Longwick Art Show

Bug Mad Girl had one of her pictures on display at Longwick Art Show this weekend. It was created with inks, wax crayons and a sprinkle of salt, apparently. She even made a sale, although it was me who bought it!

Well done - what a beautiful butterfly!

National Nest Box Week

This week is National Nest Box Week, so we put up two new boxes in the garden this morning. Bug Mad Girl decided to paint one of them first.

Then we registered all of our bird boxes with the BTO's Nest Box Challenge. You record your bird boxes, then monitor whether they are used during the spring/summer. You can take part here www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/nbc.

To give the nesting birds a little bit of extra help we made some nesting bundles. We collected some twigs, dried grass, reeds, moss, feathers, hair, wool and even some felt and mixed them all together.

A lovely mixture of nesting materials

Then we tied it all onto branches using wool and hung the bundles up in the garden. Hopefully the birds will pull out the nesting material that they want and use it to make their nests. With purple felt and bright blue feathers, we could have some very pretty nests this year!

Full instructions for making nesting bundles can be found on the BBC Wildlife website http://www.discoverwildlife.com/british-wildlife/your-garden/how-make-nesting-bundle.



One of our new nest boxes, with a nesting
bundle hung underneath it

One of our nesting bundles

One of our robins was straight over to see what we'd been doing. It's not her sort of nest box, but maybe she'll use some of the nesting material.

 

Finally, as an extra treat we made some bird cake - all the birds love that!

Lucky birds ... let's hope we have lots of babies again this year!

Tree climbing at Coombe Hill

The sun was shining again, so this morning we headed up to Coombe Hill to admire the great view and climb a few trees.

Coombe Hill is one of the highest points in the Chilterns and used to be part of the Chequers estate (country estate of the Prime Minister), until the land was given to the National Trust in the 1920's. At the top is a monument to the Buckinghamshire men who died during the Boer War and there are great views out over the Vale of Aylesbury.

The path through the wood opens out to reveal the view in the distance

The monument on the top of the hill

Chequers can be seen from the monument

The view from the top - Beacon Hill is the grassy hill, Pulpit Hill is the
wooded hill to the left and Bledlow Ridge is in the distance

We headed back into the woods so the kids could climb some trees. This one was a particular favourite and needed a big hug!





There are some great trees in the woods up there. These are very old coppiced beech trees, that look a bit like they're wearing a thick fur coat.

There were lots of lovely climbing trees and we even found a dragon disguised as tree - all we could see were it's nostrils and belly button!

 

The dragon's nostrils - luckily it was asleep!

and it's belly button



Some of the other little gems that we discovered ...

The woods will be full of bluebells in a couple of months

Orangey-red, flat fungus growing in a tree stump - maybe beefsteak fungus

Gorse - looking dramatic against the blue sky



The honeysuckle has started to grow leaves

This tiny red weevil was out and about on a tree trunk

This huge tree gall wrapped right around the tree trunk
and looked a bit like a bear hanging on to the tree

College Lake

College Lake was looking beautiful in the sunshine today. As it's half term, the families with children outnumbered the serious birders by about 20 to 1, so we added a bit more chaos to the mix and headed out to see what we could 'spot'.

Looking back at the visitors centre from the hide in the lake

The view from outside the visitors centre

The view from the bat roost

Part of the lake was frozen and there were a lot of gulls standing on the ice. A small gaggle of canada geese were making a terrible racket and lapwings were all over one of the islands in the centre of the lake. We also spotted a cover of coots (yes, I had to look up the collective noun for coots) that were really enjoying the weed in the lake.

2 of the canada geese, with the gulls in the background

Lapwings on an island in the middle of the lake

One of the coots

From the lake, we headed back up to the woods, spotting catkins and some pussy willow that was just starting to open, on the way. In the woods there were lots of snowdrops in flower, as well as a few very pretty aconites.

Catkins

Pussy willow just starting to open

Snowdrops

Aconites

 

We spent a few minutes in the hide in the woods, where there were lots of chaffinches, great tits and blue tits. A squirrel appeared for a quick snack, then a great spotted woodpecker stopped briefly on one of the feeders, before disappearing up a tree.

Chaffinch

The view from the hide in the woods

Great spotted woodpecker

Heading off up a tree

Then we moved down to the barn, where you can sit indoors and watch the birds on the feeders. Again there were lots of chaffinches, great tits and blue tits, as well as several robins. Then we spotted what at first we thought were sparrows, but we looked closer and saw they were reed buntings. A new bird for us, so quite exciting!

Female reed bunting

Male reed bunting

A robin, posing in the sunshine

Back along the trail through the woods and we found some jelly ear fungus, lovely lichen and several types of moss (I've had a go at naming them, but could well have got it wrong!)

Jelly ear - you can really see where it gets its name from!

Lovely lichen



Lichen that looks like little barnacles

Neat feather moss

Common feather moss

Wood bristle moss

Capillary thread moss

It was a lovely morning - the sun was shining, the kids were having fun and using up some of their energy.