Garden diary, one November weekend

Thursday 19th - I go out into the garden first thing to feed the birds, even before I've fed myself for some reason. It's sunny but cold. Wonderfully, a robin comes and lands on the bird feeder hook right next to me as I'm putting feed on the bird table. I freeze and smile and say hello, and it stares at me for a few moments before flying up onto the fence behind it, still only a foot or so away. It flies down to the bird table a few times while I'm still there, hovering for a moment before landing, to snatch one of the little pink fat pellets I've noticed it prefers. So cute!

I hear the contact calls of long-tailed tits and turn towards the trees, and happily manage to catch a glimpse of them flitting along. Long-tailed tits are one of my favourite birds, simply because they are ever so cute. They're absolutely tiny, fluffy and round like those little craft pom-poms, with a pinkish colour, and a long tail which makes them look like flying spoons. They're very social birds and hang around in groups, huddling together for warmth at night, and their nests are amazing, made of moss and spiderwebs so that it expands as the chicks grow. I see them flying around sometimes - they tend to flit along from one tree to another quite quickly - but sadly for some reason they don't come into the garden to feed.

Once back inside I get my breakfast and sit at the dining room table, next to the door to the garden so I can look out. It always takes the birds a little while to come once the food's out, but Ms House Mouse is out from under the deck straightaway. For some reason she always jumps up onto the feed bowl rather than running up one of the short legs of the stand it sits on.

House mouse taking some bird food

The squirrels monopolise most of it, of course, sitting on the bird table and just staying there, eating their fill even before the poor birds get a look in. As I type there are currently four of them on the various feeders. The poor collared doves sit on the fence next to the bird table, wanting their breakfast but not brave enough to go for it with the squirrel there. It takes them maybe five minutes to cotton onto the fact that they could just fly across the garden to the dish by the deck. Alas they're only there for a moment before a pigeon arrives, puffing himself up and jostling them off the dish. A few times the doves have stood up to his kind, raising themselves up and spreading their wings in an aggressive posture, which is great to see. I find myself scolding the squirrels and pigeons through the window for being such pigs, as if they could understand me, hahaha.

(By the way, although I'm using "he" and "she" for these creatures, I have no idea of their sex, except the sparrows.)

Last to arrive are the starlings and sparrows. Starlings just make me think of lanky, squabbling teenagers, haha. They look funny running across the lawn on their lanky legs (even lankier when they were juveniles/fledglings back in the summer), and are noisy and boisterous, shouting at each other to go away. Sparrows are noisy too but in a nicer, less intrusive way, it's a sweeter sound. They hang around in groups so there are always lots of them, and when they're in the trees it's just such a lovely sound, so much birdsong!

But we have a little mystery - one of the bird feeders, which hangs on the hook by the bird table, is missing. It's not in the little hebe shrub underneath, as it usually is if it's not on the hook, so goodness knows what happened to it.

A magpie turns up later in the morning for a short time. The starlings eat all the mealworms within just two hours. I spot a great tit on one of the feeders by the back fence, and a blue tit later on, and a dunnock hopping around on the ground under the shrubs. We occasionally get a jackdaw or two visiting. 

This is a typical day.

Saturday 21st - Long tailed tits!!! A few of them flit down to the feeders for a few moments, never staying still, but alas they're all off again, out of the garden within 30 seconds. Maybe they come down to feed more often than we think, but it happens to be when we're not looking. 

We're out of bird seed so I put some peanuts in the dish by the deck. There's some in one of the hanging feeders but for some reason nobody is interested, only the squirrels and the nocturnal wood mice eat them. I watch at the window for a little while but not even the house mouse comes out for the easy calorie-rich meal which is literally right on her doorstep.

The missing bird feeder has been found. Under the hebe. We obviously just hadn't looked hard enough haha. 

A dove seems to be taking sanctuary in the garden. It flew in looking much bedraggled, with most of its tail feathers missing, and just sat itself down inside one of the pots on the deck, sheltered a little by the other potted plants. It's been there for about 45 minutes now. I've not seen such behaviour before, all the birds are constantly on the move. It must have been attacked, poor thing. 

