Rural Life

Wildlife at home and a look back at The Broads visit

The trail camera moved a while back but the grass around it got so long, we had problems with anything other than camouflage photos of what went through.  I pulled up some bits and bobs but then John strimmed through and now we can see rather better who or what is around.  Moths!  Which don't photograph well.  The deer are back but again not a good picture.  No sign of that wretched coypu again - perhaps it has wandered off?  The hare is around though, and always so beautiful to see!

Next week I will write about orchids - they are slowly coming out.  Of course I may forget...  Yesterday and today have been about getting work done to ensure food later in the summer and autumn.  I saw some small and not dead yet tomato plants in a local supermarket, so succumbed, although I know they will cause me heartache, not least if we have a moist and humid summer.  Anyway, I had the space and we have the 20 litre plastic cloches (well former heating fuel canisters), so yesterday I cleaned up the space a bit and planted the tomatoes next to the chillies and aubergines I bought at the vide grenier last week.  If they do well, there is most of a ratatouille there, I just need to set off the courgette plants.

So now for the travelogue - The Broads are very beautiful but in a rather bleak way.  But as soon as you get up on to a bit of higher land (say 40 feet above sea level), you are into standard East Anglian rolling farmland.  This on the World War II discovery circular path that goes out from Acle and I was standing by a disused and overgrown pill box.

But out in the middle of the Broads, like here down on Halvergate Marshes, you get the feel of the immensity of the sky and the landscape.  This is looking towards Mutton's Mill, but if I looked 90º to the West, there was a clump of another 3 or 4 mills.  There are spots where you can see up to 8 or 9, but some are now surrounded by trees or have fallen down.  Mutton's Mill will be having the scaffolding taken down once the driveway dries out, then the refurbished sails will be put back on and it will be magnificent.  By September all work should be completed.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust's Carlton Marshes reserve is being extended along the River Waveney, and there are accessible hides and landing stages, lots of nesting and migrating birds and some nice cattle keeping the scrub down.  The Trust has been able to rebuild the visitor facilities to create a magnificent café area, for use by visitors and by local community groups (there was a Knit and Natter group there when I visited).  The floor to ceiling window over the Marshes gives a mesmerising view.

RSPB Strumpshaw is another rather splendid reserve and well appreciated by locals and twitchers who come vast distances to see the birds there.  At one end of the Reserve there is Strumpshaw Pump House - a engine house for pumping water, so a different generation to the windmills.  It has a rather impressive chimney that is a navigation point out on the marshes.  The pump house itself has an interesting architecture and has been renovated and a bat box put on the outside although with so much natural habitat close by, it isn't that well used.  A new, wildlife bench has been installed and is wonderfully tactile.

Whitlingham Country Park and Broad is close to Norwich and the most accessible part, and will have Changing Places toilets installed by September too.  As with all the Broads, it is man-made, but more recent than the others, dating back only to the last century.  It is home however to at least 78 confirmed different species including bittern and otters.  I met Egyptian geese there - pretty, but a non-native invasive species.

Well, that's it for this week.  Next week I will be back to purely French subjects.

 

Not staying on top of things

I set off on my glorious adventure to the UK something like two and a half weeks ago, and I have been home for a week and I am still chasing my tail trying to catch up on all fronts.  I've not downloaded the lovely photos of the Broads and my visit to the UK, I've not written up my notes from my visit, I've not caught up with all my clients in France, I've not planted all the potatoes yet, I've not got to grips with the garden or the window boxes or the fridge or planning meals or anything.  I feel totally inadequate! 

Yesterday we did do the village "vide grenier" or car boot sale, so actually getting anything sorted out for that was a last minute effort, and we didn't have as much stuff on display as perhaps we would have liked.  But we were there!

Actually it was probably rather a good thing that we didn't have too much stuff out on display, and certainly no books or clothes.  That was a deliberate choice as the weather the day before wasn't brilliant.  Even so we got rid of some big items, although we did feel a bit mugged by two wee munchkins who cut down our ticket price on a cauldron by 50%!  Still, when the rain came, it was heavy and quite long duration, so it was good we didn't have fabrics other than the table covering.

