Sorry for delay in posting but as a result of my flu like infection closely followed by a chest infection I discovered via a visit from our Doctor that I'm now suffering from Labrynthitis, this is as a result of original infection, it's like severe sea sickness or; being very drunk!
Not nice.
I submitted an article some time ago in our newsletter on the breeding and treatment of frogs in my ponds, well, this year is almost a repeat of the year before last except that this year the disappearance was down entirely to the newts!
The frogs laid about ten lots of spawn in the overflow pond and four in wildlife pond at the bottom of our garden and the toads later also made a small contribution i.e. about three lots in overflow pond.
Despite my best efforts the ever voracious newts ate the lot in both ponds!
Just a few tadpoles maybe a dozen or so actually hatched out in the overflow pond and swam around for a couple of weeks, these may have been toad tadpoles, but by the end of March all were gone. I did search through both ponds with a net but not a one left.
Another downside to having too many newts is they have a very catholic diet and apparently eat anything that moves in the water, snails, Argulus, leeches, Daphnia, Caddis larvae, Mayfly larvae, etc. etc. all seem to have disappeared that were once prolific particularly in small overflow pond. I would hope that once they've eaten everything they will move on to new pastures; or ponds!
On a more positive note the hedgehogs are back to their regular nightly visits tripping our security light most nights and leaving their lumpy calling cards scattered around the lawn.
They are certainly well fed as sometimes they're difficult to tell apart from the dog jobbies!.
On the subject of dogs our angelic looking little dog Lottie continues to surprise us with her Jekyll and Hyde personality and last week she caught and very quickly killed a large male rat so big she could hardly get her jaws around it. Such a disarmingly sweet little dog with a dark soul!
Absolutely super down at the Elwy this morning, everything fresh and green after last nights rain and the warming sun cheered us by squeezing out from behind scattering cumulus clouds around half past ten on our way back.
Saw a pair of Goosander on the river at the back of the new cricket pavilion this week so our lonely female has paired up again but her new very handsome mate is a lot shyer and they flew off downriver when we got within 100 yards of them. We could get to within 20 to 30 feet of the female through this last winter and it just swam away if we got too close.
The swallows are back to St Asaph again zooming up and down over the river at breakneck speed catching this mornings hatch of what looked to be Chironimid midges and Stone or Sedge flies? They were joined by five or six Yellow Wagtails possibly a family flitting out across the river then returning to the white limestone boulders scattered along the banks to bob and curtsey.
The council (so efficient) have cut the grass around and on the retaining banks on The Roe and the Common so the air is full of the pungent smell of garlic as there where great rafts(in full flower!) of Ransoms or wild garlic and Hedge Mustard which also smells of garlic so the smell lingers somewhat days after they cut it.
Spring is nearly here!
Re: Spring is nearly here!
SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMERS DAY,
THOUGH ART MORE LOVELY; AND MORE TEMPERATE.
ROUGH WINDS DO SHAKE THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY,
AND SUMMERS LEASE HATH ALL TOO SHORT A DATE.
W.S.
Erring on the side of caution I spent yesterday dosing my pond with PP in readiness for delivery of my raffle prize Goshiki Koi. It was very kindly delivered by Colin before our club meeting last night so a very big thank you to him, Super man!
Settled the new fish into its new home then we went on to The Farmers at Waen to enjoy a very pleasant club meeting.
Arriving home about half ten on a cold clear starlit night and with the space station glowing like a bright low star in the North Western sky we saw we had a visitor.
Trundling across the road in front of us and heading for our driveway was a fairly large hedgehog. We turned the headlights off and waited for it to continue on into the drive before we pulled in behind it and I got out to look at it more closely.
I recognised our male hedgehog as he is quite tame and I'm sure he knows our voices as he doesn't curl up fully when first approached. We opened the large side gate for him so he could get through for his nightly feed in the back garden.
