Turtle Dove

08 Thu Oct 2020

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

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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.

This and That

11 Sun Feb 2018

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

≈ 57 Comments

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'The Company', art, Deer, Diary, drama, gardening, health, home improvements, Jane Austen, London, moles, Rain, Sense and Sensibility, snow, snowdrops, Suffolk, the Gospel of Mark, violets, weather, wildlife

This will be a post full of bits and pieces of news; just a catch-up post on the things we have been up to during the past month or so. I apologise for the length of the post – feel free to skip past as much as you like!

Snowdrops and a few daffodil buds in a pot

We began January with heavy rain, as I mentioned in a former post, but the high waters gradually receded despite lots more rain during the month and we are now left with a few waterlogged fields, lots of full ditches and ponds and plenty of mud. A storm in the middle of the month left us without power for fifteen and a half hours but we suffered no damage to our house and out-buildings for which we are very thankful. We have had a little sunshine, some mild, wet and windy weather and a few colder spells too. Very changeable weather. This week has been cold with some snow showers. The following photos were taken on Tuesday at sunset on our way home from Norwich.

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A dusting of snow

My mother had another fault on her phone-line and we spent some few days trying to get it repaired – again.

Elinor’s lap-top developed a fault and had to be repaired. She doesn’t like to be without it as she finds her phone inadequate for some of the things she likes to do on-line. She borrowed my lap-top.

We now have Super-Fast Broadband – except it isn’t really super-fast but faster than it was, which is quite satisfactory. The downside is we have a new thick cable attached to the house right next to our bedroom window which loops over our front garden to the pole in the lane. We think it is dangling just a little too much and in the summer when it expands it may be low enough to snag the roofs of delivery vans. Trying to get someone back to deal with this may prove difficult.

Sweet violet

We have had some gates fitted at the end of our driveway, which look fine.

We are arranging for the old conservatory (which we cannot use) to be knocked down and a new one put in its place. This will be a very messy job and will take a few weeks to get done but we hope when it’s finished we will have a room which we will be able to use all year round. One which isn’t too cold in winter, too hot in summer, doesn’t leak when it rains or drip condensation when it’s cold. I need to move quite a few plants away from the flowerbed outside the conservatory and find a place to keep them while the work proceeds. We will also need to find somewhere to store all the furniture in the living room for the duration!

Snowdrops and early crocuses under a crabapple tree

We have all had the usual visits to the dentist, doctor and hospital. I was particularly pleased with my appointment at the Rheumatology Clinic. I have been in remission for some while and my blood-test results have been good. Because of this, I have been told I can stop taking one of my tablets. I have been taking this one for eighteen years and it is thought I don’t need it any more. It is also a tablet that can cause irreparable damage to the eyes and the longer it is taken the more likely it is that damage will occur. I wonder how long I would have been left taking this medication if my blood-test results hadn’t been so good? So far, after over three weeks without them I have noticed no return of pain and I feel fine! If I remain in remission for another year I have been told I may be able to reduce the dosage of the medication I inject myself with each week. I would love to be able to do that!

Molehills in the garden

Gardening can be quite difficult in the countryside as we humans are not the only ones who like flowers and shrubs. Most of our visiting wildlife love them too – as food. My favourite miniature iris started blooming at the end of January but the deer found them and have eaten all the flowers. A few of my other plants have been pruned severely by the deer and pecked by the pheasants. The only answer is to cover everything with chicken wire which isn’t attractive and it’s such a bother to have to remove it each time I wish to work on a flowerbed and then remember to put it back again afterwards! Despite my grumbling, I do feel lucky to live here and to be able to see all the wild creatures that visit us. Gardening on a plot surrounded by fields is different from gardening in a town or village. It is impossible to keep wildlife, including weeds like brambles, nettles and thistles, out of the garden. We have to be more relaxed in our attitude but it is hard not to be disappointed when a flower that is looked forward to for eleven months is eaten before it blooms! Before Christmas I was looking out of the window at dawn and saw a family of Muntjac deer in the garden a few metres away from me. A female, a male and a tiny spotted-backed fawn about the size of a large cat. The baby kept racing about and bouncing on all four legs at once. As soon as it got near enough to her, the female proceeded to wash him which he tolerated for a while and then ran off again!

