Tags
amelanchier, blackthorn, bullace, cuckooflower, Damson, garden, garden plants, ground-ivy, horse chestnut, Lady's Smock, lesser celandine, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, mining bees, montana clematis, pasque flower, Pear, pond, Suffolk, trees, wild cherry, wild flowers
This was the view from our front door on the 1st of April. The rather untidy Blackthorn trees growing on the verge on the other side of our hedge looked like they were snow-covered; the blossom was so plentiful.
Just over a week after I took the photo of the Blackthorn I was finding bee nests all over the garden. Some were plain ones like the photo above….
…and these ones.
But this one (the burrow is in the shadow of one of the seed-pods) has been decorated with twigs, bits of wood, stone and seed-pods! I wonder if this is just by chance or if not, were these to make it easier to find or, is the bee just more of an individual, more artistic than most other bees? I have found other nest-burrows seemingly marked with twigs and stones.
This is one of our wild cherry trees just coming into blossom in the middle of April. The house on the left of the photo is that of our next-door neighbours and this long thin strip of land, in-between their garden and our leylandii hedge on the right, belongs to us and is where the former owners of our house used to park their combine harvester, so we are told. We have planted a few trees on this strip of land; you can see a couple of hollies and another cherry has decided to grow here too.
For the first time since we have lived here we had no nesting geese on the island on our pond. They built a nest and I am sure they began laying an egg each day prior to incubation but something happened and the nest was abandoned. The water level in the pond was very low and it would have been easy for a fox to cross the water and get to the nest. There has always been danger from mink and otters but up til now the geese have coped with them. A fox is different and much bigger. This is only a guess – there may have been other reasons; I don’t know.

We have a couple of spindly Damson or Bullace (Prunus domestica ssp. insititia ) trees growing in the scrubby area near our pond. This is a photo of the blossom and new leaves.

Pear blossom. We recently pruned and topped our pear tree as it was getting enormous. We should still get quite a lot of fruit this year, if all goes well.
I have a few more April photos I would like to share but I will save them for a separate post.