to a farmer’s field and people often use this entrance to pull off the A5 and stop. Perhaps for a rest, perhaps for a snack or sometimes to release racing pigeons, there is no harm in that you may think, and it is even interesting to see the pigeons released and flying in circles above our house. But earlier this week as I drove past, I saw a huge tip of rubbish. There it was slung across the gateway, blocking the entrance to the field and giving us all a nasty shock to see this eyesore in the countryside. It has all disappeared now and my guess is that the farmer has had to remove it as he did last time it happened. Now our cash-strapped council is considering the closure of two of our recycling sites in Shropshire. I dread to think what will happen to our gateways and roadsides if fly-tipping increases. I have heard that 70% of the rubbish we throw out onto
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Good news and bad

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  She was nowhere to be seen when we arrived home from our holiday. We left food and water out and the pop hole works automatically so that it closes at dusk and opens at dawn. A friend came every day to check on her. I called and chucked, but I could not see our hen named Speckles. Then suddenly, there she was at my feet, feeding on the scraps of bread that I was dropping for her. Last weekend we fed her as usual and went out for lunch. Once again when we arrived home, she was nowhere to be seen. Then I noticed feathers which filled my heart with horror. Soft white feathers at the pop hole and bigger wing feathers trailed along to the gate. Speckles, our hen, was not going to return this time. What could have taken her in broad daylight? You never know what prowling animal could have killed her out here in the countryside. Our hen has been taken by a hungry creature. As if to cheer us up a robin began nesting in my bird box outside the kitchen window. I could see it on the cotonea
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Fighting the digital world

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  The digital world is taking over. My mobile is flooded with dates and reminders. As soon as I have made an appointment a message comes through. Then a day or two before the date another reminder arrives. Even after the event a ‘how did we do?’ probing text arrives. This seems fair enough for health appointments but now my hairdresser is in on the act sending confirmation and then a reminder. When I order online, I often get prompts that goods are arriving the next day then a reminder on the day itself and if you are not sure you can track its progress. My friend counts her steps every day with the help of an app on her mobile. She has a daily target. If she does well the target moves to a higher number. She is always trying to do more. At night if she is short of her target then she paces the house, up and down stairs and from room to room, she goes to bed when she has done what her mobile tells her is enough. I know that exercise is good, but I have deleted my step counting app
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A helping hand

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  Have you seen any yet? I keep going to my pond at the bottom of the garden to check, so far there is nothing to see. But I do hear a little ‘plop’ every time. I think that the frogs are back because as well as hearing them I see little ripples on the surface. A toad has appeared walking along our grass path going from the woodland towards my pond. You can tell it is not a frog because frogs hop and this one was certainly walking. In the Shropshire town of Ellesmere, the toad volunteers are out again collecting buckets of these creatures crossing the roads to get to their breeding ponds. The trouble is we have built on their habitats and of course they do not know the dangers and simply walk on the road as they travel without checking for traffic. We used to see lots of toads here in our garden but now one is an exciting event as we look out for them. That last one I saw lived under an old ivy-covered damp log, it was coming out of hibernation, it needs a damp environment and ivy
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