The meadows are springing

[Paul O]

Though the primroses have been flowering for weeks, over the last ten days spring has seriously started here in the Blackdown Hills. We saw our first swallows on Tuesday of last week, but they don't seem to have noticed our shed with its specially-made swallow hole and emanating swallow calls from an audio lash-up just inside the door...yet.

We've had 2 sightings of brimstone butterflies, one near the house and one in the meadow-on-the hill, also numerous fast-flying butterflies, probably small tortoiseshells.

Yesterday I found yellow rattle in the garden and in a drier part of meadow-by-the-brook, but the plants are still so small they're hard to spot until you get your eye in:-

The list of birds in and around our meadow-by-the-brook is long, and they all seem hungry, particularly the magpies (who have been eating some of the remaining rotting apples in the orchard) a female sparrowhawk and a kestrel. We know when these predators are around because suddenly all the birds using the feeders have vanished.

A chiff-chaff arrived last week - its call always makes me think of when I first came to live in Devon, as I'd never heard one before. Great spotted and green woodpeckers are frequently around the house and orchard area.

The only blooms I noticed in the meadow-on-the-hill today were celandine, dandelion and wild violets, but there's plenty of other stuff amongst the grass...and, looking 20 ft. up instead of down, we saw this:-

I recorded this birdsong a day or two earlier at the north end of our meadow by the brook - you can't miss the 9-chip song thrush! Most of the trees were planted by my wife one cold, wet winter's day about 20 years ago. https://zedland.uk/moremeadows/EveningB ... mField.mp4

Happy Spring/Easter everyone!

[Donna Cox]

Thanks so much for sharing this Paul. Like the hole in the shed wall for the swallows to gain access and I enjoyed listening to your bird wall of sound

[Paul O]

Two days ago I saw two swallows visit the shed briefly while the swallow audio was playing. Today I caught a glimpse of a bird swooping inside the shed, and waited a few minutes to see if a swallow emerged, but nothing did. Shortly after that we saw the culprit - a male sparrowhawk!

30 minutes later it was still there, not really what we had planned, so I flipped-off the circuit breaker to stop the audio and within a minute the sparrowhawk flew off.

So what's the best plan - stop playing the audio and keep the shed door shut so as to give the swallows a chance to nest and breed before they are eaten? Or maybe just forget the shed and get on with managing the meadows!

[Robbie Phillips]

Hi Paul,

A tricky one. Often birds of prey will que into any lure used to attract bird such as swallows and if the swallows are there there is the risk they may be predated.

However, when trying to attract new breeders often the risk is low as they may not be there often when the lure is playing. And once the sparrowhawk has realised there is no food it will generally not keep coming back.

If it does become a problem and keep revisiting then you may have to think about not using the caller but for now I wouldn't worry too much about it.

It's best to have it on a timer and not have it going all day, but when it is playing making sure it's for a while so the bird doesn't think it is natural if it just plays for a few minutes at a time.

[Paul O]

Thanks for the advice, Robbie. The caller has been off for a while now, so I'll try using it for a couple of hours each morning and see what happens. There are swallows in the area but not that many - I think they spend more time around the nearby farmyards.

[Jane W]

Hi Paul
How are things with the swallows a couple of months after your initial post? Did they take up residence in the shed?
I saw two swooping in front of our house yesterday. I wondered if they were eyeing up the open fronted lean-to, for a nest...maybe for future years....but I was pleased, as I've only ever seen them way overhead in previous years.
I thought all seemed a bit quiet here this year, but then suddenly lots of baby birds appeared, and so I guess they were all just getting on with it subtly! I am especially thrilled to see Mistle thrush fledgelings. I suspected they always nest here, but have never spotted a young one until this year. Blue tits and great tits are doing circuits in great chattering, chirping groups but I've also seen long tailed tit fledgelings. We left some land to revert to woodland and I noticed them building a nest in the 'scrub', in a gorse bush.
Wrens have been successful too and some greater spotted woodpeckers. I've been trying to spot the call of the female cuckoo, and think that she may have been at work here too ( the male certainly was)...a couple of exhausted looking dunnocks and robins have made me wonder whether they are victims of a big cuckoo baby, but so far I haven't spotted one.
A personal first of seeing spotted flycatchers has been really nice...and they weren't quite what I expected...they're not spotted for a start! I thought they looked most like a robin but without the red...I pondered on Garden warbler or even Nightingale...but finally it was a friend who identified them as flycatchers.
Within the last week Meadow Brown, Marbled White and the gorgeous Ringlet have started to appear, and make it feel like summer.

[Paul O]

Hi Jane
No takers in our shed yet, but we haven't seen many swallows around so far this year. The bats are doing better though - when I manage to stay awake after 10pm my bat detector is overloaded with calls, mostly of pipistrelles, which zoom up and down the lane at twighlight. It would be nice to be able to sit outside at around 9pm watching the swallows get replaced by the bats as it gets dark: next month maybe, if this hot weather persists. Then, with almost superhuman effort, we must stumble down into the field when it's properly dark to see if we have any glow-worms. The last time I saw one was about 30 years ago in the days when we would be walking the three miles back from the pub after closing time.

