What a difference a day makes

Saturday was a similar day to Friday and bees and hoverflies were buzzing around the garden. This time two of the black bee-like insect were visiting the flowers of the Margurie Fish plant.

But today, as the song goes, what a difference a day makes! It started with a bit of drizzly rain and later turned to snow which started to settle on the decking, shed roof etc but not properly on the wet ground. However, after about half an hour the snow began to settle on the ground too and the snow continued for several hours. More snow down here, realtively near the coast, than I had seen for many years. Usually a fine dusting on the ground and thats it. Our daughter, as you can imagine along with all the other children, were very excited. I did my best to cover up the raspberry plants that were in full leaf and a few other plants that might be damaged by the snow fall and strong wind. The area around the pond and aquatic plants soon became covered in snow.

There is something about snow that brings out the inner child and it wasn't long before we were having a snowball fight with our neighbours. Then we all built the first substantial snowman for many a year. This is the most snow our daughter has everseen (she is now twelve). After another snowball fight our daughter went out with a friend (enjoying the snow while it lasts). I went for a walk to Easthill Park to see what was going on.

Most opf the grass was covered in snow but there were patches of green beneath some of the large thick evergreeen trees. Here blackbirds and other small birds such as dunnock and sparrow foraged for food. The blackbirds seemed to be doing quite well. (Blackbird below eating earthworm).

The main field was full of children, snow balling, making snowmen and generally having a great time. I walked to the North of the park and walked along the tree path walk at the top to see what birds were around.

The most numerous seemed to be the tits, both blue and great tit (latter below). They made their way through the branches in small feeding groups.

There was also a small flock of long-tailed tit, often hanging upside down trying to avoid the tops of the branches that were covered in thick snow.

By mid afternoon the snow was already beginning to melt and was almost completly gone the next morning.

beeflies and peacock butterfly

Not a lot to report recently, partly due to the bad weather and also that I have not been walking my daughter to school so often the last couple of weeks. The tadploes have continued to develop. Apart from the tadpoles in the pond, I have removed a few to the water butt and a few to my workshop. I usually try to raise a few outside of the pond and then return thme when they each froglet stage to make sure at least a few make it to frog.

Yesterday I saw the great spotted woodpecker for the first time in a while. It was at the top of a high tree in Easthill Park (portslade). There was also a fair amount of bird song, notably blackbird, great tit and hedge sparrow at present.

Today it was still quite mild and I decided to take my laptop and work outside. I moved the garden chair (leaning aaginst the wall) so I could set the table up and noticed a bee fly in a spiders web. The picture below shows the bee fly in the web, upside down. the long probosis is visible in the flies shadow.

Bee flies are usually around in the spring. The female scatters her eggs with a flicking motion, I observed this last year on our rockery. The larvae hatch and go insearch of miner bee nests.

There was also a insect, resembling the brown coloured (golden) bee fly visiting the flowers by the pond. I think it might be a bee of some sort.

The first peackock butterfly in our garden. Peackock butterflies hibernate as adults during the winter and awake in the spring.

Tadpoles

The weather is much milder today and there has also been quite a bit of sun. The last of the frog spawn in our garden pond has now hatched. The pond is black with tiny wriggling tadpoles.

developing frog spawn

I moved a small clump of the frog spawn to an aquarium tank in my workshop. I did the same last year to ensure some of them make it to froglet stage. The workshop is not too warm this time of the year and so the development is a similar time span to the spawn in the pond. The tadpoles are beginning to take shape, some slightly more advanced than others.

Developing spawn

The frog spawn seems unaffected by the ice previously. I noticed this morning that the spawn has started to develop, they now resemble tiny bean shapes.

frozen spawn and nest box

I awoke this morning to discover the pond had frozen during the night. embeded in the ice were the tops of each clump of spawn. The ice was thin, so hopefully it has not caused too much damage. I boilded some water and carefully poured it onto the ice away from the spawn to speed up thawing.

As I came back from taking our daughter to school I stopped to check out the bird box mentioned earlier. After a few minutes a blue tit arrived and entered the nest box. It stayed inside for about 3 minutes before coming out. Another blue tit was near the nest box. Not conclusive evidence that they are nesting, but a good sign.

Woodecker, great tits and flying squirrel.

Walking past Easthill Park this morning I heard the familiar drumming of the great spotted woodpecker and a flash of black and white as it flew past.

The park was alive with the usual tits, finches etc. The chaffinches were particulalrly visible today

On the wayback I noticed movement at the far end of the paddocks in the adjacent horse sanctuary. I walked along by the park wall, adjacent to the paddocks for a closer look. It was a fox. Above me I could see a noisy pair of great tits in the branches. As I came out of the park I watched a squirrel making its way along a branch which extended out over the road. At the last moment the squirrel made a leap, rotating its tail in mid air, paws outstretched and landed on an evergreen on the oteher side. Well thats one way to cross the road.