I feel bad now, I scared it away, going out to put a handful of oats down. It flew off, to the shed roof where it's sitting now. A red kite just flew over, low and slowly, but the dove is hidden from above by the hazel tree overhanging the shed. 

An hour later...

There's a flippin' sparrowhawk in the garden!!!! :D :D :D I've only ever glimpsed one before; soooo excited! It came for the dove. The dove had flown back down to the deck pots and sat there for a little while again, eventually working up the courage and/or energy to hop onto the bird food dish, but it was only there for half a minute before it started to fly up again and another bird slammed into it. I thought it was another dove or a pigeon, but when neither bird flew up again I went outside to have a look, and saw these yellow eyes staring back at me! My mouth dropped open as far as it could go, haha. Wow!!!!!!! 

It stayed in the garden for a while, plucking its meal. It was constantly looking up and around, and moving around the border from shrub to shrub, wanting to hide, not wanting anything else to take its prize. What a privilege to be able to see it so close and for so long, and to get some photos too!

Sparrowhawk in the garden

Sunday 22nd - So the sparrowhawk (which was a female, I looked it up online) did not have a meal in our garden yesterday... for some reason she plucked the feathers from its chest but didn't actually eat any of the meat, or at least hardly any of it. Bizarre. I wonder if she was scared off by next door's dog; she ended up dragging the dove around the garden to a sheltered spot between the fence and the hebe, where she and her catch were well hidden, but that fence gets a dog or two running close to it numerous times a day. Will never know. The dove was dragged back out onto the patio by something overnight, so I've thrown it over the back fence into the woods.

Monday 23rd - The bird seed order hasn't arrived yet, so I chopped up some peanuts, instead of leaving them whole, to put out. Much more appealing to our garden friends! Yay I get to watch the house mouse, so cute :) The birds seem more active in the early afternoon than in the morning.

The hedgehog food is still being eaten each night. I only put a little bit out now. The hedgehogs are probably hibernating, but they can wake up once a week or so to go find a bit of food or move nest, so I don't want to stop putting food and water out over the winter. I've seen next door's cat eating the food a few times, so even if the hedgehog isn't eating it all at least it's not going to waste. I just hope the cat doesn't put on too much weight, haha.

Just opened a letter from the Woodland Trust, and it has a photo of a long-tailed tit on it, hehe. Big silly smile. Gorgeous little floofs. I'll cut it out and stick it in my "pretty things" scrapbook. 

Edit Tuesday 24th - Err so apparently the house mouse is a brown rat, haha. Even if it was a house mouse, I realise we should take steps to discourage them. It's still cute, but don't want them to become a problem so might have to stop feeding the birds and hedgehog for a while... 

I love ecology!

I don't know why I feel a need to apologise every time I don't post in a long while, haha...

I am absolutely loving my college course so far! Particularly all the ecology stuff and species ID. It'd be difficult to find something more up my street unless I did an entire course solely on ecology. Last week I got 100% in the first ID test we had, of 25 trees and shrubs - yay! We're doing one category each half term, so we've now started to learn 35 woodland bird species for a test before Christmas. Thankfully we don't have to learn the scientific names for these, as we did with the trees, so it's easier. But this week the tutor did a see-how-much-you-already-know-before-we-start-learning-them test, and there were only two birds I didn't know, which I was quite chuffed about. It's a shame the species ID is a separate certificate, and doesn't count towards the actual course! But I'm so keen, it's exciting to have something I'm good at and to be learning about things that I love!

We do Estate Skills practical days once every two weeks; I missed the first two due to joining the course late and then being unwell, but so far I've built a bat box, and helped to remove and start to replace a stock-proof fence, and next time we're going to be working on a hedge. The practicals are challenging, obviously because I haven't done anything like it before, but it's quite fun doing something different. I hate wearing the understandably-necessary steel toe capped boots, though, they're too big and clunky and uncomfortable. We're also doing a unit on machinery... so at some point rather soon I'll be having a go at using things like chainsaws and driving tractors!

