Rural Life

Using the new trail cameras

Last week I brought home the trail camera that had been on the ridge separating two pond areas.  Lazily, I hadn't deleted the 600 odd files from the camera being placed in the cats' kitchen to see who might be stealing their food (a couple of visitors, but mainly they are greedy gut buckets), or the 300 or so files from 24 hours in the chicken run, checking for rodents (no rodents, but sparrows and a big, fat, cat that isn't one of ours).  But lucky me, there were a further 600 odd files showing who spent time on the narrow paths that crossed just by where I posed the camera.

There were a few visitors I had expected - the ducks.  They really are rather sweet!

I was a bit concerned to see that a boar had tried to go along the path, but it turned around and went back.  Still, the photo was pretty worrying!

It should be no surprise that there were rodents.  I got one short film of a rather cute mouse with huge ears, which is quite difficult to see.  I got a lot of footage of what rats do when there aren't sewers and garbage bins around to rummage in.  I actually find it rather good to see a wild rat a long way from human habitation, and I have no intention of doing anything to move them on.  This is their natural environment after all.  Here is a bit of rat activity for you.

The mouse was about a quarter of that size, so that is definitely rat.  While this is definitely coypu!  Fortunately it only passed the camera once during the two weeks the camera was in situ, so I'm hoping that means it doesn't live around there.  If I spot it on another camera and a lot, then I will have to intervene.  Coypu are an invasive, non-native species that cause habitat damage and have no natural predators.  They are also rather ugly to my eye.  You can see he is a lot bigger than the rat, but has a similar style tail, so cannot be confused with a beaver.

Deer passed through and a thrush looked for snails, but the real find at that location was a bird I had to get a chum to identify as my original thought was a partridge with a dodgy beak.  It doesn't make much noise, so my Merlin bird identification app hadn't picked it up either.  May I introduce my new best friend, the water rail?  Elusive and rather scarce but seemingly happy to pass through the plot from time to time.  It went backwards and forwards for three days, and was a privilege to see.  

 

Otherwise, we have been working hard on the gardening front - I've been planting shallots and eyeing up the flower buds on the broad beans, which should come out soon.  John has set up and planted the new asparagus bed, complete with commercial compost on the top to give it the best possible start.  A good asparagus bed will last at least 10 years, while the corms we planted just before we moved (so back in 2003 or so) are still productive, or at least those that still survive are anyway. 

Some of my favourite spring flowers - flag irises - are starting to come out.  These purple ones are the earliest, but will be followed by the reddish ones and the deep purple and white as the weeks go by.  As there is left over compost, I must also plant up the bag of freesias I bought a couple of weeks ago and then think about getting the onions in.  For ages we were saying that spring was still a way off, but now it is here, and it is action stations!!

So I'd better stop writing about it all and get back to doing useful stuff!  Have a good week!

 

St Malo and the spring tides

Ramadan started last Sunday, when the moon was dark and new.  It is the new moon that helps create the great tides, the spring tides, the ones that create a Severn Bore and the ones that make the Mont St Michel an island again.  St Malo is just round a headland from the Bay of Mont St Michel, but in that geographical zone that sees some of the biggest tides in the northern hemisphere. 

I needed to get away for a few days for a change of scene and air, so it seemed only fair to go visit St Malo, one of my favourite places, and to do so when there are some of the highest tides of the 12 year cycle - a coefficient of 116 in fact (and if anyone can explain the calculations of tide coefficients, I would be grateful).  And a very high tide is generally followed by a very low tide (to get that big tide coefficient), which meant a lot of rockpools not normally seen, would be available for inspection.

The Intramuros of St Malo is on a rocky outcrop sticking out into the estuary of the Rance, surrounded by ramparts, with the port entrance guarded by forts, including more than one with a Vaubin influence.  Here is what it looks like when the tide is about half an hour off its height and has a coefficient of 113.

The fort is on the second island out.  Between the seagull and the white pole there is a vague piece of metal - that is the rail for the high diving board on the tidal swimming pool.  What swimming pool?  This one!

The first island (the Grand Bé) is a bit of a wildlife sanctuary and also has the tomb of the French poet Chateaubriand - yes, he is also famous for the steak and has a town named for his family, as he wasn't the first of that name.  The second island is the Petit Bé and has the Vaubin fort, and during periods of normal tides is not always accessible by foot, so wasn't a brilliant posting for soldiers in the past.  But on special days, you can get right out to it with no hint of damp on your feet (the Grand Bé is accessible at most low tides).

