Wildlife in July

The proliferation of naturally available food seemed to take it's toll this month, with absence from one or two favourite regulars. No Nuthatch (who as I type this on 4th Aug, has now returned), our Red Poll have all disappeared, as have my beloved little Tree Sparrows towards the latter half of the month. Hopefully, they will all be back soon.

We have had a few successes too though. An amazing aray of fledglings, who are still being fed by their parents all around the garden. We saw the male Bullfinch 7 out of 8 days in a row. That is certainly a record here so far. And we have had a couple of visits from a new visitor.

This delicate little Willow Warbler has turned up a couple of times. The second time, he brought his wife with him too.

I have also now included other visitors to the garden. The Bank voles who have always been here, we can see their nest holes, but never see them. The bats who currently swoop each evening infront of the house - we now believe they are Long eared Bats - but we are waiting confirmation when our friends with the Bat Detector come to visit (You know who you are BD!). We also have a wasps nest, and a bumble bees nest.

Buzzing Around

We had a new neighbour today. A juvenile Buzzard (of which there are many in the woods locally), decided that the field behind us was a good place to practice it's hunting hunting skills.



He spent much of the day either sitting silently watching for voles, or, as seen above, swooping to catch them in his claws.



It's no wonder it takes us all day to do the most simple of tasks with distractions like this.

Caldbeck Common

Driving over Caldbeck common to visit a friend (and return her mega carpet cleaner), I had a sudden urge to explore the area a bit more. We have walked around here many times on our hols, and since moving, have spent much time on the eastern side of the common. An idea for a walk was whizzing round my head.
This morning, we drove and parked at Fellside and headed up Dale Beck toward Roughton Gill.

These commons were once big mineral mining areas, evidence of the workings are all around. This is Roughton Gill mine which was abandoned in 1894. More info is available here

At the head of the valley we cross Roughton gill and walk back down the other side, back to Fellside.

Wide open spaces. Wheatear and Curlew flying around, a small snake-like thing (probably a slow worm, but not my speciality and only saw part of it) and plenty of sheep. Other than that we didn't see a soul.
That is why we are here.

A Splash of colour

Don't believe everything the RSPB tell you. We thought we had a lot of House Sparrows in Lincolnshire. That was nothing to what we have now, and they are supposed to be under threat.

You will have to look closely - they are well camouflaged. This is below just one of four feeding stations. A neighbour recently counted over sixty of the little blighters roosting in the clematis on our shed, and they all spend an awful lot of their day in our garden.
No wonder then that we got excited at lunchtime yesterday when we had a visit from our frequent juvenile woodpecker, this time accompanied by his Mum AND THEN, his Dad joined them too. We have become used to any of them popping in and out throughout the day - but never before have we seen them all at once.
Even better than that, was opening the curtains to find this lovely splash of colour on the ground under the feeder.................


He paid us many visits yesterday during the day and evening, and has called back quite a few times today too. I guess that will be the last we see of him for a while, he never seems to visit for more than a couple of days at a time.

Wild Food

Not only do we have an abundance of wildflowers in the area, it seems we have more than our fair share of Wild Fruit as well. Wild gooseberries grow happily in the hedges along one of the village lanes, and whilst walking Her Ladyship in our neighbours woods today, we came across acres of wild raspberries.

Lunch on the hoof!

Harvest Time

No cereals, OSR or Beet for us this year, but we thought it was high time to see how the carrots are doing...............







And while we are at it, today seems like a good day to lift a few tates too.


I think those will go very nicely with the joint of local lamb we are having for supper.

Now We Know Why

Since we first found this part of Cumbria, we have been aware that the verges through the village are classed as 'County Wildlife Sites'. We assumed this is connected to wildflowers. We were right!

Along with all the usual grasses, Keck, buttercups, nettles, docks etc that we are all familiar with, there are plenty of other interesting specimens;
Sweet Cicely - with it's pungent aniseed scent, honesty, birdsfoot trefoil, zigzag clover, selfheal, tufted vetch..........

But I guess one of the main reasons for the classification is the orchids, which are all over the verges for a number of miles.

That reminded us. The last time we

did one of our 'from home' walks, we made a note to go back and look for orchids. We had spotted a few leaves http://cumbrianretreat.blogspot.com/2010/06/ouch.html

We had no trouble at all finding them

I believe they are Common Spotted Orchid

and it would be no exaggeration to say that the area was absolutely carpeted in them. Neither of us have ever seen so many orchids in one place.

All this, on the doorstep. We still can't believe our luck.

Back to Beet

Don't panic, neither of us are hankering after our careers back. But having spent more than half our combined lives advising other people how to manage their crops, we thought it was time to start managing ours.
Our beet was drilled fairly thinly so that the only thinning necessary was now that the roots are beginning to swell.
The first few thinnings tasted divine!



On a different note, we have had a Hosepipe ban for the past week here. If ever you want it to rain, you know what to do. Since the ban was imposed, we have had about an inch and a half of rain, taking July's total to date to about 2 inches. Now that's more like Cumbria. I guess it will be a little while before Haweswater and Thirlmere are back to normal, but it has been very welcome rain.

A Garden Full of Fledglings

What a lovely sight to have a family of Goldfinches with Youngsters being fed on the fence. We generally get at least a dozen Goldfinches, but these babies have made the numbers soar.


Not all fledglings are that welcome though. This juvenile Sparrow Hawk made repeat visits this evening. The green bush is known as the Dunnock bush, because our resident dunnocks like to dart into it for safety. This Sparrow hawk is pretty sharp though, and clearly knew there was supper in there. What a shame we disturbed it before it had chance to eat!

This is What We Need

The forecast was for over an inch of rain overnight and this morning. By lunchtime, all we had was blustery drizzle. Then briefly it poured down for a few minutes........


This is Real Lake District Rain. We just need it all afternoon and most of the night too.

Not much to do on a day like today if you are an old dog.

Oranges and Lemons

Yesterday morning I had a trip across the Uldale Fells to visit a friend near Cockermouth. After a very pleasant coffee and chat (and bringing home a monster carpet cleaner), I had the afternoon free to finish off some marmalade that I had started the afternoon before. This is my own 'Secret' recipe, never tried before, so I will await judgement eagerly! In the midst of all those oranges and lemons, there was time to make another batch of Mum's recipe 'Fruit Squash' which now gets made here frequently.
All that home made produce and today it's time to filter the first batch of elderflower cordial. At this stage it looks like something the horse passed. Let's hope it doesn't taste like it too!



Having freed up the bucket, another load of elderflowers have been picked and are now busy steeping into their liquid in the garage.
All that and time to clean half the sitting room carpet too (Thanks Bilbo. 'Red Betty' is brilliant!).