Weather for Newts!

After many days of warm, sunny weather we have rainfall today and a good chance to reflect on the lockdown wildlife in my blog. The robin's have left the nest and probably the fledglings are sheltering in the shadows somewhere. I have my suspicions the robins are starting a second brood with one of my neighbours (or maybe it's even another pair!). We have been in lockdown for 6 weeks but to me it has actually gone quickly and we've not been bored with cycling, gardening, art, music, trying to do "school" and increase online social skills. I was very happy on Sunday to discover that my husband had found tiny newts sheltering under bricks in our garden. I have been wondering why we didn't have many return frogs after all the froglets released two years ago and this kind of makes up for it. We only have a tiny plastic half barrel pond in a wild corner of our garden so this was an amazing surprise. On a grand cycle to Creech Woods a couple of weeks ago we discovered many adult newts catching thousands of little tadpoles in a drainage ditch. 

Happy Easter! New adventures into garden wildlife exploration. We set up a trail camera to watch a robin nesting at close quarters. It was already quite happy nesting with all the family noise around and has chosen a nice dark rafter in my shed. If I manage to upload this video it will beat decades of inertia to film wildlife which is really what I love doing. This film is showing the males passing food to the female which is a critical part of robin nesting behaviour. A robin often hatches a second brood while the male feeds the first fledglings I was interested to read in the "Birdfeeder Handbook".

Unprecedented Times

"We are living in unprecedented times" is an expression I hear a lot. On the news mainly. On emails from our now "so-near-yet-so-far" schools for the three children. My stumbling block to writing anything is sitting down at a computer and actually doing it. Great essays, poems, novels are shelved at the back of my mind. Diary entries, things I meant to tell someone... beautiful, funny observations of my children at play...they get left aside for action, the action of keeping my 3 children involved and active and the mundane tasks that keep us afloat as a family. It is Good Friday. But it isn't Easter as we know it. The business, the expense, the stress but then the great joy of going to see family by land or sea has evaporated with the word "Coronavirus." A month ago I don't think we truly had any idea how our life would be affected by this bug that seemed so sad but far away like other mystery illnesses that never touched our lives. I truly believe good will come out of keeping this blog a bit more often and share my nature observations and learning. The habitats we are observing are microhabitats in the garden and the familiar landscapes we cycle or jog through on our daily exercise. On the 19th March school was about to close and friends and acquaintances were hastily adding each other to WhatsApp groups. Friends that had shunned home learning for being "anti-social" were thrown into it and other friends who were already home learning were about to face a "lock-down" preventing them from their social groups and organised museum visits etc. I always fell between both camps. We decided not to home educate but there's more to life than school and now we were about to discover what we have on our doorstep to offer our children. On the 19th March a warbler, oblivious to these great, human changes decided to hop into my garden. I think it is a Chiffchaff and shared it on I-spot. Whether someone will confirm this I don't know. Either way it came so close to my kitchen window I took this photograph. Birds don't have boundaries during human lockdown. They face great challenges on migration and yet an innate urge to move pushes them forwards. The national symbol of a rainbow is used to promote hope in this time. My symbol will always have a bird flying over it!