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The
other night we were woken by some high pitched squeals and
screams that slow came closer to the house. I got a powerful
touch and shone it in the direction of the noise to reveal
three pairs of eyes shining from the light, looking in our
direction. The owners of the eyes scurried off across the
field into the distance and judging from the closeness to
the ground and the noises I am sure they were three fox cubs
larking about.
There is a gap in the fence
around our garden, it is waiting for me to make and fit a
gate which I will get around to once I have finished everything
else, and the other morning from the bedroom window I saw
a a deer stood in the gap not quite having the courage to
enter and have his breakfast. I did not realise it at the
time but Di was standing in the garden also watching him;
he was a young buck and only had the beginnings of two antlers
on his head; the gate will have to be put on the more urgent
works list if we want anything of the garden to survive the
year.
We were given a greenhouse
some while ago, one of these meccano type jobs, all nuts and
bolts. As the green house would be close to the Holly trees
at the bottom of the garden and one of them, having a heavy
growth of ivy on it, was leaning over the proposed site. The
part of the tree overhanging the garden was cut off and in
the clearing up, right at the top of the tree I found a disused
crows nest. It was little more than a well arranged collection
of twigs and didn't seem the place an egg could hatch
and a chick be brought up, unlike the nests in the nest boxes
which are lined with feathers and moss and have a look of
comfort about them.
It is so lovely to see the
flowers and blossom coming into flower at long last. At the
end of March we were walking on the common and under some
trees there was a patch of blue haze; it was a bit early for
bluebells, on further investigation it was a tiny bright blue
flower not more than six inches high with a yellow centre.
I had never seen this before. My flower book advised that
this was a rare plant to be found in the wild - Spring Squill
(scilla verna) or wild hyacinth.
During the bright sunny days
the brimstone yellow butterflies are to be seen at the beginning
of April. I watched a female feeding on a newly opened dandelion
flower. The deeply veined wings are a paler yellow colour
than the male. They also feed on primroses, having a long
tongue to reach the nectar at the base of the flower. This
helps the plant with pollination. Eggs are laid singly on
buck thorn and hatch after about ten days . The caterpillars
take on the colours of the leaves to aid camouflage. I saw
a female orangetip butterfly which looks similar to a cabbage
white but is much smaller. It is only the male that has the
orange tips to its wings. They are seen mainly in early spring
having only one generation - they live for about eighteen
days. The caterpillars feed on yellow cress, cuckoo flowers,
buttercress, wild turnip, and garlic mustard.
A friend of ours saw a Red
deer in her back garden. The garden backs onto the Surrey
Wildlife trust land and she commented that it was very big,
about the size of a large pony. Richard used to see them regularly
on Romping Down which is part of Thundry Farm, in his youth.
but we haven't seen any for many years so it is very nice
to hear that they are still around. The most common deer to
be seen in our area are the Roe Deer. They have devoured all
our tulips in the garden which were about to bloom and so
they are gaining in numbers and becoming a real pest.
When cleaning out the leaves from our pond I netted a Newt,
a beautiful creature with a brown body and yellow underneath.
They come back to the pond to breed in Spring.
Richard
and Diana Terry.
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