Brush Hill and Whiteleaf HIll

It feels like ages since I last had a wander around Brush Hill (although it can only be about a month), so I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and go up there yesterday.

The first thing I noticed was how much work has been done, presumably by the Chiltern Society. A lot of thick scrub and brambles have been cleared and it feels much more open now and will be much easier to explore. Must have been hard, prickly work!

I had a quick look in the ponds, but couldn't see any frogspawn

The paths seem to be edged with logs, which I'm not a huge fan of. It makes it all feel a bit too neat and formal, like you can only walk on the designated path, when half the fun is snuffling around off the beaten track. Maybe they just needed somewhere to put fallen logs though and I'm sure it will look better when all the plants start to grow and take over!


The entrance to the woods - this area has all been cleared as well

Our lovely snail is still there, but is looking a bit more exposed than he used to be. Please don't clear him away, he's an old friend!
 

This snail lives in Brush Hill

Lots of new nest boxes have been put up in the woods, some bigger than others.

A large box, for an owl maybe?

The dog's mercury is soon going to flower and the bluebells look like they'll put on a stunning display in a couple of months. There were also lots of Lords and Ladies growing in the woods.

Dog's mercury

A carpet of bluebells in the woods

The bluebells are growing well - still too early for flower buds though

Lords and Ladies (wild arum)

The beech trees will soon be in leaf as they're covered in leaf buds.

There were lots of little birds twittering around, including chaffinches, robins, blue tits and great tits. A great spotted woodpecker appeared high up in a tree and hopped around up there for a while.

Then I headed out of the woods into the freezing wind to take a look at the view.

I could also see Pyrtle Spring, down in the fields below the hill.

Pyrtle Spring is in the group of trees in the middle of the fields

Back through the woods, I headed over the road to Whiteleaf Hill for some more stunning views.

Bug Mad Girl is in school at the bottom of the hill, in the centre of the picture.
The top of the chalk cross is just beyond the wooden railing. 

looking down at the top of the chalk cross

Apart from the gigantic chalk cross on the side of the hill, there are a couple of other interesting features on Whiteleaf Hill. The first is a Neolithic barrow, which is one of the oldest monuments in Buckinghamshire and was the site of a burial over 5,500 years ago.

Neolithic barrow

The second is what appears to be digging by some sort of animal. It's actually World War I practice trenches, that were dug at half the size (or maybe 3/4 size) of the real trenches. They can be found throughout this part of the woods.

WWI practice trenches

Out by the cross, a pair of red kites were being blown around in the wind. They seemed to having a fabulous time gliding around wherever the strong wind took them. From the top of the hill you can get a unique view of them, as they often fly below you, so you look down on their backs.

Normally I'm looking up to see them, but from the top of the hill you can
look down on them as they fly past.

They have a very distinctive outline in flight, with a forked tail and the
curved shape of their long wings.

I headed back through the woods and bumped into this crow. He was stomping around in the leaves looking for food and didn't seem to care that I was right next to him.

Finally, I couldn't resist a bit of moss and lichen ...

This lichen was pale green - not the usual silver leafy lichen

A last quick look at the sleepers edging the car park and I found this
capillary thread moss - I liked all the capsules on it

Who's been digging up the ant hills?

I was up at Brush Hill yesterday and noticed a lot of the yellow meadow ant hills had been dug into. I saw well over a dozen of them and some had been dug into from 2 or sometimes 3 sides. It looks like whatever is doing the digging is specifically looking for something in the centre of the mound, at about ground level. They haven't completely trashed the hills, just dug into them.

My guess is that badgers must be doing it, but do they eat ants? I would have thought a nice juicy worm would be much more tasty than ants! Is this normal behavior for them? I don't remember seeing the ant hills like this before, but maybe I just didn't notice them.

It was quite hard to make out any clear tracks, but I found this one. I also found a poo nearby which may help id the culprit. (Note that there are a lot of dog walkers up there, so wouldn't be surprised of these are both from a dog!)

Anybody know what would do this to ant hills and if this is normal behavior. There are a lot of untouched ant hills up there, but even so, it seems unusual. Seems like bad news for the ants and the chalkhill blue butterflies if a badger decides to dig up all the ant hills!

Homemade nesting pouch

Nanny Moth decided to have a go at making some homemade nesting pouches for wrens (or any small birds that fancy using them). Bug Mad Girl helped (while Little Brother poked her with sticks) and the end result is brilliant.

They started with some bendy sticks cut out of the garden and wired them together at the bottom. Then they weaved another stick around the vertical sticks, quite tightly at the bottom to support the nesting material inside, but getting loser higher up.

Then they tied the sticks together at the top and trimmed off the ends. They made a door by twisting another stick into a circle and attached it to the pouch in one of the gaps.

Finally they stuffed ferns into the bottom the pouch and wove them around the sticks to line the inside.

We put it up in the garden in the middle of a bush, fastening it securely top and bottom.

Last year the wrens nested in a hole in the side of one of our hanging baskets, so hopefully they'll be very comfy in these. We'll keep you posted!

