Spring is nearly here!

[pollygog]

SOLITUDE

I love the stillness of the wood;
I love the music of the rill;
I love to sit in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill.

Here from the world I win release,
Nor scorn of men,nor footstep rude,
Break in to mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude.

Here may the silent tears I weep
Lull the vexed spirit into rest,
As infants sob themselves to sleep
Upon a mothers breast.

But when the bitter hour is gone,
And the keen throbbing pangs are still,
Oh, sweetest then to sit alone
Upon some silent hill!

To live in joys that once have been,
To put the cold world out of sight,
And deck lifes drear and barren scene
With hues of rainbow-light.

Catch up time and I have been busy of late with family business.
First frogspawn on the 25th Feb not very much just four lots but possibly more to come?
Newts already busy foraging in original small overflow pond where frogspawn is laid so I caught them in net and transferred them to new wildlife pond including three of last years young newts, no doubt ready to get stuck into the frogspawn as they did last year!
This mild fairly dry weather of last few weeks has brought everything on in my garden including lots of daffodils already in flower for tomorrow's Dewi Sant (St Davids Day)
Some figs unfolding their buds in my greenhouse and three peach trees just starting into flower in there, I have an Apricot in a tub outside my greenhouse thats also come into flower this week so will have to bring it inside if it threatens frost at all over next week or so.
Don't you just love these extra hours of light! still light til just after six o clock tonight and we are into March.
My koi are foraging in the waterlilly tub rooting off leaves and buds yet despite their attentions the lilly has managed to push its first new leaf to the surface and lots more following.
Our male resident hedgehog put in an appearance last night tripping the security light several times much to the delight of our neighbours from across road who were dog-sitting for us. We also found that he likes dried mealworms as he cleared our bird ground feeder of them and all the suet pellets!
On a final note, today is I'm pleased to say the anniversary of my original posting of
SPRING IS NEARLY HERE!
With over 9,000 views to date so please keep it up.

[pollygog]

Just a quick reminder its the March meeting for members next Wednesday night!
You can pay your due £15 annual subs then or at AGM in April.
Phil

[pollygog]

I hope the old legend of March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb holds good as I could get used to this good mild weather of late. It started off as the wettest winter ever on record and now it looks like a record year for frogspawn as my frogs go into overdrive to produce more frogspawn than I have ever seen before and its still being produced! another lot today and it heralded the arrival of the first toads today, three so far though lord knows where they are going to lay their spawn as there is precious little space left in the two wildlife ponds, see pic.

[pollygog]

A Goldcrest seems to have taken up residence in our garden as I have seen it in the same conifer three times this week, it is not fased by me either as I can stand within 15 feet of it provided I keep still, it is so incredibly tiny and cute! hopefully I can get a photo of it soon and share it.
The game fishing season gets under way this week and I celebrated by having a very successful day at Nanerch with 5 trout to the net this morning, best fish 3.5 lbs.A beautiful bright sunny spring day after the fog lifted at 9.0am. There were daffodils and lesser celandine in flower everywhere and pussy willow catkins around the lake glistening like jewels with dew on them in the early morning sun, just a pleasure to be alive on a day like today.
I went out with a torch on Tuesday evening and counted 9 newts eating the frogspawn in the tiny overflow pond next to my koi pond but they wont eat it all like last year as the frogs have laid a staggering amount this year, mostly in my new pond, I reckon there is at least 40 lots so the poor old toads have got some competition this year.

[roselanekoi]

Hi Phil,

The frogs in my small wildlife pond are a week behind yours as they only started spawning yesterday, I counted 4 lots of spawn so far. I've not seen any newts yet.

About a dozen lapwings have returned to a nearby field and they're very busy with their courtship display flights, I'm always amazed at the agility of these birds. Only a few days to go before the official start of spring on the 21st,

Colin

[pollygog]

Hi Colin, surprised at lateness of your spawn! I've been out today looking at the spawn in the original small overflow pond and there are actually tadpoles swimming about from first spawning last month, even the last lots laid are showing 'c' shaped embryo's and there was a pale buff coloured newt eating them as I watched. Interesting incident ocurred as I bent over pond leaning on the balustrading, a small vociferous group of sparrows were squabbling and making a right din behind me near our bird feeder when suddenly I felt a blow to my head just above my right ear as the sparrows still fighting flew into the side of my head giving me one hell of a fright. I was looking down concentrating on what was going on in pond and barely aware of them til then.
Another happening in pond today was watching the caddis grubs bumbling about on bottom of pond with their varied assortment of bits stuck to their casing, from tiny sticks, gravel, bits of leaf etc, best way to see them is to carefully lift them out and put them in a shallow container with some pond water and examine them through a magnifying glass, they are fascinating little creatures.
You seeing the lapwings or peewits as we called them instantly takes me back to my youth as they were very common birds then and hundreds used to nest on the nearby "moss". They made some weird scary noises of a night to as I recall when we used to camp out there in a tent as young lads.