We all spent a day in London on the 25th January but I took no photographs. It was a day for visiting bookshops as a treat for Elinor; she had recently celebrated her 21st birthday. We had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue and when we had had enough of books we wandered down through Trafalgar Square to the Embankment to see how many monuments and statues we could see before catching the tube from Embankment Station back to Liverpool Street Station. We were very fortunate with the weather which though cold, was dry and sunny. All our trains ran to time and we had a wonderful day.

Richard and I have taken a short walk near home recently and all three of us have been to Minsmere for a walk. I will post about these later.

Richard and I went with friends to see a one-man performance of St Mark’s Gospel in Wangford Church last Saturday evening. The church was freezing cold, probably because it had had extensive building work done to it and the people from the village had only just finished the clean up that afternoon! The performance was absolutely brilliant! St Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the gospels and was written at speed. It is said that Mark recorded Jesus’ life using Saint Peter’s recollections of Him. It was performed by Ian Birkinshaw who was the narrator but he also acted all the characters in the gospel. He had minimal props and costume accessories and I was very impressed by the way he used them. For example, he was wearing a keffiyeh which one minute was round his neck, then with a little folding looked like a child in his arms and then a baby which he held over his shoulder. Ian Birkinshaw’s performance conveyed the excitement about Jesus that is evident in the Gospel and his energetic recital which lasted over two hours was very impressive. I cannot recommend this performance highly enough. Here is his wordpress site.

As I have mentioned recently, Elinor, my younger daughter has been attending art classes in Norwich since September and has been enjoying them. She has shown great improvement in her work and has become much more confident; she is managing her anxiety a little better. She had been very disappointed last year when she failed to get onto a course which would have given her a qualification which she needs to get into art college. She applied to a different college to have an interview for the same course and this time she was successful. She will be starting college in September but instead of Norwich her new college is in Great Yarmouth on the coast.

Here are four examples of the work she has been producing recently. Each of these pieces were completed in two and a half hours.

Portrait

Painting

Portrait

Painted with twigs

My elder daughter, Alice belongs to a couple of drama groups in Sheffield where she lives and works. Next week, one of the groups – The Company – will be staging a dramatisation of Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’. Alice is playing the part of Mrs. Palmer. The drama group has produced a few vignettes to celebrate St Valentine’s Day and the opening of the play next Wednesday. I think you may be amused by the following, in which Mr and Mrs Palmer have been asked questions about their relationship. Alice tells me that they were given the questions and were asked to improvise the answers in character.

The Company have posted a number of these on their Facebook page and they are all amusing. I particularly enjoyed Edward Ferrars’ contribution!

If any of you are in Sheffield next week I would heartily recommend you going along to see the play at the University of Sheffield’s Drama Studio in Glossop Road. The performances are at 7.30pm Wednesday to Saturday. Tickets can be bought on-line on the link I have provided or on the door.

Thanks for visiting!

Garden Visitors

03 Tue Feb 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, Rural Diary, wild animals

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Brown Hawker dragonfly, butterfly, cuckoo bee, dragonflies, Field vole, Flesh Fly, flies, garden, ichneumon wasp, Large Yellow Underwing moth, micro moths, moths, Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, small white butterfly, Southern Hawker dragonfly, Tachina fera fly, wildlife

I will continue to post last year’s photos while this winter weather continues. I am away from home for a good part of the day; certainly the part of the day with the best light for taking pictures. We haven’t been out anywhere recently either, so nothing much to show or tell you.

Rear end of a vole. I think this may be a Field Vole (Microtus agrestis) rather than a Bank Vole (Clethrionomys glareolus).

Front end of a vole.

This vole was hiding behind the wheel of the hose-pipe cart. In fact, the shots were taken just a couple of weeks ago but I was unable to add them to the other posts I’ve published this year. Field Voles are aggressive and noisy rodents and like to live in damp and tussocky grass. Exactly! Our garden is full of that at the moment.

Bees on Chive flowers

I let most of my herbs flower as I prefer to see the insects and flowers to having perfect tasting herbs.

009Cuckoo bee Psithyrus vestalis on chive flower (640x480)

I believe this is a Cuckoo Bee (Psithyrus vestalis) on Chives.

A micro moth I found in grass. I haven’t yet discovered what it is called.

Another micro moth seen on a wall. I apologise for the shot being out of focus.

A Brown Hawker dragonfly. This is the only photo I managed to get of it and it blends in so well with the dead leaf it was perching on. This is our only Hawker with amber wings and has prominent yellow stripes on its thorax. These can just be seen above the wings. I believe this is a female.