When Winter Came

It's been a cruel and bitter winter. Not in a meterological sense - in that regard it has been unseasonably, unprecedentedly [post 2020 everything is now unpredcedentedly] warm, being a toasty 12 degrees on Christmas Day; but in the sense that we lost a family member.

K

Unfortunately, despite pulling through a compromised and difficult surgery, our lovely K simply couldn't cope with her other serious medical conditions and we made the heart-wrenching decision to let her go. The sun has shone nearly everyday since, the blanket on the windowsill lies forlorn and empty. After spending hours staring out the window at the world beyond the glass, I like to think that perhaps now she is staring [glaring] back at us from the outside. May the sun shine on you wherever you are.

The rest of the garden [and its inhabitants] appear to have weathered the winter well. Storm Eowyn [which many a weather reporter failled to pronounce - away and read Lord of the Rings people!] came and went, leaving a small pile of sticks where we once had a rather rickety dried willow fence - I guess it makes it easier for the birds to take their pick for nest building? The greenhouse tried to blow away, but was prevented by the rope tethers and the quirky angle of the [pre-windblown] bird feeder pole. I don't know where all the birds went that day, but squirrels turned up in force [ok we had three] apparently not caring tuppence for the wind, see below.

Plants have been somewhat confused with numerous false starts [glorious warm weather followed by biting frosts], with the yellow hues of primroses and forsythia adorning the garden since January. Snowdrops emerged soon after, followed in succession by crocuses, dandelions, muscari and daffodils. By the end of March, the first camelia buds were emerging along with the harlequin flowers of snake's-head fritillaries.

Left - right: Snake's-head fritillaries, Pulmonaria, daffodils, camelias, snowdrops & muscari, hyacinth

The sunny days have brought the birds back to the garden; we definately had less birds this winter, I don't know if this was simply due to more households feeding them - and they put on a better spread or if there was some other reason. We've had many robins shouting loudly at each other from either end of the garden and lots of blackbirds too. This is great to see because a) got to love a blackbird - we only really see them in winter and b) there's a nasty deadly virus going about called Usutu virus (USUV). I believe it's currently only affecting populations in the south of England as its spread by mosquitoes; but the warmer summers [and winters] mean the chance of it spreading north increases.

The supposedly 'shy' dunnocks are extremely confident in our garden, breaking cover and using the bird feeders with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Sparrows are dust-bathing on the bare soil; the starlings parade the lawn selecting only the best wisps of dried grass for their nests [in the voids between the roof and gutters of neighbouring houses]; while the magpies pluck beakfuls of moss from the lawn searching for tasty morsels. Wrens are becoming more confident too, dashing in and around pots like tiny brown ping-pong balls.

For a couple of evenings I heard some unusual bird song - turns out its blue tits! [Can recommend the Merlin bird ID app [no, I'm not affiliated] as it not only identfies birds by their call, but records it too].

Blue Tit Evensong

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The wood pigeons are getting uh...romantic. Some males are getting rather persistant/desperate, but the females know their stuff and have been practising their kung-fu as a deterrent...

Turns out not everyone was kung-fu fighting...

In the mammal department, we have two regular squirrels visiting the feeders and accepting walnuts from the door-hatch - Sassy #2 [identified by her knocked-up finger] and Fluffy [identified by generally being considerably fluffy, particularly behind the ears]. We've started seeing hedgehogs again [hurrah!] and what's great [if slightly gross] is that the scat they are leaving in the garden has insect shell casings in it. This is great news as it means that there are invertebrate in the locale and that they are eating them; and not being solely reliant on tinned food. We have started to put out tinned food, as it is the time of year that they need to bulk up, but we're not putting it out regularly so we're not creating a dependency culture. It's too late for the peanuts unfortunately...

And we've still got mice living at the bottom of the garden. Much to the chargrin of the local cat population...