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A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Tag Archives: Turtle Dove

Turtle Dove

08 Thu Oct 2020

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, wild birds, wildlife

≈ 100 Comments

Tags

Suffolk, Turtle Dove, wildlife

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land…

The Song of Solomon; Chapter 2, Verse 12

When I first moved to Suffolk in 1988 I thought I had moved to heaven on earth!  I had been living in a late-Victorian, terraced house in a south-east London suburb.  Not the worst location by any means; there was a park, an excellent library, friendly neighbours and shops just a few minutes walk away.  But…there weren’t many birds in my tiny garden, though I found that the flowers I planted with the help of my (then) mother-in-law attracted a few insects, especially butterflies and moths.  The only wild flowers I saw regularly were straggly dandelions.

My parents had re-located to Suffolk in 1987 and I had visited them two or three times as they settled into their 18th century cottage.  I decided that Suffolk was the place for me too, and the following year moved to Halesworth, a town about ten miles distant from them.  Admittedly, the bird-table in my garden attracted mainly seagulls (I lived fairly near the coast) but I still managed to see a good variety of smaller birds and every now and again I saw something really special.  The bird I remember being most excited about was a Black Redstart.

In the summer, I used to lie awake at night listening to Nightingales singing from the Folly, which is a patch of heathland on the edge of the town.  When I visited my parents I discovered their garden had Turtle Doves that purred from the trees all afternoon on warm days.

When Richard and I got married in 1994 we moved out of Halesworth to the village of Rumburgh where we lived until 2004.  I don’t remember hearing Turtle Doves in Rumburgh but there were plenty of other birds in the garden, notably Spotted Flycatchers which regularly nested in the Winter-flowering Jasmine against the wall next to the living-room casement-doors.  I also saw a female Cuckoo in a tree behind the house and heard its bubbling song.  The garden was an old established one (our cottage was two hundred years old) and was home to many different creatures, especially a large assortment of moths and butterflies.  We regularly saw toads in the back yard and lizards were everywhere.

In 2004 we moved to Bradford-on-Tone in Somerset because of Richard’s work but we didn’t stay there long, just eighteen months.  The birds we saw in our garden in the West Country were very different from the birds we were used to seeing in East Anglia.  Siskins and Bramblings visited in the winter and Ravens and Buzzards flew overhead all year round.  We had Serotine Bats roosting in the cavity wall of the modern extension to our home.

The year 2006 saw us move back to Suffolk to the house we live in still.  We are only a couple of miles from Rumburgh and when we returned to East Anglia we resumed the life we had led before.  Our present home is even more rural than our one in Rumburgh had been but the house itself is only thirty or so years old.  Before we left Rumburgh in 2004, the Spotted Flycatcher hadn’t nested in the garden for a couple of years, but I don’t remember us noticing any other changes in the wildlife population.  On our return to Suffolk we were amazed to see Yellow Wagtails in our new garden and we had Turtle Doves cooing in the trees round the pond.  This was the first and last time we saw the Yellow Wagtails and from then on the Turtle Doves only visited sporadically.

In the following few years we became aware of a great diminution in the amount of insects, especially moths and butterflies, in the area.  This led to fewer birds of all types, though I did my best by feeding them and trying to encourage insects into the garden.  I feel that, as well as climate change, changes in agricultural practices must have caused the losses in our local wildlife populations.

However, in recent years the Government have provided countryside stewardship grants and we are fortunate that many of our local farmers have been trying to change the way they farm to include wildlife havens.  As well as improving the quality of the many ponds and ditches, wide headlands have been left around the fields where grasses and flowers have been allowed to grow undisturbed.  We live in one of a very few areas in Britain where the Barn Owl is seen regularly.  These grassy headlands are ideal hunting grounds for the Barn Owl. In the past couple of years, farmers have been planting pollinator strips alongside their fields to encourage the insects to return to farmland.  Wild flowers and insects are returning slowly to this intensively-farmed area of Britain.  This year for the first time since we moved here, Turtle Doves have nested in the trees round the pond in our garden.

Turtle Dove on the right and Collared Dove on the left. Collared Doves frequently attack Turtle Doves.

 

I have added a recording of a Nightingale, just for Peter – with best wishes.

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Quiet Sunday

01 Wed Jul 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, wild birds

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Bees, Cotoneaster, gardening, Great Mullein, Mullein Moth larva, purple toadflax, recording of Turtle Dove song, scabious, St Michael and St Felix Church Rumburgh, Suffolk, sunset, The Vapourer Moth larva, Turtle Dove

 

IMG_2312Grasses (640x403)

Grasses growing round the edge of the field behind our house.