We hung on for another hour, but there were no paying punters, so we legged it early and were able to spend time drying everything we hadn't sold and putting it away carefully for next year.  

The trail camera has moved and been installed on a track used a lot by the local fauna.  The grass around it was very long, so there has been limited action, although a nice bunny did pop up one day.

Rather less appealing and also rather less welcome was a suspected sighting of a coypu.  As we are desperate to keep the water in the ponds to support the 5 rather large fish (plus the army of noisy frogs and the ducks), we don't really want coypu digging into the banks and potentially draining the pools into the ditches below.  They are also a non-native, invasive species that really has no place in France, and certainly not somewhere where there is very little water held in the wetland anyway.

A much more welcome visitor was this Red Admiral butterfly I found yesterday sunning himself after a shower.  My Dad used to make up stories for me about a Red Admiral and a Painted Lady, which I am sure had a subversive subtext.  It is a shame I can't remember any of them, and that he didn't write any down as far as I know.

We had a visitor of a different sort today at the Garden - easy enough for me to hear, as I was having mud smeared over me by a cat, but it wasn't until it was nearly overhead that John heard it over the noise of the rotavator and through his ear protectors.  The Air Force still use the local airport, even though little else does nowadays, and this looks like a pretty heavy cargo plane - possibly one used for refuelling others in flight?  I'm sure someone will tell me!

We also went for a walk around the One Acre Wood to admire the lily of the valley, see some wild medlar flowers, and be enchanted by the veil of green that has crept up on us.  It was rather sadder to see that a number of the large chestnuts have not survived some very difficult growing conditions.  First it was the new invasive wasp that targeted sweet chestnuts, and weakened them by growing its young in the leaf buds.  Then the plot next door was clear felled about three years ago, changing the light and drainage patterns.  Then last year's drought and fierce heat, and finally a dry February all seem to have contributed to a number of trees having no leaves at all this year.  While good for our heating needs, we have to hope that cutting down the dead trees will encourage new growth from the boles, as many are several hundred years old.

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I don't know if the last photo will come out when you read this - but I really can't bear trying to reload them all again!

Finally here is a purple orchid we spotted in a ditch near the wood - they seem a bit late this year, and I am observing the progress of the bee orchids as I think we have a problem!

Until next week!

 

 

The end of an era

It is with regret that I announce the death of our neighbour for more than 20 years, Monsieur François Salmon.  He died early on Monday morning (17th April) in palliative care at a local hospital, riddled with cancer and aged perhaps 57 years old.

He bore a startling resemblance to Henri IV, King of Navarre and France, who had a legendary number of illegitimate children, so who knows, perhaps François had royal blood in him.

[Thanks to Getty Images for this stock portrait of the King.]

His family were allegedly quite posh, although we have little evidence of that, other than when sober and able to hear, François was quite erudite and could read English.  He was also very fond of The Pogues and Bob Dylan.  He was however an alcoholic and had had a hard life.  While off on one of his alcoholic sprees, his wife and two children were murdered viciously, and he only found the bodies when he returned after a week on the lash.  The case was quite famous, and was referred to for a while as the French Ripper, but Google that now and you won't find it, you will find a load of publicity for a book about a French murderer at the turn of the 19th century, by an American.

In François's many court cases, generally for being drunk in charge of something, this appalling tragedy was used as an excuse for his affinity for the bottle, until his father stood up in one court session and said that his son had been an alcoholic from age 12 and no excuses should be made for his behaviour.  Like I say, I'm not so sure about the "poshness" of his family!

