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Posted
I didnt see it but I have been hearing a lot of low squealing and grunting in the garden in the middle of the night.

 

Any link with the young couple that @mikeprice saw ‘sitting behind the hedge’?

 

:getmecoat:

Posted
Any link with the young couple that @mikeprice saw ‘sitting behind the hedge’?

 

:getmecoat:

 

I wish it to be known that I had NOTHING to do with that comment

 

nothing at all

 

I feel this is a case of a 'usual suspect' trying to deflect blame onto an innocent party

  • Thanks 1
Posted
I wish it to be known that I had NOTHING to do with that comment

 

nothing at all

 

I feel this is a case of a 'usual suspect' trying to deflect blame onto an innocent party

 

Ooh - does this mean that I’ve been promoted to the position of ‘usual suspect’? I’m honoured - I think...

Posted

Got back from the weekly shop to find our back garden was suddenly the in place for Blackbirds(?). Sorry about the picture, but I'd already scared a load off by moving!

 

Blackbirds.jpg

Posted
Got back from the weekly shop to find our back garden was suddenly the in place for Blackbirds(?). Sorry about the picture, but I'd already scared a load off by moving!

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]57823[/ATTACH]

 

They are starlings. The rain today is great for them as it makes the worms come to the surface.

  • Thanks 1
Posted
The starlings are suddenly very busy this week. We have gone from 2 or 3 at a time to dozens of them collecting food for nestlings. Our new pond has become an oversized starling bath.
Posted
The starlings are suddenly very busy this week. We have gone from 2 or 3 at a time to dozens of them collecting food for nestlings. Our new pond has become an oversized starling bath.

 

Are certain mods branching out from frogs, now...?

  • Thanks 2
Posted (edited)

Checked the trail camera this morning and finally have photographic confirmation that we have a hedgehog in the garden again. In 2018 we had 3 visiting our feed station and then, mysteriously, they disappeared last year. We have opened up a couple more hedgehog holes on our boundary and it’s good to see we are back on the route. The image is very grainy, but it’s definitely a hedgehog

Adjustments.JPG

 

Out on my Permitted Exercise, I make sure to pass a pond where Moorhens hatched their brood of 8 on Good Friday so they’re 3 weeks old. This week’s bad weather hasn’t been good news and the 8 seen last weekend has declined to 5. They look very cute lined up on a plank floating in among the duck weed. Dad appears to be in charge of crowd control. Mum has been refurbishing the nest this week and has started sitting again today. Google tells me the first brood will help rear the second.

Adjustments.JPG

Edited by elsiegee40
Posted

Link: SPACE10 Open Sources The Growroom

 

SPACE10 Growroom.jpg

 

The design for The Growroom, an urban farming pavilion that looks into how cities can feed themselves through food-producing architecture, is now open source and available for anyone to use.

 

SPACE10 envision a future in which we grow our own food much more locally. To spark conversations about how we can bring nature back into our cities and tackle the increasing demand for significantly more food in the future, we teamed up with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum to create The Growroom. Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way.

 

From Taipei to Helsinki and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco, the original version of The Growroom sparked interest and people requested to either buy or exhibit it. But it doesn’t make sense to promote local food production and then start shipping it across oceans and continents. That’s why we’ve released The Growroom as an open source design and encourage people to build their own wherever they are.

 

Manufacturing for all

 

Digital fabrication has made state-of-the-art factory tools accessible to ordinary people. A new generation of technologies, from 3D additive and subtractive manufacturing to laser cutting and surface-mount manufacture, is available to the public in fablabs and maker spaces in any major city.

 

This means most people — in theory — could produce almost anything themselves. Just as printers are now ubiquitous, local and on-demand, customised production could become the norm of the future. We’re tapping into this emerging potential by releasing the cutting files for The Growroom. All you need to build it are two rubber hammers, 16 sheets of plywood and a visit to your local fablab or maker space equipped with a CNC milling machine. The design focuses on making the assembly easy and intuitive for anyone to handle, and The Growroom is produced from only one material — making it accessible and affordable for most communities...