Normally they come and go under the small side gate on the opposite side of the house and they have actually worn a path smooth in the gravel under the gate over the past years.
Went out this morning at 7.0am to check my new fish and the PP treatment was clearly evident with the oily brown foamy scum floating on the surface.
A quick dose of 35% Hydrogen Peroxide well mixed in to a 5 gallon bucket of pond water then sprayed onto the pond surface, I retired in for a coffee and breakfast and an hour or so later; all clear on the Western Front! crystal clear!
THOUGH ART MORE LOVELY; AND MORE TEMPERATE.
ROUGH WINDS DO SHAKE THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY,
AND SUMMERS LEASE HATH ALL TOO SHORT A DATE.
W.S.
Erring on the side of caution I spent yesterday dosing my pond with PP in readiness for delivery of my raffle prize Goshiki Koi. It was very kindly delivered by Colin before our club meeting last night so a very big thank you to him, Super man!
Settled the new fish into its new home then we went on to The Farmers at Waen to enjoy a very pleasant club meeting.
Arriving home about half ten on a cold clear starlit night and with the space station glowing like a bright low star in the North Western sky we saw we had a visitor.
Trundling across the road in front of us and heading for our driveway was a fairly large hedgehog. We turned the headlights off and waited for it to continue on into the drive before we pulled in behind it and I got out to look at it more closely.
I recognised our male hedgehog as he is quite tame and I'm sure he knows our voices as he doesn't curl up fully when first approached. We opened the large side gate for him so he could get through for his nightly feed in the back garden.
Normally they come and go under the small side gate on the opposite side of the house and they have actually worn a path smooth in the gravel under the gate over the past years.
Went out this morning at 7.0am to check my new fish and the PP treatment was clearly evident with the oily brown foamy scum floating on the surface.
A quick dose of 35% Hydrogen Peroxide well mixed in to a 5 gallon bucket of pond water then sprayed onto the pond surface, I retired in for a coffee and breakfast and an hour or so later; all clear on the Western Front! crystal clear!
-
roselanekoi
- Posts: 322
- Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 pm
Re: Spring is nearly here!
A quickly taken picture of the Raffle Prize Goshiki before I bagged it up to take it to Phil's, not the best quality picture I'm afraid.
Colin
- G&S Goshiki.jpg (100.39 KiB) Viewed 12891 times
Re: Spring is nearly here!
Thank you for that Colin; it looks even better in the pond this morning.
Rough winds certainly shook the darling buds of May this afternoon; in fact it was just short of violently ripping all the tree blossom off completely, what a wind that sprung up!
Luckily we walked the dogs early on this morning and it was quite warm sunny and pleasant, warmer than yesterday with its chilly breeze so I regretted putting a heavy coat on when we were half way round our walk.
The river was fining down and getting a lot clearer after the torrential rain over the weekend, Saturday particularly and there is now quite a large tree jammed on the concrete apron on the central pier of the road bridge at St Asaph brought downriver Saturday night by the floods.
I saw this morning that the pair of Dippers that have taken up residence under the bridge are using it as an observation post.
Just 200 yards farther on along the river bank exactly behind the Co-op shop car park otters have left a lot of spraints (poo!) at the top of one of their slides down the river bank
It looks like several were there last night; or one that's very incontinent!
Because of the rain last week we walked the dogs along the tarmac path toward Rhuddlan and on Friday we got a glimpse of a Kingfisher for two seconds on a tree stump on the opposite side of the Elwy right at the back of the new cricket pavilion, then a brilliant flash of emerald and blue in the morning sunshine and it was gone; downriver.
A young lady with a black Labrador pointed it out to me, she had just managed to get a photo she was proud to show us with her phone as it dived and came back out to the same tree stump.
The rabbits from the woods at the back of our house are getting brave of late, every morning up to about 7.30am they feed on our back lawn despite the dogs chasing them out when they are let out every morning for their constitutional (peeing contest)
Unusually one was there at lunchtime today, quite a young one though, about half grown.