I can't speak about his wife, we knew him after the event, but over the past 20 years, he had the most appalling taste in women, and the two or three girlfriends that hooked on to him as a source of drink, soft drugs and comfort were all unspeakable.  Some of his friends are pretty suspect too, although he had a very strong and mostly very good influence on them, and was a leader in that milieu.  He had strict moral views on some subjects, most importantly that you never (proverbially) shit on your own front doorstep.  Well unless you are so blasted that you don't know where home is, of course...  We were protected by being his good neighbours from the majority of minor delinquency that goes on in a rural area.  Now we will have to watch ourselves and our chickens much more closely.

He was an amazing gardener who could get anything to grow, when he concentrated on it.  His attention did wander, and he spent time in prison, at which point things would wither away.  His prison stints helped his body to recover from his destructive life style, but once he was out, there was little support and he normally fell back into old habits. 

During the second Covid lockdown he was hospitalised for something akin to double pneumonia, and his house mate was called to say a final goodbye, so we were all astounded to see François home 10 days later!!  He'd had the fear of death pushed into him and he found the will to live and to stop drinking and really reduce his smoking.  He even bought a "sans permis" van and drove the other drunks around until they too got on the waggon. 

He had a succession of cats that he cared for well, particularly when sober, but also remembered when under the influence.  When he came into a bit of money, one of his first acts was to get his current cat spayed, rather than rely on the "pill", as he couldn't bear coping with kittens that he couldn't afford to keep and no one would take.  

Farewell, François.  You could be hugely irritating, but you were a character, you were harmless, you were a gentleman and a gentle man.  I'm sure you had royal blood in you really!

 

That was the weird week that was

Last week's blog was published a bit earlier than normal, as we had been invited to a semi-private Easter Sunday gig.  Being British, we naturally arrived well too early, but did get a reasonably sensible parking space (not that I was driving) at what in daylight seemed to be a ruined and deserted farmstead.  But as night and the fairy lights took over, it turned into something that 15 to 25 year old me would have been utterly delighted by - a rock/indie rave complete with party barn and stage, oil drum fires and people who are not normally seen in daylight appearing from an eclectic mix of vehicles.  Being in rural France, the music started nearly an hour later than advertised, and the first act was Gertrude, a burlesque accordion artist, with a fine line in animal noises...  She performed for an hour.  Second up was the reason we were there - Bourbon, a Rory Gallagher tribute band, and while we aren't into Rory ourselves, we have a chum who is and leads the band.  But as we are no longer 25 years old, the fascination with semi-pro rural music faded, so we didn't make it through to the final act, Punkabilly band D-Track, which was a shame in some ways, as they play very jolly, infectious music. 

So that was Sunday.  Wednesday is always market day at la Flèche for me, but I don't expect to see trams passing the market.  I'm not sure where this one was heading to, but it certainly mucked up the traffic for a while in town!

I also did time this week finding hidden water cylinders and photographing their detail plates - two houses, two instances of the hot water cylinder being hidden and essentially blocked away for all identification and maintenance purposes!  How mad is that!  We are on our third hot water cylinder since buying our house, as with extremely hard water, they only seem to last about 10 years.

I'm not sharing photos of that sort of malarkey.

During the week, the fish in the lower pond seemed quite distressed - the water level is getting worrying in that pond.  Of course another reason for it seeming to be quite active, is that it is not the solitary specimen I thought it was - I counted at least four.  It was therefore something of a relief on Saturday that the level of water in the pond had risen and the fish were not to be seen.

Then yesterday was Vide Grenier at Echimiré day - very similar to a car boot, in that as a seller, you arrive very early and have to spend ages swatting people off, before you can get a display you are happy with.  For the organisers, they make their money on selling a variety of liquid and solid refreshments, so the early morning coffee was very welcome as was a glass of rosé wine and a punnet of chips at lunchtime.  For us, the aim is to reclaim space, so we were happy to see large items go, and only really dug our heels in on dropping prices when someone was pratting, around making out he couldn't understand my French.  As the lady on the next plot said to him, "she will start increasing the price if you carry on being rude - your wife understands very well!"  Anyway, we do another one in a few weeks and that is our lot for the year.  