The rocks around the back of the Grand Bé, facing the fort are covered with mussels and oysters, as they are generally not 3 meters above the sea.  On that Wednesday, the difference between high and low tide was something around 14 meters.  The view of St Malo from the islands is lovely and shows the fortifications rather well.

St Malo is a working port.  There is a fishing fleet that goes out and when I was hovering around watching them bring in the catch, it was mainly scallops.  This is tightly regulated in terms of number of days, size of shell and size of catch.  Many go straight to the restaurants in the Intramuros (I had delicious scallops on a bed of leeks, with Mediterranean vegetables one night) and along the coast, including the Thermes Marin (a thalassotherapy centre).

I didn't know it at the time, and was lucky to capture it in a photo, but there was a rather novel ship in the main port.  Not the big orange thing, but the one with the tall masts - it is the first of a new fleet of cargo ships that take high end, low weight goods across the Atlantic using only wind power.  There has been one doing the circuit St Malo, the Lesser Antilles and New York for a few years, but only taking about 40 tonnes of goods.  This new one takes nearer 150 tonnes, if I remember the TV report correctly.  It left harbour while I was there.

Leaving St Malo on Friday morning to come home, I took the route along the coast road to Cancale, stopping a couple of times, including once at the Anse de Guesclin to admire the bay and the island.  With a beautiful sunny morning, mild weather and nearly alone, it was hard to tell I was in Brittany.  I could have been anywhere, even the Caribbean! 

So now I am home, with a cold nose and good hair thanks to all the fish I ate, well buffed joints from an afternoon of thalassotherapy, and hopefully a better attitude to life in general.  But the Breton influence isn't totally over - while checking over the Garden this morning, I discovered one of my cauliflower plants had decided it was Time!  So we picked this beauty and tomorrow I'll make a cheese sauce!

Next week there will be wildlife photos and news as one of the trail cameras has come home again.  Have a good week!

 

Spring flowers

With the move into March, meteorological spring has now started and we can talk about flowers and buds with joy.  One of the least showy, but most successful spring bulbs round our way are grape hyacinths - you can't stop them it seems and they spread.  These window boxes must have been planted up with bulbs at least 7 years ago, and not by us.  We do nothing to them, and we certainly don't water them through the summer, yet each spring they produce a magnificent display to cheer us up on even the wettest and coldest of March days.

Daffodils can be a bit tetchy, coming up blind if they aren't treated with a bit of respect or if they are too crowded or if the weather isn't to their liking.  This year they are looking rather splendid.

One flower we never seem to have problems with are cowslips, with rosettes turning up everywhere and spreading across any green area they come across.  Later in the season, the mutants will start to flower, with orange and red flowers.  I believe that there are specific names for those, although I do wonder if they are the result of cross-pollination with the polyanthus that are in every garden.  For the moment we are just seeing the early yellow flowers of cowslips however, which are very lovely and a welcome sight.

The hedgerows are white with blackthorn and wild plum blossom, which is gorgeous but makes me worry for the cultivated plum blossom that will arrive soon.  So far only the peach is starting to flower, but that is quite well protected and always early.  Fortunately the Victoria Plum is not showing any sign of thinking that blossom is imminent, but the mirabelle style plum in the Meadow is a bit more optimistic.

Periwinkle can be a real thug, particularly in the wrong place, but in the Orchard it has to fight for its place.  I do love the blue flowers, and prefer the green leaves to the variegated versions.

There is another type of flower that needs my attention at the moment - the sort that is used to decorate the village float for the Comice.  It has taken a while to get a Comité des Fêtes reinvigorated, and a theme agreed for the float, but now that is all sorted, it is all hands on deck to make flowers, ready to be stuck on during May and June.  With 14 willing participants, the first session on Thursday afternoon went really well and was a very convivial event.  We have a way to go though.

There are two trail cameras placed around the ponds to see what wildlife is passing through and next week I will bring one home to check through.  While I have been without a camera, I have used a different technology to see what is going on, this time focussing on bird song.  The Merlin App by Cornell Labs (others are available) sits on my phone and when there isn't too much wind or noise of motors, I can get a view of who is making a racket around me. 

You do have to be a bit circumspect as I am pretty sure the bittern it thought it detected was actually a motorbike misfiring across the valley, but with so many small birds being hard to spot with all the vegetation, it is an eye opener.  The list of 47 species below are all those that have been picked up at least once by the app since the 1st January this year.  I have doubts about just two on this list - the green winged Teal and the European Turtle-dove, but the rest have made enough appearances for me to be confident they are, or have been, in the zone.