Rough winds certainly shook the darling buds of May this afternoon; in fact it was just short of violently ripping all the tree blossom off completely, what a wind that sprung up!
Luckily we walked the dogs early on this morning and it was quite warm sunny and pleasant, warmer than yesterday with its chilly breeze so I regretted putting a heavy coat on when we were half way round our walk.
The river was fining down and getting a lot clearer after the torrential rain over the weekend, Saturday particularly and there is now quite a large tree jammed on the concrete apron on the central pier of the road bridge at St Asaph brought downriver Saturday night by the floods.
I saw this morning that the pair of Dippers that have taken up residence under the bridge are using it as an observation post.
Just 200 yards farther on along the river bank exactly behind the Co-op shop car park otters have left a lot of spraints (poo!) at the top of one of their slides down the river bank
It looks like several were there last night; or one that's very incontinent!
Because of the rain last week we walked the dogs along the tarmac path toward Rhuddlan and on Friday we got a glimpse of a Kingfisher for two seconds on a tree stump on the opposite side of the Elwy right at the back of the new cricket pavilion, then a brilliant flash of emerald and blue in the morning sunshine and it was gone; downriver.
A young lady with a black Labrador pointed it out to me, she had just managed to get a photo she was proud to show us with her phone as it dived and came back out to the same tree stump.
The rabbits from the woods at the back of our house are getting brave of late, every morning up to about 7.30am they feed on our back lawn despite the dogs chasing them out when they are let out every morning for their constitutional (peeing contest)
Unusually one was there at lunchtime today, quite a young one though, about half grown.
Re: Spring is nearly here!
Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.
From 'A Shropshire Lad' 1887
by Alfred Edward Housman
April seems to have been the main month for cherry blossom this year and my cherries have excelled in bloom this spring despite the cold winds of late. Hope there is a nice crop of cherries at the end!
Still windy this morning and quite chilly at 7.00 am when I went out to water my pots in the greenhouse still no rain yet as promised though.
Discovered an attack of the dreaded vine weevils in my greenhouse pots over the last weekend, vine weevils will chew every root off your plants or trees and kill them so I ordered some 'Nemasys' nematodes from t'internet (eBay)
Nemasys nematodes are a natural and very efficient way of killing the evil little beasts, you water them in and they then set about finding the vine weevils and crawl up their orifices to produce a toxin that kills the weevil; a fitting 'end' to the destructive little beggars!
Despite the chilly morning my koi were looking for food so I tried them with a few Wheatgerm pellets and waited around for a few minutes before feeding them some more.
I have a very efficient surplus food removal system in my pond that's better than a skimmer and environmentally friendly as it quickly recycles the koi pellets.
The system consists of a family of thieving Magpies that loiter round the pond from dawn to dusk hoovering up any pellets that get within swallowing distance, the frustrated antics out of them trying to get to the floating pellets is remarkable and entertaining, they really are intelligent birds at working things out; but, still not particularly nice birds!
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.
From 'A Shropshire Lad' 1887
by Alfred Edward Housman
April seems to have been the main month for cherry blossom this year and my cherries have excelled in bloom this spring despite the cold winds of late. Hope there is a nice crop of cherries at the end!
Still windy this morning and quite chilly at 7.00 am when I went out to water my pots in the greenhouse still no rain yet as promised though.
Discovered an attack of the dreaded vine weevils in my greenhouse pots over the last weekend, vine weevils will chew every root off your plants or trees and kill them so I ordered some 'Nemasys' nematodes from t'internet (eBay)
Nemasys nematodes are a natural and very efficient way of killing the evil little beasts, you water them in and they then set about finding the vine weevils and crawl up their orifices to produce a toxin that kills the weevil; a fitting 'end' to the destructive little beggars!
Despite the chilly morning my koi were looking for food so I tried them with a few Wheatgerm pellets and waited around for a few minutes before feeding them some more.