Now we come to a question of time.  If I have time, I will prepare a couple of blogs to be published the next two Sundays, as I am away to the UK and won't have the technology to post anything.  Apologies if I don't get round to it however as all sorts of "stuff" seems to be cropping up this week.

 

 

 

 

 

All sorts of races

This week the inaugural edition of the Tour du Pays de la Loire was run, and Day 3 of the race started at Baugé en Anjou.  While it was a professional race, the teams were limited to 6 riders each, and the top names were saving themselves for this weekend's Paris-Roubaix, although I am sure many would give up the threat of the cobbles in the latter race for the joys of Anjou!  There was the usual Village Depart in town, but as parking would have been vile, I had just got my new orthopaedic insoles, and the Depart Fictif was coming through the village, we decided to watch it go through just up the road.  By quarter to midday, a small crowd of villagers had gathered in the Place d'Eglise to see it go past.  With the Tour de France, you get the media helicopters and a publicity caravan dishing out goodies.  With the Tour du Pays de la Loire, you get more official Tour motorbikes than seems feasible, plus loads of police outriders, until the actual competitors arrive.  Then after they go through, you have at least one car per team, plus ambulance, doctor, red lantern van (picks up stragglers) and a final van for anything that looks dodgy.  Here are the riders arriving in the village up the big hill (something to warm up the leg muscles).

We are in a race against time and the elements to get the potato bed ready for planting.  In theory the spuds go in on Good Friday, but weather and other people's lawns have made it difficult to get going on this.  Still yesterday John managed to get perhaps half the bed, or at least enough for 2 to 3 rows of potatoes to be planted if there is nothing else to do!

The trail camera is in the Garden at the moment.  In theory it was placed to see what is coming through the fence, prior to blocking off the hole, but we don't have any evidence of that.  We have plenty of wood pecker action (due a blog of its own), and have many fine shots of the massive rat that has a burrow in the garden.  We have also occasional shots of these two racing around - they never stay close to the camera for video footage, just stills.  I am pretty sure they are not rats (the tail is wrong where it exists), but otherwise I am not too sure.  It could be the pine martins that seem to live mainly over in the meadow, not least as one of those is minus a tail now, but I'm not totally convinced.

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Flowers and blossom have been a bit delayed this year compared to the last few, so the tulips are racing away to flower before it gets too hot.  The red ones are in their second year in a pot by the Shack kitchen, while the yellow ones (which were brought as white) were planted three years ago on the edge of one of the cultivated squares.  The square has moved it would seem as they are a way off it now!

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Of course not everything is rushing around (thankfully), and this week we have been able to taste the fruits of our labours in the form of harvesting 2 of our 6 cauliflowers.  These aren't the easiest vegetable to grow and are in the ground for ages - over 7 months in this case.  I think the only thing I can say about our success is that the wretched plants seem to favour being planted in near solid clay.  Anyway, here is a portrait of the one we are eating at the moment (half roasted yesterday, the rest raw today).

The Easter weekend is proving to be beautifully sunny and warm - well, at least until late tonight or early tomorrow when rain comes in.  We laboured long and hard in the potager yesterday, what with rotavating, planting onions, and clearing soil to sow mangetout peas, so we were both entitled to hammock time.  It was lovely lying there, looking up at the tiny new birch leaves opening above us.

Next Sunday we are selling "stuff" at a vide grenier, so the blog won't be written until the following day - it's not like the UK where a car boot is over by midday.  Here you set up at about 7:30am, and don't get to dismantle and go until gone 5:30pm, but which time I won't want to communicate with anything!!

 

Starting the gardening season

I don't know why, but we haven't really been inspired to get this year's gardening underway so far.  We have planted shallots and onions, which are now sprouting, and of course in the last weeks of 2022 we sowed our broad beans, but other than that we've not done much.

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Over winter, we have been able to enjoy fresh parsley, parsnips, chard, leeks and the stored potatoes (now all gone), but yesterday we had a few spears of feral asparagus which acted as a reminder that if we want to feed ourselves, we need to get ourselves into gear!  After all, we do have 53 seed potatoes chitting away, which will need to be planted soon.

