Strimming, singing and snapping

Since my last blog, I’ve had a busy week. I made the mistake of heading to Testwood Lakes with the intention of taking the strimmer to Fishlake Meadows on Friday. I hadn’t really expected the weather to be quite as bad as it was, so I gave the strimming a miss and did it on Monday instead. It was a very sunny day, hotter than ideal for strimming, and got pretty windy later on. I did manage to get a lot done, getting the path as wide as possible, without cutting too much vegetation, and creating passing places where I could.

From the viewing screens there is currently a good variety of bird life. On Sunday there were shelduck, teal, pochard, gadwall and coot close to the screens. It’s lovely to see a mix of species as wildfowl numbers seemed quite low over winter. The reserve is alive with sound at the moment, the viewing screens are one of the best places to listen from. Sedge warblers are singing very energetically at the moment, which in turn seems to spur on the Cetti’s warblers, and water rails are then never far behind in adding to the cacophony.

Teal in front of the screen

Shelduck pair

Coot

Closer to home, I’ve carried on trying to get the hang of my macro photography lens. A dark-edged bee-fly kindly obliged by spending a good amount of time feeding on ground ivy in my garden. I also got a photo of one of my favourite flowers, scarlet pimpernel, they are such a beautiful colour. Another snap from home was an ashy mining bee on a dandelion in my lawn. This was taken on my iPhone and gives an impressively clear image. I sometimes think that my garden isn’t too good for insects as I don’t have as many wildflowers as I’d like, so a relief to see some insects.

Dark-edged bee-fly

Scarlet pimpernel

Ashy mining bee

Over the next week I will be doing more patrols at Fishlake, potentially more strimming and hopefully getting around to finishing off building some planters at home.

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