Spring is nearly here!

Advice on Koi,Ponds and Equipment
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

As you know, we had hedgehogs here in our garden regularly but worryingly there are far fewer sightings this last year or so.
The classic spotting was our security lights being triggered by scurrying hedgehogs across our yard but it's usually moggies now, they regularly use the gap I originally made under our side gates for the hedgehogs to come and go.

There must be a very dangerous liaison between the hedgehogs and the badgers in your plumbers garden Colin; as you know badgers eat hedgehogs!.

I don't know whether you remember, but I had to put up the wooden fence across the bottom of our back garden to keep the hungry badgers out. I mentioned them to a neighbour at the time who took me to the back of the woods at the bottom of our garden to show me the most enormous badger sett dug into a high clay bank. I was building my pond at the time and rooting badgers had tipped a stack of engineering bricks into my pond and also turned plant tubs over. I was also worried they would have a go at our little dogs or eat my koi so up went the fence. We originally had galvanised sheep fencing to keep the dogs in and sheep out but the badgers easily climbed over it.
roselanekoi
Posts: 307
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by roselanekoi »

I remember watching one of the spring watch programmes from Bristol a few years ago. They couldn't understand how a badger kept getting into someones back garden until they set up a camera and saw it climbing over a 4ft high chain link fence.
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

NOVEMBER
Rainsoaked spent raiment that branches can't keep
Windblown and trembling the Autumn leaves weep.
PL

First snow on the tops of the Clwyd's this morning and with this timely reminder, I just ordered 30 kilo's of sunflower hearts and 10 by 1 litre tubes of peanut and suet with mealworms. The woodpeckers robins nuthatches and tits just love the tubes of mealworm/suet, they vanish at a rate of knots. The tidy up team, the chaffinches pheasant and blackbirds then clear up on the ground underneath the apple tree were the suet feeders are.
I get the peanut suet tubes from CJ Wildlife on internet, £40.00 for 10 x 1 litre tubes, P&P included or £5.50 each if you just want one.
I've tried others over the years but the birds prefer this particular one.
Last edited by pollygog on Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
roselanekoi
Posts: 307
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by roselanekoi »

I was up in Snowdonia on Friday walking up the Watkin Path it was a beautiful sunny autumn day. I could see on the BBC that on Saturday there were several inches of snow on the A5 at Capel Curig.
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I went to the Anglesey circuit on Saturday to see my nephew racing in the Race of Remembrance, a 12 hour race spread over the Saturday and Sunday. Andrew races in the Citroen C1 class, basically bog standard road cars stripped out and fitted with the necessary safety equipment. Their weekend did not get off to a good start after the intended race car was damaged in practice and they started last of the 10 C1's entered. Over the weekend things went a lot better and they eventually finished 3rd in the C1's and 26th overall out of 40 cars entered.
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With regard to bird seed, I was shopping in ALDI this morning and could see that a 12.5kg bag of bird seed was £3.99 and 50 fat balls were also priced at £3.99, perhaps not the highest quality but my sparrows, pigeons and jackdaws aren't the fussiest eaters.
Last edited by roselanekoi on Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

If your birds eat the Aldi food then the reasons for feeding them is achieved Colin, they need food; any food that provides energy through the winter and that is bargain food at those prices.
I had no such luck a few winters ago when I bought some very cheap suet pellets and fat balls in the pound shop in Llandudno. They didn't smell particularly appetizing, in fact they smelt a bit rancid.
The tits and small birds wouldn't eat them so eventually after quite a few weeks we reluctantly gave in and threw them all in the field for the ever ravenous rooks to eat, guess what: they just scattered the food about the field but left most of it!
We reckon the foxes ( or something very hungry) ate the fatty food eventually.
After that we trialled a small amount of quite an assortment of various fat/suet bird foods before we committed to buying a lot of same. The best consistently good food is RSPB bird food, but, at their high prices we would be broke trying to buy the amount we use through a long cold winter.
Another thing I found when ordering bird food is you never get a 'one stop shop' as most bird food suppliers work on the "loss leader" principle. So; I buy sunflower hearts from one source, suet pellets from another, Niger seed from a third and fat tubes with mealworms from a fourth, yet the dried mealworms we buy come from a fifth source!
It's surprisingly cheaper done this way believe me, I've been buying bird food for many years.
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

A view taken from near Llyn Cregennan above Arthog taken in late October this year, Barmouth is bathed in hazy sunshine with the tide in. Way off in the distance above centre foreground rock is Bardsey Island sitting at the end of the Lleyn Peninsula stretching off to the right. Turning around 180 degrees from first view is Llyn Cregennan, Cader Idris is brooding in centre background.

Note, not a wind farm or power lines pylon in sight: How rare is that.!!!!
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roselanekoi
Posts: 307
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by roselanekoi »

November the 5th was the date set for the launch of the North Wales Space Agencies first flight. Jones1 was designed and built by my brother and it was initially intended to land on the moon but we later thought this was a bit ambitious for the first flight so we settled on an orbit around the earth.
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Betty the cat had sneaked aboard the rocket when no one was looking, hoping the be the first cat in space. Fortunately, as it turned out, she was spotted just before blast off and confined indoors, her owner thinking it was too dangerous for her precious cat.

As you can gather the launch did not go smoothy. Due to a major design flaw, the take off booster fireworks had been fitted upside down so they couldn't provide the required boost at blast off and the rocket failed to leave the launch pad with disastrous results.
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Back to the drawing board, although I'm not sure there will be a Jones2 as we've used up all our scrap timber building Jones1.
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

The NWSA/Jones1 Rocket fuel: was it petrol or diesel you used for the booster lift-off?
It's good to know there are people about who still have a well developed sense of humour; and about as mad as Hatters, just like us.
It cheered us up in this manky miserable month of November!

I see you finally posted your pic of Snowdonia, that's a very good snap Colin, enlarged to 8" x 12", it would make a very good print!
roselanekoi
Posts: 307
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by roselanekoi »

The rocket fuel used was paraffin but I guess we must have spilt some on the rocket.
pollygog
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:26 pm

Re: Spring is nearly here!

Post by pollygog »

The hard frosts over the last 6 nights has had an effect on the local wildlife here, since Sunday the small herd of Sika deer that live in the wooded area around Plas Erw Hall on the Old Denbigh Rd have taken to grazing in the sunny mornings. We have seen them in the field on the left just past the entrance to Plas Erw while driving past on Sunday and Monday and yesterday morning there was a magnificent dark coated stag feeding on his own away from the herd. None out this morning, but it was just slightly milder though.
This long field facing East with a high wooded bank to the back, gets the very early morning sun which melts the heavy frost from the grass: hence them feeding later.
Last Saturday; the second day of hard frost that saw ice on my water butts, hungry starlings turned up mob handed, a flock of at least 40 or 50 turned up and stripped our ground feeder and tree feeders of suet and fat balls in a morning.
They were ably assisted by a rapid influx of smaller birds that had been noticeable by their absence of late, too much natural feed like windfall apples and berries during fairly mild if wet November.
Another surprise visitor, our resident cock pheasant turned up last Friday; first time he's been to garden/feeders since about April this year, he's been every day since to feed!

My brother living in Canada rang me to tell me they had 3" of snow on Saturday morning but the sky had cleared and it was now a balmy 12 degrees below; but with a wind chill factor of 20 degrees below!
It was announced on the local Toronto radio that it was so cold the night before that there was a long queue of brass monkeys waiting patiently in the snow outside the local forge for their brazing service.
To cheer him up I sent him the latest copy of 'Private Eye' magazine, the 'Election Special'!
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