The chard will keep going for a while and there is a hint of cauliflower on the six plants that are still also providing ample food for caterpillars.  There is also corn salad hiding away among the weeds that have grown back, which I hope to rescue soon.

The state of the rhubarb reminds us that we need to care for the soil, adding organic matter back where we can, while at the same time continuing to fight the good fight against the rampant scrub that wants to reclaim the gardens.  These tulips were planted in a vegetable bed only 3 years ago, but are now fighting their way out of a bramble patch.

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Those plants that fight on through the weeds and scrub come out stronger - this calendular made it through the winter and is now developing many more flower buds for more blazing orange.

One reason for our lassitude to date is that for once things are a bit delayed in nature.  The daffodils would have been finished by now last year and the year before, while the cowslips are just going from strength to strength.  But blossom is late - the countryside is white with wild plum and blackthorn much later than normal, while the pear may not be in full bloom for Easter, as it usually would be (irrespective of date, as Easter is determined by moon phases).  There is a slow green veil taking over but that has been apparent in late March for the last few years, not early April.

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The birds are out in force, but there were few insects around, despite the blossom and the highly pungent laurel flowers.  The hornet trap is set at The Shack but not at home, but there is no sign of any interest in it so far.  There are a few heavy bumblebees around, but without insects, there will not be much fruit, so I hope they appear soon.

The extremely clear sign of a late spring was at the One Acre Wood however.  For the past few years, by the start of April, the lily of the valley would be perhaps an inch or two tall and showing whether there would be any flowers to come.  We walked through the spot today, and could see nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  They will sprout in due course, but they confirm we are right not to be plunging into too much gardening activity before Nature is ready to give us a helping hand.

Many the Easter Bunny bring you more chocolate than you can eat in one sitting!

 

Seaside Rendez-Vous

This weekend we had our first holiday together for four years, comprising a night away at Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the Vendée.  Once we had fed both sets of cats, and hidden food bowls around the house for the girls, we headed south west in search of pastures new, sea air, food not cooked by us and exercise.

Our first "holiday" stop was to admire the ruined castle at les Essarts, somewhat north of la Roche-sur-Yon.  it looked dramatic driving by, and has a lovely new carpark and an excellent boardwalk to the entrance, but won't be open until 7th April, so the boardwalk was as far as we got.

We then carried on to Saint Gilles itself, found a parking space near our hotel and before we checked in, went for a first exploratory wander.  The place is an amalgamation of a number of small communities along both banks of a river which takes a tortuous route to the sea.  We were on the far side, so to speak, but there was actually a further side beyond the river Vie, which we went to today.  Without a map it was horribly confusing, and as we were outside the tourist season, we had to wait until we checked into the hotel to get our hands on a town plan and make sense of it all.  Anyway, we walked out along the river towards the sea, taking a few photos on the way.

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We then checked into the hotel, let my feet recover from a lot of walking, and studied the map carefully, before changing for dinner.  We then set out inland back over the second loop of the river, and as the weather was pretty filthy, chose the first open restaurant we came to for our dinner, which was very good.  I forget how much I like Pineau de Charente as an aperitif!  We also forget how good the simple things in life are, like good bread and butter and tinned sardines (sardines are very much The Thing at Saint Gilles), which made a delicious starter.  After a very nice dinner, and once that rainstorm had blown over, we went back to the hotel, stopping only to photograph the rather dramatic church tower.

This morning was the fine weather before the storm, so we took advantage to walk up and down along the dune and Grand Plage that protect the entrance to the river Vie and the sailing and fishing ports behind.  In summer it must be vile, lined as it is with holiday apartments, candy floss shops, ice cream parlours and creperies, but firmly out of season and with a few brave cafés and restaurants open and a few mad kite surfers, it was what we needed.  The wind was blowing a gale, which made life interesting.  John had to screw his flat cap on his head to avoid it flying away more than once.  The amount of oxygen inhaled in any one breathe was intoxicating and my hair is still standing on end.