I have a very efficient surplus food removal system in my pond that's better than a skimmer and environmentally friendly as it quickly recycles the koi pellets.
The system consists of a family of thieving Magpies that loiter round the pond from dawn to dusk hoovering up any pellets that get within swallowing distance, the frustrated antics out of them trying to get to the floating pellets is remarkable and entertaining, they really are intelligent birds at working things out; but, still not particularly nice birds!
Re: Spring is nearly here!
BENEATH THE APPLE BLOSSOMS,
I GO MY WINTRY WAY,
FOR LOVE THAT SMILED IN APRIL,
IS FALSE TO ME IN MAY.
Sara Teasdale
Went down to my greenhouse early this morning to water pots and to check the filter as usual and discovered that my Nexus filter was almost emptied out with just a few precious inches of water remaining in the exit chamber.
The central chamber with the filter medium in was clogged solid and the outer chamber was showing the K1 heaped up in the bottom.
Ducks had obviously visited my veg filter overnight rooting around for food and disturbed a great load of detritus and flattening down the watercress in the process
I set about flushing the filter out and very quickly found the 2" flexible waste pipe was clogged solid at the filter end.
I put the exit end of pipe into a large tub to capture whatever had blocked it instead of flushing it out over the grass around my pear trees.
I cleared pipe at filter end, re-connected pipe and opened 2" valve to flush Nexus out, I then went to inspect tub and found 6 black toad tadpoles swimming around in tub!
That I presume is what the ducks were after in the veg filter as it's the only place the tadpoles could have survived, they have then run the gauntlet of passing through the pond, Koi and filter and luckily not been spotted and eaten; as the Koi and Rudd just love tadpoles.
Walking the dogs this morning we went a different way for a change and crossed over the stile at the back of the St Asaph allotments to travel upriver.
I stopped on the river bank to watch the chittering swallows swooping and diving and suddenly realised that the swallows weren't swallows but Sandmartins!
There is a whole new colony of about a dozen pairs nesting in holes along the river bank here, how pleasing a discovery is that!
Last time I saw a colony of Sandmartins locally, a huge one though, was on a high sandy river bank at Radcliffe near Bury in Lancashire at a paint manufacturers called McPhersons Paints one of my companies customers.
Happy memories of 20 odd years ago sitting with binoculars in the lunch hour with the Storeman himself a keen bird watcher watching the parent birds feeding their young at the entrance to their burrows.
Strange coincidence is; the company that has its premises and owns the land on the same side as the Sandmartins nests is Cascade Koi where I bought most of my Koi from the following year!
I still have four in my pond and Cascade is where I still buy my Cloverleaf Blanket Answer blanket weed treatment from.
I GO MY WINTRY WAY,
FOR LOVE THAT SMILED IN APRIL,
IS FALSE TO ME IN MAY.
Sara Teasdale
Went down to my greenhouse early this morning to water pots and to check the filter as usual and discovered that my Nexus filter was almost emptied out with just a few precious inches of water remaining in the exit chamber.
The central chamber with the filter medium in was clogged solid and the outer chamber was showing the K1 heaped up in the bottom.
Ducks had obviously visited my veg filter overnight rooting around for food and disturbed a great load of detritus and flattening down the watercress in the process
I set about flushing the filter out and very quickly found the 2" flexible waste pipe was clogged solid at the filter end.
I put the exit end of pipe into a large tub to capture whatever had blocked it instead of flushing it out over the grass around my pear trees.
I cleared pipe at filter end, re-connected pipe and opened 2" valve to flush Nexus out, I then went to inspect tub and found 6 black toad tadpoles swimming around in tub!
That I presume is what the ducks were after in the veg filter as it's the only place the tadpoles could have survived, they have then run the gauntlet of passing through the pond, Koi and filter and luckily not been spotted and eaten; as the Koi and Rudd just love tadpoles.
Walking the dogs this morning we went a different way for a change and crossed over the stile at the back of the St Asaph allotments to travel upriver.
