Composting Sunday

January in the sun kissed South West has been, weather wise, as depressing as a depressed thing under the weight of the World. Dull days, damp days, hardly a day of sunshine. Of course it IS January and the winter is in full force, but constant grey skies make me a grey person.  But this morning despite the light drizzle accompanying the grey skies, I hot footed it out into the garden as a well overdue job was on the cards. Compost spreading.  

We love compost. It is like alchemy. Every day we hurl stuff from the kitchen into the green bin and for 6 months no matter how full the bin seems each day, 24 hours later there is a good six inches of space, with hundreds of brandling worms wriggling in the light, alongside woodlice, millipedes, centipedes and all manner of beasties. Eventually though even this legion of devourers can not cope and it's time to spread all their fabulous produce. Unlike some gardeners who work on a 6-8 week cycle, turning compost regularly to afford a quick product, we work on a 6 month slow compost route. We do put garden waste in the plastic composter but most of this goes into the wooden one next door, again on a 6 month cycle. 

First job then to strip off the top layer of material still waiting to the broken down, that'll make a lovely base layer when it goes back in. Then the black gold as many call it comes out. Three wheelbarrow loads from the wooden bin and nearly three from the plastic composter. We don't grow vegetables, purely an ornamental garden and wildlife friendly - it's never had chemicals. The ornamental perennials, biennials and annuals are mostly grown for pollinators with the odd exception for a bit of riotous colour. But that's in May or June when the first summer flush is dazzling the neighbourhood.

But in late January it is the spring bulbs that will dazzle the neighbourhood. Ours at least. These Iris reticulata were planted in September and I remember us packing the bulbs into the pots thinking, spring is around the corner. Of course it was months away, and these only flowered yesterday, but that riot of blue did really brighten up the grey day...by the time the photo was taken it was drizzling even harder.

Snowdrops of course are now coming into their own. Although they have sporadically been out down here in Somerset since the first week in January, the massed Galanthus show is just coming into its peak. Yesterday while heading into work at Tyntesfield the massed snowdrops by the quarry wall seemed incongruous, beacons of light in the mist, like miniature headlights in the gloom. I love snowdrops and have a few in pots which I look after all year like these Galanthus woronowii, known commonly as the giant snowdrop; not so much for the size of the flowers, but the leaves, more bluebell leaf in shape and rich green colour than the spear like sage green leaves of our 'native'  snowdrop. Look closely and the colouring inside the flower is just sublime.... Every One A Winner on these grey January days.

January moss

Picking up a little bit on my posting yesterday, with the sun still shining, these moss fruiting bodies growing on a brick wall at work caught my eye this morning.  I'm no moss expert (which is a shocking thing to admit to as they are fascinating) but I think this may be a Brachythecium moss, possibly Ordinary Moss Brachythecium rutabulum.

Whatever the moss, it is beautiful and looking at the wall top which is covered, there are at least a dozen different mosses, oh to have a handy plant specialist next to me to identify them. And as mentioned yesterday, every day in January something new comes along to interest me in the natural world.

January blues fading away each day

It was Monty Don talking last night on Radio 2 which has inspired this short return to the blogging typos-phere. Speaking on the Simon Mayo show Monty discussed amongst other things January, and that while it is a bleak month in many ways, day by day, little by little, things are changing in the garden, and of course the wider countryside.

Monty on Simon Mayo  (about 1 hour and 9 minutes in)

I've just returned from a lunchtime walk - while the northern half of the country is blanketed in snow, here in Clifton, Bristol it is sunny and a balmy 6 degrees. Three weeks ago I lay in my sick bed. Aussie Flu wracking my body into oblivion. Dark by 4pm, I felt the woes of midwinter terribly. This lunchtime however my walk rewarded me with a couple of occasions of wonderful scent from winter shrubs. Where these shubs were I could not say, but their sweet scent filled a small patch of air. Robins sang lustily, at the Cathedral the early daffodils I've mentioned many times on this blog are at their very best (our pot daffodils were out in December). 

In a garden not far from work is a huge magnolia, under planted with spring bulbs, bulbs that are often out a week or so earlier then elsewhere. Snowdrops a plenty, a couple of crocus, and joy of joys a splattering of winter aconite.  Celendines are out in the garden back at at home and the many corvid pairs around the village are in the trees, twigs in beak. And it is still light at 4.30 in the evening.

January can be a bleak month in many ways, however I'm with Monty. Day by day, little by little, things are changing in the garden, and of course the wider countryside. 

Photo a Day # 3

The underground carpark at work today - view from the car. Reason? From next week I wont be parking here as a new member of staff is obtaining my space. I'll be parking off site, so a memory of a summer being able to park at work - it was good while it lasted.

Photo a Day # 2

It was while having a cup of tea in the garden this afternoon, that I spied this earwig clinging to the underside of the mesh table we have on the patio. It's our commonest of 4 species of earwig in the UK (though sources now quote 7 due to new arrivals). It's a female of the species Forficula auricularia - female as its 'pincers' are straight (ish). This image I took underneath appealed to me. Wildlife is out of sight until we see it.

Photo a Day # 1

Back in 2013 I ran a blog called 365-2-50 which documented the year of my fiftieth year via a photo a day. It ended in October 2014, and since then I have done other things, but increasingly I've missed my blogging. Having now left Twitter and Facebook, I toyed with Instagram, but that is just a mobile based package. So a decade after I began blogging, I'm of again capturing an image a day, no connection to all the images other than, this image caught my eye on the day it was taken.

