Spring is nearly here!

[roselanekoi]

I think we can become obsessed by heavy rainfall effecting the pond water parameters. 2 inches of rain is less than 4% by volume of a 5 ft deep pond.

[pollygog]

IF TWO IDIOTS CAN OUTVOTE A GENIUS - THAT'S DEMOCRACY WORKING.

I have a crude way of measuring rain water entering my pond by checking contents/levels of overflow pond and of course the waterline on the pond itself but it's certainly more than 4% Colin.
What puts the volume up considerably is I have the roof of a large pergola draining into pond through downspout and roof of my pump-house also draining into pond.
Plus: we have had an inordinately large amount of rain this past week or so, it's actually raining as I type this at 5:30pm!

Carol weathergirl tells us it's becoming clear so expect frost, like; where?
Weather forecast for tomorrow is more heavy rain; should be quite a nice day then>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And my pond is still crystal clear <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

[pollygog]

We had a lovely warm sunny spell in early September this year when I took the photo below of a Red Admiral feeding.
I was surprised at the amount of butterflies attracted to the boxes of rotting fruit I'd collected, mostly Tortoiseshells, Red Admiral's and Painted Ladies with one or two Cabbage Whites.
It was lovely and warm and sunny then, unlike yesterday's cold wet and miserable day when it was pretty much dark at 7:00pm
How things can change in just a few short weeks!

Halloween won't be the same this October as we all ponder and speculate over Brexit and Boris; will it be Trick or Treat?

[pollygog]

I think it must be the large amounts of heavy rain hitting the pond surface of late, coupled with a combination of mild weather and wind but my fish are still pretty ravenous. I'm down to feeding them once a day but they are still gathering excitedly in the feeding area as I approach. The 5 remaining raffle prize koi I bought with my winnings are growing at a prodigious rate and two koi particularly must have increased by 50% in body size, they are usually first up and feeding furiously, just not fazed by my larger koi that must be 20 times their size. Walking down by the river on Wednesday morning, I noticed the Elwy was slightly down from last week and a pair of Dippers were diving and feeding off a rock near the back of the Co-op shop. This is the first time the river has been low enough for them in weeks. They were feeding close to the 4 foot high carved wooden Dipper placed earlier this year on the river bank.
This is the latest addition to the carvings placed along the river bank on The Common either side of the stone road bridge. They are placed to represent the varied wild life we have here, we already have a badger, pheasant, kingfisher, giant bat, giant bee, Elwy salmon and large wooden otter (some people think is a Merecat!).

Here are two of them!

As October ages, just one cold period around the 10th has set the leaves aglow, I noticed however that the rare black poplars on The Common have just about lost every leaf this past week, blown off by the storm we had earlier, strange seeing them so bare yet the huge Gean cherry trees and oak, ash, sycamore and alder surrounding them have barely lost a leaf! They're turning some lovely colours though

[pollygog]

Pictured is a maple tree in October by the Elwy in St Asaph, it looked even better in the sunshine: Enjoy!

[roselanekoi]

Seeing the photo of the maple in its autumn glory reminds me that I'll have to pay a visit to Bodnant Gardens this coming week to see their collection of maples.

A few days ago I went for a walk around the woods above Llangwyfan in the Vale of Clwyd. There were loads of pheasant about and I also disturbed a lot of partridge on the way back down to the car park. As I was leaving the car park I spotted a very strange pheasant which I think was a Lady Amherst pheasant. I was unable to get a photo as I was driving but it looked a lot like the picture below.

LAmale.jpeg (64.38 KiB) Viewed 10786 times

The bird definitely had the cape of the amherst pheasant but I don't remember it having so much white so maybe it had interbred with the local pheasant population. I'll definitely be keeping a lookout for the bird when I next visit.

[pollygog]

Seeing your post of that beauty, the Lady Amherst pheasant reminded me of where I think I saw it last. Back in the 1970's + I was a member of the Dee Wildfowlers and every summer we were invited to shoot woodpigeon on Lord Mostyn's estate, mostly in woods around Mostyn and Holywell area. Lord Mostyn kept ornamental pheasant at the Hall, possibly to impress his many guests. He also had Silver and Golden pheasant as well as other exotics.

On the subject of pheasant, when I lived in West Lanc's near Rainford in the early 60's, the local land owner (possibly all of West Lanc's) was Lord Derby of Knowsley Hall who also had a lot of Ornamental pheasant. One particular ornamental pheasant had an enormously long tail, it was also huge, called a Reeves pheasant, they also escaped on a regular basis. One of his gamekeepers who I knew reckoned a male weighed around 4lbs, he also told me it would cost me £50.00 if I shot one! They were apparently protected back then, possibly by one of Lord Derby's pet magistrates!

The bird you saw Colin could possibly have been a cross-breed from one of these many pheasant as I know a lot escaped from various estates or were set free by anti-blood sport protesters all over the North West back then.

[roselanekoi]

Winter must be close, in the last few days I've seen several large flocks of fieldfare. A member of the thrush family it breeds in Northern Europe and Asia and migrates south to overwinter, with a reported 680,000 birds overwintering in the British Isles.

[pollygog]

No Fieldfares up this neck of the woods yet Colin, at least I've not spotted one (mostly due to rain). Something is eating the berries off the holly and viburnum trees in our back garden at a rate of knots though.
I watched BBC Autumn Watch last night and thought it was seriously disturbing news about the rapid decline of the hedgehog, at it's present rate of loss it could be gone from UK by 2025!
That's a really, really, bad prognosis!
We had a mini-holiday earlier this week near Barmouth, one of my nephews, a teacher, had a half-term break and rented a cottage in Arthog with his family and invited us down for a few days. The cottage though lovely was rather tiny for six so we stayed in Penmaenpool.
There are some really nice places to see around and above Arthog.
It's pleasing to see up there that is still completely unspoiled by commercial enterprise and there are no bloody wind farms to spoil the views.
A first for me was using the miniature steam railway from Fairbourne that connects you to the little boat ferry across the Mawddach to Barmouth beach, that was interesting if a little scary as the very strong equinoctial tide was ebbing fast!

[roselanekoi]

Interesting comments about the hedgehogs. The plumber servicing my gas boiler last week was telling me he has a family of hedgehogs in his back garden and they have become quite tame as he regularly feeds them. I've also noted a few hedgehogs recently, sadly usually run over, after not having seen any in recent years. As with most wildlife programmes they do seem to exaggerate and I would be very surprised if there are no hedgehogs about in 2026.

I remember the scare stories a few years ago that, due to global warming, there would be no polar bears by now but in fact their numbers are steadily increasing after a hunting ban.

My plumber lives on the outskirts of Buckley and is quite keen on wildlife in general. Gary also told me was that he has a family of badgers living under his veranda, I bet they make a mess of his garden.