Brambling

Carrion crow

Cetti's Warbler

Common buzzard

Common chaffinch

Common chiffchaff

Common firecrest

Common Wood Pigeon

Crested tit

Dunnock

Eurasian Blackbird

Eurasian Blackcap

Eurasian Bluetit

Eurasian Green Woodpecker

Eurasian Jackdaw

Eurasian Jay

Eurasian Linnet

Eurasian Magpie

Eurasian Nuthatch

Eurasian Siskin

Eurasian Skylark

Eurasian Wren

European Goldfinch

European Greenfinch

European Robin

European Serin

European Starling

European Turtle-dove

Gray Wagtail

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great tit

Green Sandpiper

Green winged Teal

Hawfinch

House Sparrow

Long-tailed tit

Mallard

Marsh tit

Mistle Thrush

Redwing

Reed Bunting

Ring-necked pheasant

Rock Pigeon

Short toed Treecreeper

Song Thrush

White Wagtail

Wood Lark

Anyway, that is more than enough for you to think about for the moment, so I leave you with an image of a small mud slide on the road near the Orchard, because, yes, it has been raining this week!

 

And if you thought last week was wet....

It rained last Sunday as I wrote last week's blog, it rained again on the Monday too.  On Tuesday, when I went over to Chinon for a visit, the fields by the autoroute were under water in many places, la Loire was full, but not dramatically so, but the Vienne was well over its banks and had closed quite a few roads.  When I was there, it was perhaps 4.3 metres over its usual level and hadn't reached its peak.  Fortunately for those in the area, it didn't reach the high end of the estimated flood levels and started to recede later on the Wednesday.

We were therefore interested to see what awaited us at la Flèche on Wednesday morning, when we were there for the market.  Parking was surprisingly easy, but I'm guessing that was an access issue.  Le Loir was seriously over its banks, with many riverside gardens flooded, the overspill carpark by the bus station underwater, and a number of roads flooded.  It was even more astounding that parking was easy, when one of the carparks right by the market was also underwater - I've never seen it that high there.  Perhaps half term made things easier.

With the rivers so high, it is only logical that our various ponds are also filling up.  The two main ponds at the bottom of The Orchard are doing wonderfully well - the level in the upper one is just at the limit of the overflow pipe (so it may well have been higher) while the lower one is at what I would call a sensible level.  With the winds on Thursday, we lost a chunk of one of the surrounding trees, which is now in the pond, and will need to be dealt with in due course.

Finally, yesterday we made it to the One Acre Wood and as expected, found the two small, ephemeral ponds there were full of water too.  They form in the pits dug to find clay for making tiles, and there are vague ditches that lead into them, but not the main ditches that mark the boundaries of our piece of land.  When these ponds form, they are a magnet for newts and salamanders.  Yesterday the upper pond was totally still, today both pond surfaces shivered with the antics of either marsh gas or hidden amphibians doing their thing.  You can also see a wild animal trail going to the right of the pond, and there is now a discrete trail camera keeping an eye to see who visits.  I'm not totally hopeful - the last time we had a trail camera there, it caught a chaffinch and that was it.

The pack of three new cameras has arrived, and one is now installed by the ponds at the bottom of The Orchard, a place that has always put on a good show.  Another is at the One Acre Wood, while the third did a sterling job showing us who was eating all the cat food we put out for the Barn Cats.  It was pleasing to see that in the main, it was the three boys eating it, but there are two others who are popping in of an evening for a good feed.  One we know as Minnie the Moocher, the other is a big fluffy thing we do not know.  Anyway, mystery solved and the spare camera is here, waiting for my next inspiration.

Today is sunny and not raining.  It is really too wet to do anything too useful in most places, although the portion of the wildflower Meadow that John has decided will be an asparagus bed was actually fine to rotavate today.  I'm not planting shallots or onions until we have had a couple of mainly dry weeks (which looks possible after Wednesday), but I could lift the last carrots and parsnips, along with a couple of leeks, so I can spend tomorrow making soup for the freezer.  There are also signs of rhubarb from one of the crowns we have, so that also inspires us.

Today we allowed Rebus the Psychokitten out into the garden for a bit of a run - he is so full of energy and just needs to run, perhaps he is in fact half whippet?  The chickens aren't totally happy with us, while Bridie the Freeloading Bantam has taken to a high perch in disgust.  Such is life!