It was another beautiful autumnal day yesterday. A good day for planting
some bulbs in the wildlife nature garden I thought.
I decided to have a little stroll to Hale light and the Withins
first, such a pleasing light at that time of day, and the air full of the calls
of curlew. Rob was on his ownsome by the last house on church
road doing his migration count, wood pigeons leading the way but the count
was low this morning compared to previous days; Rob has been doing this
count for years and recording it on the trektellan web site, logging
the changes and trends, It's interesting to compare years, have a look at
these records, 12 years apart. https://www.trektellen.nl/count/view/392/20191021
https://www.trektellen.nl/count/view/392/20071021
It was cold morning, and there was evidence of an overnight in some of
the shadier place, but I was impressed to still see the cornfield
annuals that the farmer had sown along the field edge were
still hanging on, and hopefully setting their seed will
germinate for a repeat performance next year....which gets me to
thinking we really must try and sort out our cornfield meadow at the back
of the visitor centre, the wonderful colourful displays of wildflowers
across the Merseyside area have caught the public's interest and it would be
great for our meadow to reach its full potential.
Autumn going into winter is always good to observe the birds, not just
the migrants heading in and out but also the more home birds feeding on the
land, one of the farmers had spread slurry on a field, large gathering of
gulls, curlews and starlings were rooting about looking for choice morsels. I
was happily surprised, by a covey of nine grey partridge which erupted
before me as I passed the hedge calling loudly with rapid scratchy
voice. Speaking of which the hedge and path , it was busy , full of
smaller fare, dunnocks, blackbirds, wrens, song thrushes and robins .
I arrived at Pickering’s to see the usual dog walkers and joggers
were already out and about. Carol has told me the tree was dropping its
leave, she was right, the garden under a blanket orange ,yellow
blanket and actually complimented the range of flower hues
that were still doing well.
I got to work, serenaded by a robin seeing his
wistful autumn song, great and blue tits vocalising the
arrival of fresh peanuts in the feeders.
The ground was soft so it didn't take long to push in 185 bulbs, snakes
head fritillaries under the tree, allium sphaerocephalon in a side bed,
wild daffodil Narcissus pseudonarcissus and
crocus tommasinianus along the path and dotted about. As long as the
local squirrels don't dig them out, we should have a little early spring colour
and nectar for our wildlife. It was good to see the
hoverflies and bees were still visiting as the morning warmed a little, no
butterflies though, perhaps if I’d tarried longer. (https://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/flighttimes_by_date.php)
Before I left I gathered a big bag of fallen leaves to take home with
me, additional bedding option for any hedgehogs hibernating in my garden.
Laura
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