I have been doing a lot of gardening recently.  Not the gentle-dead-heading, touch-of-light-weeding type of gardening but lots of digging – which always involves extracting large flint boulders from clay soil, lots of watering – carrying heavy watering cans round our large garden and lots of grass-cutting – I do most of this with shears.  We have a large area of grass which is planted up with spring bulbs.  There are a few trees planted there as well and the ground is very uneven.  I think that it was originally a spoil heap from when the house was built; it also slopes quite steeply down to the ditch at the front of the house.  We leave cutting the grass until the bulb leaves have died back which means it is left until June by which time it is looking quite unkempt.  The ground is much too uneven for the tractor mower and because of the trees it is a very difficult area for Richard to do (he is 6′ 3″ tall).  I am a foot shorter in height than he is, so I do this part of the garden.  I can’t use the strimmer as it is too heavy for me so I cut the 3′ high grass with shears.  We bought a scythe but somehow we can’t get it to sharpen.  I like using shears as I can see what I am doing and I don’t cut the wrong things down as I might if I could use the strimmer.  A strimmer makes such a mess; shears are tidy.  Once I have cut the grass to a manageable length I then rake it up into a number of enormous heaps and then transport it to the other end of the garden in a wheelbarrow and put it on the grass heap.  I then use the electric mower and cut the grass even shorter.

IMG_4893Field of barley (640x480)

The field of barley behind our house.

As  a result of this work I am extremely achy and stiff but I have developed some good muscles in my arms and shoulders!  I was glad we had a little rain on Sunday so I excused myself from working outside.  I read my book, talked with my husband and daughter and generally had a relaxing day.

IMG_4891View across pond to field (640x480)

View across the pond to the field beyond.

We had an Evening Prayer service at St Michael and St Felix Church in Rumburgh where Richard is one of the church wardens.  We left home at 5.45 pm to make sure the church was tidy and ready for the service.  There had been a big wedding there on Saturday so the church is full of beautiful flowers.

IMG_4895Rood screen (640x479)

The decorated Rood Screen. This is very pretty but it would be better if people didn’t decorate it as the screen is hundreds of years old and falling apart.

IMG_4897Pew ends (480x640)

Posies on the pew ends. I think the top of the poppyhead (the carved pew end) looks like a clown with a bowler hat.

Flowers at the East Window
Flowers at the East Window
Flowers round the Font
Flowers round the Font
Flowers in the porch
Flowers in the porch
Flowers in the porch
Flowers in the porch

The path has been regravelled and the fence panel at the side of the church has been repaired.

IMG_4904Side of church (640x480)

Fresh gravel and new fence panel.

The bride’s family live at the farm which surrounds the church and the church is in their back garden.  I have never walked all round my church because that would mean walking through someone else’s property.  However, it is so nice to have kind people who decorate our church and repair our fence and path because their daughter wanted to get married in the church!

Our evening service was taken by Maurice and we concentrated on the Trinity.  It was a pleasant, peaceful and thoughtful service.

I’ll use the rest of the post to show you a few more things I’ve seen on my travels and in the garden recently.

IMG_2323Damaged Great Mullein (640x427)

This is a Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) and I noticed the other day that it was looking a little ragged.

IMG_2324Mullein Moth larva (640x427)

This is one of the culprits – a Mullein Moth larva (Shargacucullia verbasci). The plant was covered in the caterpillars which will probably eat most of the plant and leave a blackened stump.

I had noticed that a few of my plants and tree seedlings had been damaged and on Sunday I found a few of the caterpillars that were responsible.

IMG_2327The Vapourer larva (640x427)

This is a Vapourer Moth larva (Orgyia antiqua), and it is eating a Laburnum seedling.

The Vapourer is often found in towns and often defoliates street trees.  I’ve never seen it in our garden before – perhaps they found their way here on a plant from the garden centre in town.  Vapourers are tussock moths which are all rather hairy.  The Vapourer female moth doesn’t have functional wings and will stay close to her cocoon after hatching out.  The Vapourer larva, along with other members of the Tussock Moth family, has tufts or tussocks of often colourful hairs (the Vapourer’s are yellow).  The hairs on adults and larva are usually barbed which makes them unpleasant and painful to handle.

IMG_2313Bee on scabious (640x427)

A bee on a scabious flower.

I am not very good at identifying bees.  I never seem to notice or photograph the key feature mentioned in the ID guide.  The bee above could be a cuckoo bee.

I try to grow as many plants as possible that are liked by bees and other insects.

IMG_2320Bee on Cotoneaster (640x427)

Bee on Cotoneaster.

IMG_2321Bee on Purple Toadflax (640x427)

Bee on Purple Toadflax.

IMG_2304Sunset (640x427)

A rather lovely sunset I saw last week.

Lastly, I have another video to share with you but it isn’t the video that’s important just the soundtrack.  I would like you to ignore the video!  It’s rubbish!  I was taking photos in the garden next to the pond, when the Turtle Dove started singing.  I switched the camera to film so I could record the song and vaguely pointed the camera in the direction of the pond.  The video is very shaky as I didn’t have a tripod with me.  I only managed to record a very short part of the song.  It is quite a quiet purring sound and the other birds in the garden were singing very loudly!

Thanks for visiting!

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I talk about what it's like living in a quiet part of Suffolk. I am a wife, mother and daughter, a practising Christian and love the natural world that surrounds me. I enjoy my life - most of the time!

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