I stopped on the river bank to watch the chittering swallows swooping and diving and suddenly realised that the swallows weren't swallows but Sandmartins!
There is a whole new colony of about a dozen pairs nesting in holes along the river bank here, how pleasing a discovery is that!
Last time I saw a colony of Sandmartins locally, a huge one though, was on a high sandy river bank at Radcliffe near Bury in Lancashire at a paint manufacturers called McPhersons Paints one of my companies customers.
Happy memories of 20 odd years ago sitting with binoculars in the lunch hour with the Storeman himself a keen bird watcher watching the parent birds feeding their young at the entrance to their burrows.
Strange coincidence is; the company that has its premises and owns the land on the same side as the Sandmartins nests is Cascade Koi where I bought most of my Koi from the following year!
I still have four in my pond and Cascade is where I still buy my Cloverleaf Blanket Answer blanket weed treatment from.
Re: Spring is nearly here!
NE'ER CAST A CLOUT
'TIL MAY BE OUT.
How true the above for as I type this post, sleet and hail is covering the lawn! so, it's back to getting my 'Clouts' back on to walk the dogs later.
The inevitable follow up to my filter clogging up on Friday is every day since I have had to keep a close eye on things.
I flushed my filter out again on Sunday and found another three toad tadpoles in flushed waste then yesterday (in between showers) I got stuck in to the overgrown vegetable filter and clipped the flattened down watercress and removed a mass of the stuff.
The simplest method I find is to pull and cut the watercress and throw it into the pond the very fibrous white roots always contain all manner of bugs and creepy crawlies so I leave it for a few hours for the fish to hoover their live snacks out before removing it to the compost bins.
I then flushed the Nexus out again later on in the afternoon and found yet another tadpole! that's ten in all from Friday.
I dread to think how many have been eaten by my fish or just flushed into the grass!
When I eventually removed the watercress from the pond I threw it into a wheelbarrow and left it overnight (in the rain) I discovered in the water accumulated in bottom of wheelbarrow dozens of leeches and quite a few Argulus, so, the newts haven't eaten them all, they obviously cannot get at them in the massed tangle of fine roots in the veg filter.
Sunday was a fairly nice day walking the Elwy and we went upriver again past the Sandmartins colony, just a half mile or so upriver is the boundary to the public access walk culminating in a brand new fence that's replaced the one torn out by the winter floods. In the meadow here we stood and watched a lot of swifts and housemartens wheeling and swooping through a mayfly hatch over the river, a free show for us and a young chap we meet regularly up there the owner of a mad boxer dog.
'TIL MAY BE OUT.
How true the above for as I type this post, sleet and hail is covering the lawn! so, it's back to getting my 'Clouts' back on to walk the dogs later.
The inevitable follow up to my filter clogging up on Friday is every day since I have had to keep a close eye on things.
I flushed my filter out again on Sunday and found another three toad tadpoles in flushed waste then yesterday (in between showers) I got stuck in to the overgrown vegetable filter and clipped the flattened down watercress and removed a mass of the stuff.
The simplest method I find is to pull and cut the watercress and throw it into the pond the very fibrous white roots always contain all manner of bugs and creepy crawlies so I leave it for a few hours for the fish to hoover their live snacks out before removing it to the compost bins.
I then flushed the Nexus out again later on in the afternoon and found yet another tadpole! that's ten in all from Friday.
I dread to think how many have been eaten by my fish or just flushed into the grass!
When I eventually removed the watercress from the pond I threw it into a wheelbarrow and left it overnight (in the rain) I discovered in the water accumulated in bottom of wheelbarrow dozens of leeches and quite a few Argulus, so, the newts haven't eaten them all, they obviously cannot get at them in the massed tangle of fine roots in the veg filter.