 

SPACE10 Growroom Structure Diagram.jpg

Posted
Nice. Tempted to record in my garden and set the kids a quiz! Wood pigeon's and collared doves really need some singing lessons. Blackbirds are the best!
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Link: Want some good nature news? Stork chicks are hatching in the UK for the first time in 600 years [Metro.co.uk]

 

Lockdown has had a pretty remarkable impact on the natural world. As humans have bunkered down, hedgerows have bloomed, small animals have thrived and the atmosphere has cleared.

 

And in West Sussex, the first stork chicks have hatched in the UK in over 600 years.

 

This isn’t a fluke or a result of humankind being barricaded indoors (although this is a perfectly timed distraction), however. In a bid to bring these birds back to our shores, The White Stork Project has been releasing over 100 storks at three sites in southeast [sic] England...

 

:thumb: :)

  • Thanks 2
Posted (edited)

I counted four, where are the other twenty? Or is that only in pies? You really can get anything on Amazon these days! [emoji6]

 

Thanks for sharing.

Edited by elsiegee40
  • Thanks 3
Posted (edited)

IMG-2962.JPG IMG-2963.JPG

Spent most of my Sunday watching our new neighbours. This is the first year I’ve had a bird box up outside the house and I can’t believe the Bluetits have made a nest and had chicks! This should keep me busy for the next few weeks.

 

-Nicole

Edited by VeryPC
  • Thanks 2
Posted (edited)

My daughter came to help me out with baby bird feeding at the rescue hospital today. Just as well, 4 Jackdaws, 9 magpies, 20 or so great tits, 30 or so blue tits, 9 coal tits, 1 long tailed tit, 1 blackbird, 1 jay, 2 song thrushes, 20 or so robins, 8 dunnocks, 15 house sparrows....

 

Ear defenders needed when feeding Jackdaw nestlings. They are several decibels louder than anything else!

 

Magpies are simply full of character with a lovely dark red gape

 

And at the other end of the scale, baby blue tits are just SO cute!

30054786-A916-41E7-89B2-B29231D180C5.jpeg

 

And so are coal tits

0FD31935-AEA0-4638-A458-DBA7441CB3BD.jpeg

Edited by elsiegee40
  • Thanks 3
Posted
Amazing work @elsiegee40, so heart-warming to seem them doing so well. Do any of the birds have issues later for being hand-reared, or do they fly off in to the wild and instinctively fit right in?
  • Thanks 1
Posted
Amazing work @elsiegee40, so heart-warming to seem them doing so well. Do any of the birds have issues later for being hand-reared, or do they fly off in to the wild and instinctively fit right in?

 

They’re weaned off human care in aviaries before release. We have to be careful with the crows and magpies; tough love required to stop them being lazy and demanding we feed them. Everything else seems to work it out.

 

House sparrows in particular switch from dependent to attack mode overnight seemingly; they just start trying to rip lumps out of your hand!

  • Thanks 2
Posted
They’re weaned off human care in aviaries before release. We have to be careful with the crows and magpies; tough love required to stop them being lazy and demanding we feed them. Everything else seems to work it out.

 

House sparrows in particular switch from dependent to attack mode overnight seemingly; they just start trying to rip lumps out of your hand!

 

Corvids are probably the most intelligent birds, so I'm not surprised they're the lazy ones - they've figured out that if they can just get the humans to keep giving them food they'll have a nice life!

  • Thanks 2
Posted
Corvids are probably the most intelligent birds, so I'm not surprised they're the lazy ones - they've figured out that if they can just get the humans to keep giving them food they'll have a nice life!

 

There’s nothing like trying to clean an aviary full of corvids :D They seem to spend their time plotting the next dastardly prank to play on an unwitting human entering their domain! [emoji23]

  • Thanks 2
Posted

IMG_3431.JPG

 

I spotted this wee beastie checking out our bee hotel.

 

People cleverer than me tell me it’s an ichneumonid - a parasitic wasp. It’s tiny, only about an inch long, and most of that seems to be ovipositor.

  • Thanks 1

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