Photo Number 1

Cheddar Reservoir in bright sunshine 08.11.17

Swifts - well I think that's finally it....

 

Well I think that's definitely it. 2017 will go down in my memory as the summer of swifts. For you see we have had them nesting for the first time in the roof space of our house. On August 11th I heard the last screaming's of three around the house and on August 16th after not seeing a swift for a few days a solitary swift could be observed feeding over the garden amongst the chit chattering house martins. Since then, nothing.

 

For a few years now there have always been swifts around the house in summer. Screaming by but I always thought their nests were elsewhere. In early June however I found myself being attacked from all sides in the garden. So low and fast were these avian bullets travelling that I could easily hear their flup-flup-flup wing beats as they scudded by. Then as if an illusion (or one too many ciders) one flew in only 8 feet above the ground before rising like a jet fighter under the ridge tile and gone, out of sight, silence. 

 

Swifts usually arrive here on May 3rd, this year however it was lunchtime on May 4th. I keep a keen eye and ear open for their return around May Day and so it was that as I looked up from my pasty that anchor shape scudded across the sky. Then to my amazement few minutes later my first scream...from a swift I may add, not me. Unusual as they normally only scream around the nest site but I guess these African travellers were joys joyous on their return to Somerset.

 

Over the intervening four months I've learnt much about swifts (and realised for such a common bird I knew little). They go in for banging, not in some death metal stupor, but aerial stalling, used as anti predation defence. I learnt that kestrels are their main predator in Europe, as they sit and wait for the swifts to arrive at the nest. Clumsy of foot, the swift is at its most vulnerable as it lands before waddling into the hole or cavity where it's most rudimentary nest is housed. I saw no kestrel predation in Somerset, but did witness the resident sparrowhawk repeatedly flying off to the nest with fledgling house martins. But that's for another day, swiftly moving on then...

 

What I witnessed in Somerset was swift routine. Around mid summer I could set my watch to them. Between 6am and 10am they'd leave the roof and circle endlessly around the house, flying not more than half a mile away. My house is close by the neighbours (also with nests I discovered) with a 10 feet gap. I'd stand at the bedroom window before work and watch the swifts fly in like fighter bombers one after another at eye level. Then seemingly about to hit the window they'd sharply veer left and scream through the gap between the houses and away.

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening likewise. During the day the swifts disappeared, presumably to forage over the farmland or head up high into the air for a spot of sleep. Then at 8 pm sharp they'd be back screaming around and around the house in ever decreasing circles. The highest count was 17, so not a huge colony. Around 9pm they'd begin to do their low level practice runs. Over the shrubs of next door, swoop down over our lawn and then swish up onto the gable end of the house. For half an hour I could stand on the lawn and repeatedly have swifts pass just feet above me on these reconnaissance missions. Each time they'd stall in flight as they grabbed onto the wall, only for a second later to drop like a stone, pick up speed and fly back the way they came, this time though only 3 or 4 feet above ground in the opposite direction.

 

It became a magical evening each day to witness this.  But then the finale (and I'd read this happens), two swifts would come in together, just half a body apart. Research estimates they fly together only 0.25 seconds apart. As in the dummy runs before, the leading swift would come into the gable end, stall  (the banging)  and cling to the wall, for then a millisecond later its partner stalled but this time up and into the roof. A few noisy chattering's from the pair before the first bird then dropped off the wall and away. This happened between 9.30pm and 9.35pm for over 2 weeks. Astonishing repetition and presumably why in Europe the kestrel has worked out how to obtain a light supper before bed.

 

Most times when the bird had entered the roof, its mate would fly by one more time screaming (often accompanied by screams form within the roof) before I'd watch it fly off and up into the clouds. As both sexes share the natal duties, I have absolutely no idea which was male, or female.

 

This all went on for around a month until one evening in late July I came home from work and ventured outdoors. What a commotion from roof tile 5 as I'd christened it. Swifts were agitatedly flying back and forth, screaming encouragement and then silence, they'd be back, silence before then more screaming. But then a wing tip appeared from under the tile, then a bit of body, a foot, a wriggle and a squeeze, all the while the adults flying noisily overhead. Before like a stone the bird dropped out of the roof, gathered speed and flew off to be joined by screaming birds. I watched it's progress as it joined three others, the now four swifts flying in very close formation in a direct line. A family group almost touching wing tips as they flew in a tight group, higher and higher out of sight. I'd witnessed a fledge and stood there in the now silent garden, mesmerised. I can't put into words how exciting that was to witness a swift take its first wing beats, on wings that will never stop beating for three years or so. Astonishing.

 

 

While writing this I've been glancing out of the window over the fields (the aesthete in me says it was to gather thoughts by gazing into the distance in a melancholy. The naturalist in me says it was just to try and glimpse a swift one more time in 2017). But no. House martins and swallows a plenty, a noisy carrion crow and the ever present sparrows hoovering up seed like its going out of fashion, but no swifts. There are still reports of the odd swift locally, but in late August they'll be well on their way to Africa. As it should be.

 

Adieu then until next May my lovelies, it's been a blast.

 

....with the last word going to Richard Jefferies, from his book Field and Hedgerow,

 

"Dark specks beneath the white summer clouds, the swifts, the black albatross of our skies, moved on their unwearied wings"