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first nest of the breeding season wouldn’t be constructed in one of the newly erected nest boxes but inside our chimney instead!
The lovely weather, while preventing the capture of any siskins or reed buntings, had managed to encourage a couple more male brimstone butterflies out of hibernation, but the best sighting of the morning was indisputably our first small tortoiseshell of the year. This butterfly was a particularly pleasing addition to our garden list, as this is a species which has seemed to have all but disappeared over the last couple of years, due to its larvae having been targeted by a parasitoid fly. Fingers crossed that this would be the year of the small tortoiseshell fight-back!
Having just spent the last couple of days in a sleep-deprived and ratty state hasn’t been good. The nesting jackdaws I had been only too happy to observe with Ed a couple of days previously have been habitually at their most communicative at around 4.30 in the morning. And with the chimney breast actually passing en route through our bedroom between the fireplace and chimney pots, it has actually felt like the birds have chosen to nest at the foot of the bed instead. Enthusiastic though I was to do everything possible within my powers to encourage all nesting birds, I had just discovered that this welcoming attitude would not be at the expense of a good night’s sleep. Nevertheless, I felt the painful irony in making the decision to unceremoniously evict the first pair of birds to have actually shown an interest in nesting. The best available option would be to remove the nest as quickly as possible before the female laid her clutch, meaning she would have time to re-build and raise a family elsewhere.
So a couple of days later I had to spend the morning watching, with mixed emotions, as Ben the local Chew Valley chimney sweep dislodged the most enormous jackdaw nest out of our chimney. Hopefully that would be the first and last time I would ever have to pay for a nest removal. I elected to spend the rest of the day cheering myself up in the garden, and I decided that I would get stuck into a couple of jobs that would allow me to show Christina on her return home from work how much progress I had made.
The first job would be to tidy up the mess that the lopping and pruning duo of Mark and Christina had created the previous weekend. While chatting to Marjory and Dennis as they put out their recycling the week before, my beady eye had also noticed a shredder hidden in their extensively stocked garage. Being the generous souls I now knew them to be, they instantly offered it out for loan on condition that I would also shred some vegetation they had recently generated from a spot of gardening of their own.
Once again I was blessed with the most beautiful weather as I powered up the shredder and set to work. By doing little more than feeding one branch after the next into the ever-voracious jaws of a shredder, there was something incredibly satisfying about seeing a huge, messy stack of brushwood converted into nothing more than a small pile of macerated twigs. In fact, in under an hour both piles of vegetation were polished off, leaving me more than enough time to finish off the composting bins in time for their inspection by my other half.
I was just in the process of moving my tools into the garden when I suddenly caught sight of a rather extraordinary insect buzzing around the primroses and lesser celandines in the meadow. Looking like a cross between a bee and a mosquito with a huge proboscis was surely one of our most spectacular early spring insects, the large bee-fly. With the wonderful Latin name of Bombylius major, the bee-fly is in fact a fly as it only has a single functional pair of wings in contrast to the two pairs owned by bees, and whilst its huge proboscis looked like a hornet’s sting it is nothing more than an utterly harmless tube designed to tap into the deeply recessed nectaries of some flowers. This is a creature that has become an increasingly regular fixture in our towns and gardens over recent years, but for me it was a total surprise and a fabulous addition to my ever-increasing garden list.
Upon nailing the last planks in place, the compost bins were so heavy that I could scarcely move them into their allotted positions without either damaging them or my back. Finally, having managed to wrestle what must have been in excess of a 220lbs of timber into place I suddenly and belatedly realised that their uneven look was due to the fact that I hadn’t taken enough care to level the ground that I had placed them on beforehand. Reminding myself that they were compost bins and not artworks, rather than risk a hernia I decided they were fine where they were, and, most importantly of all, at last they were ready to be used.
Dismissing their wonky nature out of hand, Christina was so pleased with all my hard work she immediately declared I should take the rest of the evening off. And proceeding to pour me a large glass of wine before cooking a terrific meal, she was true to her word. In fact, my only delegated job that evening was to dispose of the vegetable peelings – well, somebody had to christen the new bins!
‘Quick Mike, there’s a badger in the garden!’ ‘What?’ ‘There’s a badger in the garden!’ With Christina up early ahead of a big day at work, while I would be working from home, it was one of those few mornings when she was up well before me. Dragging myself out of bed and half expecting it to be an April Fool’s joke, I stumbled down to the landing-hall window where only a minute before Christina had apparently just glimpsed the first views of a badger from the light cast by the kitchen. ‘I can’t see anything!’ I said, peering into the gloom of the garden and not sure, in view of the date, whether this was her version of an elaborate hoax. ‘I tell you it was right there on the path!’ she said, and as she seemed to be blissfully unaware of the date, it was obvious that she’d been telling the truth. The early bird had indeed got the worm – or in this case, the badger!
Whilst we already knew from the snuffling marks regularly encountered in the meadow that Britain’s largest terrestrial carnivore was a frequent after-hours visitor to our garden, incontrovertible proof, in the form of a sighting, was still exciting news. Putting my disappointment to one side that I hadn’t actually been there to share the moment, I was nevertheless thrilled for Christina, as my turn would surely come. I was tied to my office for the whole morning sorting out tedious paperwork, so it would not be until the afternoon that I was finally able properly to turn my attention to the garden, and, with the weekend just around the corner, what better time to set the ball in motion with two new fabulous projects? Of course, the initiation of any new project in our case inevitably involved the by now well-worn path to our local DIY store to purchase the necessary kit. But this time, buoyed by the unqualified success of the compost bins, I felt ready to tackle the biggest and most ambitious project yet: digging a wildlife pond!
From the moment our offer for the property had been accepted, we had decided that the addition of a pond was an essential prerequisite for any self-respecting back-garden nature reserve. In a nutshell, ponds are teeming with life, and in my opinion adding one to your property portfolio is the single quickest way of instantly making your garden more attractive to a massive range of wildlife. Garden ponds have also over the last few decades become an increasingly important habitat, as their countryside cousins have either been filled in or become so polluted from agricultural run-off or other pollutants that the life they are able to support has become minimal.
Having a pond in my own back garden is something I have intensely desired for as long as I can remember. One of my most vivid early childhood memories is of a brush with aquatic wildlife at the age of four or five, when I recall being entranced by dragonflies dashing around a pond on Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, and it’s fair comment to say I have been fascinated by them ever since. Of course, the presence of a pond will not only massively increase your chance of dragonflies making an appearance, but will also maximise the possibility of playing host to amphibians at some point during the year too. I can’t tell you how happy it would make me to be the proud owner of a clump of frogspawn – does that make me sound strange?
Of course, with ponds it’s not just about the charismatic