EARLY NIGHTS MEAN LESS WILDLIFE VIEWING TIME

I’d like to say there’s a lot going on in and around the garden, but as I’m away for most of the daylight hours it’s very difficult.

The weather has generally been typically autumnal, albeit generally quite mild.

On my morning walks to work I have once or twice noticed a flock of redwing and potentially some fieldfare, so I’m going to try and start out early one day (subject to getting the girls ready for school early).

The feeders have been fairly quiet recently, with only passing visits from the local blue tits, great tits, house sparrows and dunnocks.

There’s have been very few visits from blackbirds and no sightings of the long tailed tits.

The pond has been overwhelmed with leaves and I’ve had to be careful with removing them due to the fish, snails and other animals who now call this small amount of water home.

I’m amazed the fish from the stream are still surviving, which means they are finding food. Perhaps the larvae of midges or mosquitos, although the worry is that this food supply won’t last for long during winter.

It looks like cooler weather and colder nights are on the way as we head to December, so perhaps more birds on the feeders.

In the coming weeks I’m going to look at introducing some more video footage to this blog, perhaps with my daughters getting involved – I’m yet to ask them so we’ll see what is said!

BUTTERFLY HIBERNATING BONANZA, BUT WHAT'S THAT NOISE?

Autumn is in full swing and it’s great to see so many different colours around, which look particularly vibrant on sunny days. 

Life in and around the garden hasn’t altered too much, apart from the carpet of autumn leaves in the garden. 

It looks like the hedgehog(s) might still be around because in the last week a few hedgehog poos have been seen around the garden – yes they were hard spot with leaves, but luckily one or two of the droppings were on the path. 

Most mornings the ‘dawn chorus’ is made up of an isolated robin and the flock of geese moving from the roosting spots to their daytime feeding fields. 

The bird feeders are being used, mainly by the house sparrows, blue tits, great tits and robins, with further autumn and winter visitors, including long tailed tits, likely to arrive in the coming weeks. 

The temperatures have been fairly mild on the whole, which has meant not too many outside visitors to the garden. 

One very strange thing to happen last week was being woken by a weird sound in the early hours of the morning. 

It must have been an animal but, as I’d never heard this particular noise before, it was difficult to attribute to something. 

The audio is on the video below, so if anyone has any ideas I’d welcome them in the comments or in the social media posts linked to this blog update.  

The house still has six small tortoiseshell butterflies hibernating, although at least three have woken up in the last week, flown around and settled elsewhere. 

How long they will stay around in the same locations I don’t know, but if we cause too much disturbance I’ll be putting them in boxes in the garage to overwinter. 

Next time I’ll be looking at how the small fish are doing in the pond!