February highlights

I was expecting Feb to be a 'quiet' month, but instead we seemed to be busier than ever. Some of our best bits were:

• Heading back to Pyrtle Spring to find water in the spring, all sorts of fungi, lichen and signs of spring.
• A covering of snow turning Whiteleaf Hill into a winter wonderland and finding tracks in the snow.
• BBC Wildlife making Bug Mad Girl their blog of the week.
• Taking part in a moss walk at Aston Rowant nature reserve and discovering the beauty of mosses.
• Exploring College Lake and climbing trees at Coombe Hill during half term.
• Watching our lovely back garden birds all pair up and helping them out by putting up nest boxes, making nesting bundles and making bird cake, all for National Nest Box Week.
• The red kites starting to revamp their nest, ready for this years brood.
• Discovering a huge badgers sett, with plenty of signs of recent activity.

Pyrtle spring in March

We went back to Pyrtle Spring on Sunday to see what had changed in the last month. You can read the pyrtle spring story and it's special place in my family's history here.

We were welcomed by snowdrops growing around the edge of the trees and we could just glimpse the water level in the spring. It's always exciting to see how much water there'll be, although we've had a lot of rain recently, so the chances were good. We were very surprised though to see the water covering most of the bottom of the spring and it actually appeared to be flowing through the spring and off down a small stream. When we visited in January it had been completely dry.

From the entrance to Pyrtle Spring we could see the water level
had risen a lot and the water was now right down to the lower
half of the spring

The water was lovely and clear

The water was in the lower half of the spring, although there were some
small islands still showing

Looking back up to the entrance to the spring

At the bottom of the spring the water flowed off down a
small stream towards Culverton



A pair of ducks were on the water when we arrived, but they flew away as soon as we disturbed them.

Bug Mad Girl couldn't resist a paddle and in some places the water was right up to the top of her wellies. She also enjoyed climbing around on some of the logs - having the water below to potentially fall into only made it more enjoyable!

It felt like a very different place today. I think it was because we couldn't get down into the bottom of the spring, so the trees weren't looming over us and their roots weren't creeping down the bank towards us. Instead we were scrabbling around the edge, looking down into the spring. Still beautiful, just different!

There were a few flowers around and the plants have started to grow. Another month and I think it will be very 'green' around the spring.

There were several dandelions in flower - a great early source of nectar for
bees and butterflies

The celandines are still flowering - we saw our first one there on Jan 1st

Beautiful snowdrop

The brooklime has started to shoot

The cow parsley is growing and should make a stunning display
in a couple of months

We found a little bit of fungus and a pretty pink lichen ...

A black jelly fungus called witches butter



Some dried up jelly ear

Velvet shank

Pink lichen

... and some signs of animal life.

There were several big dig holes, which I assume
were made by a badger



Pigeon for lunch!



Nibble marks in a conker - looks like quite big teeth, so maybe a squirrel?

Holes in a tree trunk - could have been made by a woodpecker

Then on the way home we found these snails hibernating together between two tree trunks. I looked up the collective noun for snails and it's either a walk, rout or escargatoire. Well I think this has to be a huddle of snails!

Badgers!

We set the trail camera up at the badger sett last night and were thrilled to actually get some badger footage ...

It was the first time we'd set the trail camera up outside of our garden, so it was all a big adventure. We went out just before dark and picked a spot pointing at a couple of entrance holes and a well used trail. We tied the camera onto a tree and put a handful of peanuts on the ground (just to try and keep the badger there for a while). Then we headed home to wait until morning.

The camera was on the tree on the left - you can see the wet line on the
trunk that was left by the strap when we took it down this morning

Next morning, we headed out early (about 6.30) to go and retrieve the camera. We both couldn't wait to see what we'd find and Bug Mad Girl chattered all the way there (a sure sign she's excited!) I tried to keep her quiet as we got closer to the sett, in case anything was still out and about. I suspect they would have heard us coming though!

We were pleased to find the camera still there (for some reason I was half expecting it to have been stolen) and took it down. We could see the peanuts were gone, so knew something had been there and then we looked at the camera and found the photos and videos. How brilliant is that!

It looks like our badger headed out about 10.20 pm, returning home just after 5 am (the camera time is one hour fast - must have last used it before the clocks changed in the autumn).

A little bit more about their home ... their sett is in a bank in a wooded area and appears even larger than I first suspected. I believe there are over 30 entrance holes, but I'll have to try and count them properly some time. The Chilterns are all made of chalk, which must be perfect terrain for a badger sett. It's relatively easy to dig and is free draining, so there would never be any worries about the sett flooding. It also leaves the distinctive white mounds where the badgers have been excavating, so you can spot the entrances. At the bottom of the bank there's a lot of moss and fallen logs and you can see where the badgers have been snuffling and digging looking for food. An open, grassy area is about 20 meters away and is covered in holes and digging marks, no doubt where they've been looking for worms.

The badger sett on a bank

 

There are lots of holes around where they've been digging

The open grassy area (full of mole hills) with the sett just beyond in the trees

We had a hunt around for footprints, but it had rained earlier in the night and was very muddy. We found a few possible badger prints, but nothing very clear. We did see a few small deer prints out on the grassy area though, probably muntjac. We also found some poo - looks like it contained fur, so maybe fox poo?

Deer track, probably muntjac

Looks like something furry was eaten - maybe by a fox

Walking back, a buzzard was circling overhead, a woodpecker was drumming away in the woods and we saw a bunny hop off into cover. We were serenaded all the way back through the woods by the robins, each one taking over from the last, as we moved from one territory to another.

What a brilliant morning!