What happened in February

Nothing about the cold, wet, grey, gloomy, weather suggested anything exciting at all to me, but Nature thinks differently. With the lengthening of daylight, all sorts of things stir in the ground, early plants suddenly appear, snowdrops, lords and ladies, dog’s mercury, while the leaves of later flowers such as celandines and cow parsley are elbowing their way to the light. Meanwhile in the air, territories are already being contested and in the scrub a thrush was loudly insisting that Noakes Grove was his, although lots of smaller birds ignored him. At the top of a tree a raven sat, there was no mistaking its wedge-shaped tail and ‘grronk grronk’ call; a red kite, flying low over the same tree decided against taking on the raven and sailed on. That was yesterday, and I could not help reflecting that a few years ago, when we first took over Noakes Grove, neither of those species would have been seen here.

Lords and Ladies

Raven

At Scotch Patch up at Ellis Green in Wimbish, we have planted six new fruit trees, plums and cherries. Thanks to the hard work of Neil the field was actually walkable and although the ground was horribly wet and clayey, a brave team led by Andrew managed to dig the holes and bash in the stakes. The blossom of the new trees along with the existing apple trees should attract a good lot of insects.

The meadow at King’s Field is generally still very good, although the bit where feeding takes place is showing the effects of wet weather and plodding hooves, but come spring, the grass will push through the mud and green will return. However, the hazel tree behind the pond thinks spring is already here and is covered in beautiful catkins. The pond itself is looking very mature now and lovely even in the rain.

Fruit trees at Scotch Patch

Hazel catkins

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Sheep

The photos below show the youngest and swiftest member of the sheep team – Able-Shepherd Flynn! David’s dog Flynn has really learned his craft over the last couple of years and is worth his weight in gold, saving us hours of frustration in rounding up recalcitrant sheep into a pen. He is such a friendly dog although the sheep don’t think so and is a joy to watch. David calls out the time-honoured commands: ‘come bye’, ‘awaaay’, ‘lie down’, and the dog quickly changes direction or stops then creeps forward till he gets them all in the pen – magic! He is a really valuable asset, brilliant work David.

We have just sold the four ewe lambs to a friend and fellow Wiltshire Horn. I am so delighted that they will live on and be part of his flock.

The pregnant ewes in King’s Field seem to have survived the terrible trauma of being attacked and hounded in December by a pack of hounds from the hunt, which raged over the land completely out of control and jumped the wire fence into the field. We hope it did not affect their pregnancies but time will tell. They are due to give birth in April.

Wild Child club

Weather does not seem to deter the Wild Children and on one particularly cold day when I had brought my fire pit so that they could keep warm, they spent a great deal of time delightedly sliding around on large slabs of ice before making ice sculptures out of small blocks of ice using sticks that they warmed in the fire.

I am delighted that Lorraine has agreed to join us as often as she can to lead some of the sessions. Lorraine is an ecologist and has had much experience in teaching children about wildlife. Last Friday, she divided us into two teams and we had great fun in a competitive bird watch – or rather a bird listen – using the Merlin app. Our team only found one blue tit but the other team got lots! I am really looking forward to the next session.

Wild Child group

Ice sculpture

Work Parties

The regular 3rd Sunday meeting is at Noakes Grove from 10am to 3pm

The next one is March 16th and this will be to finish work on the scrub coppicing. After that we will leave the tree work once birds start nesting. In April and May we have some reptile hibernacula to build. Please join us if you can. We have a WhatsApp group for last minute messages so let us know if you would like to be added to this.

Update: We have decided not to have a third Sunday work party in April as it falls on Easter Sunday.

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