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Even though we were on holiday, we really couldn't resist this bit of interpretation about and curation of dune plants, vital for saving the Vendée coastline in all its natural splendour against the ravages of the sea.  The irony of it being next two blocks of recent and really rather ugly holiday flats seems to be totally lost on the French and local government.

The promised thunderstorm arrived a little after midday, but by that time, we were tucked up in the outer terrace (so protected from most of the elements but with a good view of them all) of a very nice restaurant having a lovely lunch and being aggressively flirted with by a waiter practicing his English before the holiday hoards descend.  We dashed to the car in a pause between rain showers, to head home to face the wrath of cats, feeling very well fed, well oxygenated and almost ready for the Spring.  Almost...

 

It's springing!

This afternoon I heard a cuckoo.  As someone else in the area has also said they have heard a cuckoo too, I'm calling it, it's now officially spring.  With spring comes the first vide grenier (car boot but it lasts all day), which we went along to this morning, saw loads of chums and got a useful implement, commonly known as a "truc", which will make getting ivy off walls a lot easier.  A bargain at only one Euro too.

I moved the trail camera to see what is invading the Garden area before we block off the hole in the fence (sometimes it just isn't worth it after all).  So far I don't have any images of that, which is big enough to make a clear path, but I have been hugely entertained by Woody Woodpecker's Missus, who is enjoying the last traces of walnuts from under the least appetising tree.  Here is her best shot - I will load a video in due course.

Something is setting off the camera at night too, but there seems to have been a mist, so I've not been able to spot what it is.  I'm hoping for something more significant than this fellow, because he doesn't really merit a path!

Soon we need to start clearing beds for serious 2023 crops, so we are working our way through the leeks that I heeled in during the dry season last year, but which have enjoyed the heavy clay soil and a damp December and January.  They are really very good, and the best I have grown here in France, though not necessarily up to my Worcester leek standards.

With spring come flowers, and we have some lovely ones at the moment.  The anemones continue to do well, the plain daffodils are still being a host, while the cowslips and the mutant cowslips (being slutty with polyanthus I think) are pinging up everywhere.  Even the fancy daffs are coming out!

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And it wouldn't be spring in France without a demonstration or two, although this one at la Flèche on Wednesday wasn't making that much of an impression on the guy loading his market goodies into his car.  A long stretch of main road through the town had traffic stopped while the police escorted about 200 union members, their wives, mothers and children up the high street and then back down again, back to the Electricity Company offices they were picketing when not marching.  They were happily singing the French sport theme too - Ultranate's Free from Desire, but didn't know most of the words other than the nanananas.

Next week's edition might be a bit late for a number of possible reasons - apologies in advance.

 

Thinking about spring

Although it's March, it's not quite spring yet, but something is definitely stirring out there.  Of course some say that spring starts at the beginning of March and I can quite see that, but I'm going to wait for the equinox this year before I call it.  It's not that we have had snow this last week - far from it, in fact.  Today we had the hammock out for the first time this year, and pronounced it to be good.  I had a lovely quarter of an hour, relaxing, covered in large cats, and for part of the time at least, watching a magnificent woodpecker in one of the walnut trees.

I did do some spring-like work in the potager, in that I got around to planting the yellow onion sets I bought a few weeks ago.  Someone on one of the forums who is a bit further north than us talked about having their onion sets planted between the autumn sown broad beans, so that when the beans are done in June or so, the onions can let rip and use the nitrogen fixed by the bean roots.  Someone else poo-pooed that, but on the forums you can normally find someone who will swear blind that black is white.  Anyway, why not give it a whirl?  The onions can't really do any worse than they did last year!!

The plants are certainly starting to get into the swing of things.  The daffodils are coming out, although the more fancy narcissi are a long way behind, and the anemones I planted back at the end of 2021 are putting on another good display this year.

