- SWIFT HALF IS TWO YEARS OLD!!! (Anna and I have lived here now for two years).
- Quite a few daffs up in the garden now.
- Pear tree buds looking very healthy - and damson tree buds coming on.
- Newts still doing well in pond.
- First pond skater of the year today.
- Blue tits busy nesting (or beginning to) in eaves at front of house.
- Black birds nesting in ivy in front garden AND rear garden. Doomed though I'm afraid thanks to the spostles.
- All hens fighting fit and laying one egg a day. Great to see Couven at her best again....
- Jays still around. (see photo above -click twice to see LARGE)
- Three woodpeckers still around (two males and a female). Males drumming for a fortnight now.
- Heading helter-skelter into June now (the year is flying by eh - 3 weeks and the nights will be drawing in again!)
- Malu has found the second blackbirds nest in the back garden (once again built in a spot where predators can take out the chicks with no effort at all - blackbirds don't half build their nests in terrible places). Over the last two days he's taken all three nestlings (by the look of them only 4 days old) and killed them all outside the back door. Again, there was nothing I could do about this. Malu 6 - 2 Yala is now the kill score.
- Eighteen of my bee holes are now occupied with egg, pollen and sealed - a resounding success this year.
- Woodpeckers drumming on large trees in and around Swift Half - very late to start displaying - I assume the male is just letting nomadic woodpeckers know that this is his territory (remember there were two males in the garden this winter, as well as a female), and that he has chicks by now, I hope, somewhere.
- No dragonflies over pond yet, but blue damselflies have joined the red damselflies in the garden now.
- Swifts still only incubating 2 (from 3) eggs...