Sunday was a fairly nice day walking the Elwy and we went upriver again past the Sandmartins colony, just a half mile or so upriver is the boundary to the public access walk culminating in a brand new fence that's replaced the one torn out by the winter floods. In the meadow here we stood and watched a lot of swifts and housemartens wheeling and swooping through a mayfly hatch over the river, a free show for us and a young chap we meet regularly up there the owner of a mad boxer dog.
Re: Spring is nearly here!
Flushed my filter through again yesterday and found yet another toad tadpole in flushed out waste from Nexus that's 11 up to now, its joined it's siblings in the wildlife pond.
We decided to walk north i.e. downriver this morning as we had Hamish Mk 2 with us, we saw and heard three male Misselthrushes singing.
They were spotted performing their 'Rites of Spring' act in the high trees down by the sewage farm next to the caravan park this side of Rhuddlan on the Elwy. They just seem to revel in the bad weather as it was quite breezy and spitting on and off with rain but they were up right on the tops of the trees defiantly singing their lungs out, just lovely to hear them.
I think that because they could hear each other was an added impetus to their loud singing. Just good to know some wildlife is still surviving and thriving apparently as like so many other wild birds, they have been in decline, that's at least three pairs breeding this year; plus the pair in the woods behind us.
We decided to walk north i.e. downriver this morning as we had Hamish Mk 2 with us, we saw and heard three male Misselthrushes singing.
They were spotted performing their 'Rites of Spring' act in the high trees down by the sewage farm next to the caravan park this side of Rhuddlan on the Elwy. They just seem to revel in the bad weather as it was quite breezy and spitting on and off with rain but they were up right on the tops of the trees defiantly singing their lungs out, just lovely to hear them.
I think that because they could hear each other was an added impetus to their loud singing. Just good to know some wildlife is still surviving and thriving apparently as like so many other wild birds, they have been in decline, that's at least three pairs breeding this year; plus the pair in the woods behind us.
Re: Spring is nearly here!
I don't believe the half I hear,
Nor the quarter of what I see!
But I have one faith, sublime and true,
That nothing can shake or slay;
Each spring I firmly believe anew
All the catalogues say!"
Carolyn Wells
Yet another single toad tadpole flushed out from my Nexus filter this morning! that's now 12 so far, I just don't know how they survive?
Rain early on has put doggie walking by the river on hold for now but hopefully should brighten up this afternoon
Nor the quarter of what I see!
But I have one faith, sublime and true,
That nothing can shake or slay;
Each spring I firmly believe anew
All the catalogues say!"
Carolyn Wells
Yet another single toad tadpole flushed out from my Nexus filter this morning! that's now 12 so far, I just don't know how they survive?
Rain early on has put doggie walking by the river on hold for now but hopefully should brighten up this afternoon
Re: Spring is nearly here!
All new, creative things come from outside our own minds.
By definition they have to come from outside our minds to be truly new
The tadpoles, still they come!. Two more Nexus flushing's and four more tadpoles in waste.
The last day of May and it's colder than the first!
It has been pretty consistent though with below average temperatures and above average rainfall so I'm thinking, should this post be re-titled Summer is nearly here?.
Could be a problem with that though as the way things have panned out recently we may not actually get a summer but slip directly into Autumn.
My brother rang me from Ontario Canada last night and said that after one of the snowiest coldest late springs they now have torrential rain bucketing down!
Not that bad here this morning just heavy showers so no doggie walks til later on this afternoon.
By definition they have to come from outside our minds to be truly new
The tadpoles, still they come!. Two more Nexus flushing's and four more tadpoles in waste.
The last day of May and it's colder than the first!
It has been pretty consistent though with below average temperatures and above average rainfall so I'm thinking, should this post be re-titled Summer is nearly here?.
Could be a problem with that though as the way things have panned out recently we may not actually get a summer but slip directly into Autumn.
My brother rang me from Ontario Canada last night and said that after one of the snowiest coldest late springs they now have torrential rain bucketing down!
Not that bad here this morning just heavy showers so no doggie walks til later on this afternoon.