We have seen Marbled Whites for several weeks, a few Red Admirals and Meadow Browns for a week or so, but disappointingly few butterflies so far this season and nothing as exotic-looking as your metallic green one - is it a Green Hairstreak? We should see some Ringlets and plenty of others soon, the weather being so warm and sunny.

I wonder if you've read Dave Goulson's book "A Buzz in the Meadow"? It's best to save one or two of his books like that one before reading "Silent Earth", because after reading that you need something with some optimism and humour.

There's been a good range of breeding birds around our house and field this year: Wren, Robin, warblers, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Songthrush, Blackbird, Greenfinch after several years absence, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Green Woodpecker, Woodpigeon and Magpie. I'm quite upset not to have had Spotted Flycatchers, as our friends two miles down the road have them every year (and they have two orchids interfering with their mowing regime in their lawn this year and we have only our first single orchid in our wildflower patch).

There's a woodpecker somewhere in there!

In our meadow on the hill swathes of Birdsfoot Trefoil have bloomed and gone over almost before we noticed them, and the Knapweed has started to flower:

With strong winds, bright sunshine and no rain for weeks, it's surprising that the plants are surviving in such steep, sandy ground.

[Jane W]

A sudden downpour has broken the dry spell here....hope you have had the same. There's nothing sadder to see than a parched meadow with flowers wilting in June. Who would have imagined that one of the wettest places on the planet could change so quickly. The rain was torrential, but the meadow does seem to be particularly well suited to capturing the water. It ran off the hard surfaces and paths in rivers, but the meadows, with their loose soil, all churned up by voles and moles, seemed to hold it.
A local farmer, who'd grubbed out a hedge last year, was desperately trying to bulldoze a new one into place yesterday, before his field washed down into the river.
Your sloping meadow looks beautiful and I'm surprised your knapweed is already in flower...ours looks at least a week away yet...the birds foot trefoil is just flowering here, although a bit less than last year I think. Quite a lot of Yarrow this year which is nice to see.

No, I haven't read 'a buzz in the meadow', but I read most of 'a sting in the tail' which I thought was great, even though I haven't finished it.( I was reading it in French and ran out of steam! , will try to get an English copy next time I'm there) Is the silent earth by him too? Have you read it, whats your opinion.
Yes, the butterfly was a green hairstreak I think...its the only one I've ever seen here though.
Any luck with spotting glow worms? Its a good reminder...I might head out and see if I can see any one night....is now about the right time to do it?

[Paul O]

We did get some useful rain a few nights ago, but not torrential enough to wash anything away. Our field on the hill drains quickly, but the wildflowers are doing quite well, though we haven't been up there much recently as it slopes down to the south-west and gets extremely hot at this time of year (since we bought it a few years ago we've had two Christmas Day picnics up there).

This year has been good for yellow rattle, oxeye daisies and now knapweed; last year it was red campion and yarrow. In a rough patch of our garden that was for growing vegetables and may be again one day, the recent rain has brought-on all sorts of poppies. I sowed meadow grass mixture on the bare ground late last year, thinking by spring I would be mowing it to eliminate dock, bracken etc., but the cold winter/spring followed by the long dry spell meant that the grass hardly grew, and the poppies look too good to be cut down.

I can't resist quoting from Matthew Cobb's review of "A Buzz in the Meadow" in New Scientist a year or two ago:-

An idyllic farmhouse, challenging thoughts on conservation, an author who sounds like a great guy. What’s not to hate in A Buzz in the Meadow?

I HATED Dave Goulson as soon as I read the opening words of his latest book, A Buzz in the Meadow: “In 2003 I bought a derelict farm deep in the heart of rural France, together with thirteen hectares of surrounding meadow.”

Things went downhill from there, as I read through chapters of beautifully written descriptions of some of my favourite arthropods, heart-wrenching stories of Goulson’s encounters with various amphibians, and some snort-out-loud anecdotes about field research.

With each amusing and insightful chapter, my fury grew, as Goulson focused on particular examples of the wildlife around his horrible Charentais haven.... When I thought he had missed out some research on the animal he was talking about, I turned the page, and there it was. In two cases, it turned out he had actually done the studies I was thinking about....

The final sections sound the alarm about the damage we are wreaking on the planet, and the way that complex ecological cascades mean that apparently small changes can produce dramatic effects that will alter our lives.... Goulson’s exhortation that we should get down on our hands and knees and look is one that should be repeated at every level of education....

To cap it all, Goulson comes over as a really nice bloke....

Like I said, I hated Dave Goulson. But I ended up loving him. You will too. Buy this book, give it as a present. It is required reading for being a human in the 21st century.

There are few chuckles in Goulson's "Silent Earth" though - it's full of grim facts about how our environment has and is being wrecked. Even our pets are contaminating the land and watercourses as they spread neonicotinoids and other persistent toxins, used to kill fleas and ticks, in their fur, urine and faeces.

It's hard to stay up late enough to see any glow-worms at present, with it still being quite light until after 10 pm, but we will try. It seems that late June to the beginning of August is the best time to look. There's lots of info about them at https://glowworms.org.uk.