I am struggling in some areas, though, probably in most. I'm fine with facts and figures, but then actually applying information to things like evaluating a practical task, or creating management objectives for a woodland, or creating a presentation as if you're trying to persuade an MP to encourage more people to get out into the countryside (especially when you know that actually more people usually just creates more issues), I'm finding pretty challenging. I got ever so stressed out a few times in the first month, spending an entire day attempting just one bit of homework at least twice. I know it's early days and I need to somehow learn to not be hard on myself, and to ask for help, and to be okay with submitting homework that I may not be completely happy with. We only have between 10 and 13 hours of face-to-face lessons a week, and I'm not someone who easily learns self-guided. I don't know how to learn, how to study. I go to my classes and do my homework, but don't look at my notes outside of class, read them, rewrite them, arrange them into easier-to-remember blocks of info or whatever, don't do any further research. Are we meant to, is that what people do? That's a rhetorical question; I'm assuming the answer is yes. But nobody tells you these things. I've only just found out what a flash card is. And I'm absolutely no good at 'self-starting' or whatever it's called, making myself do things, setting up a schedule for myself and sticking to it. The course is assessed in a number of ways, all of which I'm nervous about, especially exams, but at least it's not only exams. But the tutors are great and have said they'll go over everything again beforehand, and the college has a study support team I can go to whenever I need help, so hopefully I'll manage.

Anyway, I thought I'd write up some of what I've learned so far! Over different posts, not all in one go, don't worry.

Biomes

A biome is a major biogeographical region, defined by the climate and in turn the predominant vegetation. They're affected by latitude and altitude (how far away they are from the equator, and their height above sea level), and tend to have similar landscapes and wildlife. However, what the different biomes are, how many there are, what the characteristics are, etc., depends entirely on where you look or who you ask. Every map depicting the world's biomes is different and statistics vary. Some maps show five, others a dozen or more. To put it simply, the five major biomes are aquatic, tundra, forest, grassland, and desert (according to National Geographic). But these are all are broad classifications which just give a general biogeographical overview of a large area, and are usually sub-divided further to various extents. 

• Aquatic - can be marine or freshwater, have high biodiversity, marine is world's largest biome. 
• Grassland - open, warm, dry, can be tropical (savannah) or temperate (prairies and steppes). 
• Forest - dominated by trees, high biodiversity, can be tropical (warm and humid, close to equator), temperate (seasonal, mild, often wet), or boreal (cold and dry, close to polar regions). 
• Desert - dry, little vegetation, specialised wildlife, can be hot or cold. 
• Tundra - cold and dry, inhospitable, simple vegetation, specialised wildlife, can be arctic or alpine (in mountains at high altitudes).

The map below shows 10 biomes, and with the different colours you can see how they roughly correspond to latitude.

Map of biomes across the world

The biome covering the UK and most of Europe is "temperate forest" or "temperate deciduous woodland". A place doesn't have to be covered in trees to be part of a "forest" biome; it just means that the dominant plants are trees, and if left alone to their own devices the landscapes would eventually return to woodland. But - fun fact - we do have some tundra and boreal forest here too! They usually cover places like the Arctic and Siberia, so I think that's really cool! In the UK those biomes are only found in one place - the Cairngorms, in Scotland.

The Cairngorms are the eroded stumps of a mountain range far older than the Himalayas. Even at around 50 million years old, ranges like the Himalayas and the Rockies are in geological terms relatively young, and still quite 'pointy'. The Cairngorms are around 400 million years old, and have gradually been eroded to form a plateau - a large, relatively flat area that is raised sharply above the land surrounding it. I've just read on Wikipedia that "evidence suggests that the granite now at the surface was once found to be at a depth of between 4 and 7km." Wow! The high Cairngorm Plateau is where the tundra is, cold, dry, and treeless, and it's surrounded by boreal forest - what remains of the ancient Caledonian Pinewood - at slightly lower altitudes.

How cool is all that? :D Haha. I always loved physical geography.

Lastly - although "woodland" and "forest" are now used interchangeably, the original meaning of 'forest' was just 'an area given over for hunting'. So places like the New Forest, which was set aside by William the Conquerer as one of his numerous private hunting grounds, often aren't an unbroken expanse of trees - in fact trees tend to be a hinderance to giving chase on horseback. A woodland is an area of trees, no matter where it is or how large it is. Funny how language changes.

That'll do for now, methinks! I might write about the history of the countryside next time, that was fascinating.