Spent a good few hours in the hide last Saturday being entertained by the steady stream of woodpeckers and nuthatches visiting the feeders - these photos are both male as they have the red patch on the back of their heads - females do not have this, and juveniles have red on the tops of their heads which is later replaced by the black - but of course we won't be seeing any of those for a few months yet.
A pair of jays came down a couple of times too, the first time I let them come in and feed without firing off any shots, but the second time I thought I would give it a go. However, I made a stupid mistake which screwed up the shot; I was still set-up to shoot tiny birds (with my aperture wide open) and so when the very much larger Jay landed right in front of the hide, my depth of field simply was not deep enough and most of him was out of focus - idiot - and of course he didn't stay long enough for me to get a second shot in. Oh well - there's always next time. I do love the Jays - they seem to glide so silently around and yet their call is so loud and brash.Last Sunday we returned to make a start on the Rhodie regrowth. I cleared the wayleave area north of the dam and used the brash to build a barrier along fox ridge, whilst the boys hacked out the roots in the tent area. Flee and Tracey arrived to drop off the industrial shredder and got stuck in as well. We have decided that shredding the Rhodies rather than burning them, and putting the chippings along the paths would at least make the effort worthwhile as it's pretty slippery underfoot at the moment.
Need to be careful to check for disease first though to ensure nothing diseased gets into the shredder as I really don't want to be spreading anything around the wood that might do some damage to the native species.
http://treesforlife.org.uk/work/forest-restoration-techniques/rhododendron-control/
We braved the damp misty weather again this afternoon for a few hours of fresh air and exercise in the hope it would combat the slight hangover and lack of sleep we were both suffering. Certainly seemed to do the trick for a couple of hours at least as Ant dug out another load of mammoth Rhodie roots and Tracey and I cleared the new growth (again) down by the stream. Very disheartening to keep covering the same ground, but little by little we will get it under control and get Rais back to a healthy native woodland again.
Flee spent the afternoon re-felting the roof of Immac so that we could remove the temporary tarp and I took a good walk around snapping views with the camera on my mobile phone. I followed deer paths and inspected bog plants, nosed at the huge range of orange winter fungi everywhere and noticed the gorse bushes are in full bloom. I also found a single flowering primrose. Spring is not going to be too far away - marked on Tuesday by Imbolc - an old Celtic festival to celebrate the passing of Winter and the awakening of Spring - the first green shoots can already be seen pushing up through the leaf litter from ancient Bluebell bulbs underneath the soil - can't wait to see what effect our Rhodie clearance has had on the bluebell display this year. It's also quite exciting heading into our first Spring in the new house.... already the garden has delivered some surprises; pale purple hellebores, crocuses, pansies, as well as clumps of white snowdrops nodding away in the wind.