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No trail camera images this week I'm afraid, but a distant view of a small flock of cattle egrets along with next door farmer's cattle, doing whatever cattle egrets do.  I first became aware of them six years ago, when we went to Guadeloupe.  There, people park a cow anywhere where there is a bit of grass, and then each cow seems to have up to a dozen attendant egrets.  But now we have huge flocks of them in mainland France, some with more than a hundred birds, like a snow drift across a field.  I gather it is a sign of climate change as they have moved north from Africa.  They are lovely to look at but not right in the scheme of things.

I spotted something else that doesn't seem right yesterday too.  I was looking at the ponds at the bottom of The Orchard - I am now the proud owner of a pond dipping kit and was checking them out, to plan my first play.  I was hoping to spot a bit of spawn perhaps.  I didn't see any spawn, but was pleased that the level of the ponds has risen a bit with the recent rain, although we need so much more as they are a good 6 to 8 inches below where they should be at this time of year.  Then I heard a swish and a plop and looking across, saw the back and dorsal fin and tail of a rather large fish - when I say large, probably about 8 to 10 inches long.  Naturally it took a while for me to remember to get my phone out to take a picture and it was too far away, but I got something anyway, as you can see.  No, really!  My bumper book of Freshwater Fish says it could be Roach or Rudd, but to me the bigger questions are how did it get there, why haven't I seen it before, what does it live on and will it survive?

Today from The Shack we needed to visit another property, to check on something, and the easiest route, or at least the route we took, went through the area devastated by the forest fire last summer.  I got out of the car to take a couple of pictures and also a video.  It was most odd.  It was very quiet - no trees for the wind to rustle through, few birds, certainly many fewer than at The Shack, where they are raucous at the moment, and an overwhelming scent of pine, like someone had been spraying toilet duck around.  I hope that in a few weeks plants will start to reappear, as the black ground is chilling to look at.

So that's it for this week - I'm not sure what will be on the menu next week, but am sure that nature and life will surprise me!

 

 

 

And just about animals

So last week I featured the best photos of each of the bird species captured on the trial camera.  This week I will do the same with the animals - and the period coved is late November to late February, so everyone very much in winter mode.  Having said that, there was a good variety and it was difficult to pick the four best photos for some species, and a December video for most of them too, but I've done my best.  

The first photo is the only one I have of a mouse - otherwise they seem to keep away from the camera.  I know they are around as the cats catch some, but I assumed they were near the buildings.  This one is nearly as far away from a building on the land as you can get!

After that, let's stick to alphabetical order on what has been spotted (ignoring cat, dog, human and hunter).  The badgers are around and about.  I need to sort out more video of them as there is clear evidence of more than one individual, but for now, here are some photos and a video of a badger getting surprisingly up close and personal with the camera.

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Then there are the boar - less keen on the edge of the meadow, although they are making a mess of it, but quite keen on their trail around the ponds.  From the paper I gather that a sow can have two litters a year, of between 8 and 13 piglets - they are prolific and with no natural predators, so numerous but shy.

 

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The deer love the edge of the meadow and were also very apparent along the trail by the pond.  Apologies that some of the photos are just links - I think the internet is a bit overcrowded this evening.

 

And the deliberate errors there were that I didn't do a gallery of deer photos and the video name should be December 22 deer - you really can't get the staff!  Then there is the fox.  As we don't have chickens at that site, I'm pleased to see him or her.

My particular favourite by the meadow is the hare that has a hideyhole somewhere in the bank of brambles.  We know roughly where as there is a tunnel in and a tunnel out, and the camera was by one of the entrances.

And finally my much loved pine martin, although the video shows a rather worrying feature - no tail!  We fear that there is a snare or trap somewhere nearby and it got caught in that, although I guess there are other possibilities including a close encounter with an owl or a car.  Anyway, he looks distinctly odd without a tail.

 

Next week there may be more animal videos, but there will certainly be a review of the winter, as we are now into what can be classed as Spring (well March anyway).  Apologies for layout challenges - internet speed on a Sunday evening and perhaps the image files weren't as compressed as they should have been.