[pollygog]

Due to continuing mild weather of late my frogsawn is now converted to free swimming tadpoles, thousands of them.
Monday found a female Great Crested Newt swimming in my new wildlife pond no doubt after the tadpoles.
Surprise for me on goggle box last night was I was watching a new series on BBC 2 Wales Tuesday at 7.30 pm called "The Hill Farm" when the farmer came on I casually remarked to Cyn that the the farmer looked remarkably like Huw Jones from Graiglwyd trout fishery, it turned out that he was his elder brother! because five minutes later in the programme the farmer is fly fishing at his brother Huw's fly fishery, gobsmacked I was.
It was obviously filmed early last summer, June I reckon as the aptly named dreadful smelling skunk cabbage was in flower all around the lake. It's a very interesting programme though with great insight into the highs and lows of hill farming.
Home front and my Victoria plum tree and gooseberry Invicta are just starting to flower, a bit early so I'm standing ready with the fleece covers just in case of a heavy frost.

[pollygog]

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain
T,S Eliot. The Wasteland

AGM TONIGHT FOLKS!
Don't forget your subs if not already paid.

The frogs in my garden are still laying frogspawn, another two or three lots yesterday, the first hatched tadpoles are feeding on the latest frogspawn jelly apparently as there are thousands of them swarming on the top of the newly laid spawn.
I have never had the spawn laid over such a long period as this, it must be a month at least and now there are toads everywhere lining up for their bash, I counted nine on Monday morning and they have done again what they did last year! laid a string of spawn in the static K1 in Nexus centre and also this time in the exit chamber of Nexus, they do choose some peculiar places to put their spawn?.
My sister in law has taken some frogspawn off my hands last week and taken it down to Shrewsbury to stock her new wildlife pond with and it's already hatched out, much to her delight, I also took some to Merseyside yesterday to two other frogless ponds, so heres hoping they continue to breed.
Plum trees in full flower this week and I have the bees visiting daily so it looks like another bumper crop again this year. Very large bumble bee has moved into a discarded Bluetit nestbox and set up home so thats a good omen of things to come.
One of my Apricot tree's has produced a very good crop of fruitlets so far in greenhouse, if they all set stones it will need some drastic thinning next month.
First butterflies about this week and a chap from Avonwen was telling me on Saturday last that the swallows were back and twittering in and out of his barn on his farm this last Friday morning 27th March, thats early this far north!

[roselanekoi]

Your spring must be at least two weeks in front of me even though we're only 20 miles apart. My frogspawn has only just hatched out and like in your pond there's lots of it this year as you can see in the photo below.

FEb_2014A-3.jpg (125.49 KiB) Viewed 15964 times

Colin

[pollygog]

Hi Colin, nice to see the photo of your frogspawn, a couple of years ago I found out from a lady who lives in Llandyrnog that the Vale of Clwyd has a mini-climate, thats why she moved there from Widnes she told me. Come to think who would choose to live in Widnes!
Mind you, its a helluva lot better nowadays than it was. When I was a kid in West Lancs we knew it then as "Stink Alley" because of the many chemical companies spewing noxious smells about, they're mostly closed down now!
One of my habits when the weather warmed up was to go out on a damp night with a torch and tub of salt slug hunting, but since the hedgehogs adopted my garden the salt is redundant so I just go out with the torch checking the amphibian population.
Twice this week I have found a female Great Crested Newt inside the doorway to my filter shed and duly photographed it. I assumed it was the same one until I compared photo's and found one is much darker and the lighter one has a yellow streak in its tail so curious as to why they were in exactly the same spot two nights on the trot.
The bumble bee that moved into bird box now has babies hatched and they are flying in and out despite the cold rain, they really are tough beggars, hardier than the honey bees and wasps now about and another one with babies already is a pair of blackbirds in our hedge feeding young this last week, saw male with a beakfull of worms just this morning