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| << October 2024 | November 2024 | December 2024 >> |
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1st: Coal Tit These tits are now as regular a visitor as the Great and Blue and just as busy. Love how this one is just standing on the blades of grass - they are just so light and it obviously had its eye on something!!!!  |
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2nd: Soooo busy The bird feeding station is just so busy at the moment - the goldfinches are now here in fabulous numbers, we see 6/7/8 at a time coming to feed - the niger feed is half emptied in a mere week. And as for the the fat balls and the woodpeckers - definitely a favourite just now!! |
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3rd: Sustainable Chulmleigh What a totally fabulous day: we had a working party here from Sustainable Chulmleigh to help plant up our new pond, remove a no-longer-needed Avian Flu poultry cage and start digging out some shallow shelving round the pond edges. This whole area is destined to become a peaceful haven for wildlife where community groups can come and learn and unwind!! We are very very excited..... Thanks to Nick, Claire, Mike, Miriam, Julie, Andy, Kelly and Vivien and to Claire for some of the photos!! xx       |
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4th: Blackbirds Virtually every day, one or more female blackbirds are waiting for us when we head to the feeders to fill them up. They are of course, waiting for the mealworms. They sit, none too patiently as we top up the seeds, peanuts and fat-balls, willing us to hurry up and get the mealworms out!! One in particular, (not this one) gets so close we could reach out and touch her but to date, doesn't quite have enough courage to eat from our hands. We are working on that!!!  |
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5th: Goldcrest Very chuffed to spot this beautiful goldcrest in the trees just up from Yeti's gate - it's a popular place for a fair few passerines. Capturing them on film is not easy!!!  |
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6th: Look at these two go... Dragonfly and Firefly - nine years old and still racing round the fields and responding to the whistle.   |
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7th: Pipework Nigel helping to get the piping sorted so the barn run-off goes into the pond. It was fun getting the levels right here.....   |
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8th: The Newt Had the most amazing day at The Newt in Somerset with ❤Becky ❤ today (an early birthday treat). It is the most stunning estate with gardens, woodland, regenerative farmland, cafes, a farm shop, a Roman villa, a Beezantium, a mythical grotto, a hotel, beautiful architecture and so much more. They also run workshops, evening events, courses and walks. (And next time I will take my camera as opposed to just my phone). It was all utterly, utterly stunning.: an incredible mix of formal and wild, of stunning attention to detail, or working in harmony with the landscape, of fantastic vision. Well worth a visit - and I can guarantee you will want to go back. Our next visit is planned!!!                 |
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9th: Rook Love these silhouetted images  |
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10th: Beauty of North Devon Today I accompanied Lynda on one of her walks - we came out of Chulmleigh past the school, turned right to go to Parsonage Farm and then down to Farrier's Cottage. From there it was a right to head back into Chulmleigh via the very steep Park Mill. It was stunning!     |
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11th: Autumn    |
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12th: House Sparrow |
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13th: The last farewell And now, after 15 years of being smallholders, we are livestock-free. The goats went this morning so no more mucking out, feeding, giving chuckles, checking worm counts and feet.. we are going to miss them BUT ....instead, we are filling our land with trees, more hedging and ponds (lots of ponds) and throwing our arms open wide for all that lovely wildlife to come and make us their home. So glad for those 15 years and also very, very glad for this new journey!!!         |
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14th: Ocean Today we had SIX Gordon Setters racing round our land (as well as two Irish): our five (Dragon, Roxy, Sparrow, Redwing and Kite) plus Ocean. Ocean is one of Redwing and Kite's sisters, born to Sparrow this Feb and very sadly, her home has not worked out - this is due to 100% ZERO fault of hers nor her owner's. We are mega chuffed to Bethan, who helped us get Ocean back to Devon from Anglesey yesterday, not before a lovely river walk along the Wye where Ocean wanted to meet and greet every dog and human that she saw. She was a major star in the car both for Bethan and us and the meet and greet with ours last night, could not have gone better. We do believe there was familiarity there for all the dogs which must have helped.   |
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15th: Sisterly love.... 🥰 Makes our hearts melt.... ❤ Redwing and Kite at nine months!!!  |
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17th: Starlings Starlings really are beautiful birds - we get hundreds here every winter now. It's extraordinary to think we no longer have resident birds and that once upon a time, they were considered a 'nuisance' by some people.... I absolutely love their chatter, their mumurations, their colours. Great article here about them - rather sadly, scientists don't actually know why their numbers are declining. I love it when they visit our bird feeding station - even if they demolish the mealworms in about 30 seconds.... 😀 Read more    |
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18th: On being 60!!!
So.... 60!!
The first thing I can tell you is that I don't feel old enough to be 60!! 🤣 Nor wise enough, definitely not wise enough!!! I have been thinking about what I was doing at all the other significant 'decades' in my life:
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19th Our fields and hedges    |
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20th: Snow             |
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21st: Lucky Shot! Marsh tit in the snow at Nick's place yesterday... lucky shot as it was there for a nano second!! Beautiful little birds. Thanks also to Nick for the impromptu 'Lightroom' lesson to help make the best of today's photo shoot!!  |
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23rd: Rugs!!!! Despite not posting scenes from our loom-filled front room for ages, we are still busy on the rug-making front. It's a very relaxing little side-business and we very much enjoy turning fleeces from much loved sheep and alpacas, into soft, thick, rustic rugs that hopefully evoke happy thoughts and memories, each time they are seen and touched. 🥰 This from a grateful customer this morning: 'I'm so totally thrilled with the rug and attach a photo of it next to my bed. It is so lovely to have my boys in the bedroom with me!' And just to re-assure.... our rugs are made from shorn fleeces - the animal is very much alive when their fleece is removed!!! 😊   |
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24th: Ocean leaves for her new home Farewell to Ocean from us as she set off this morning with Raven, Pauline (Paula) and Tony to her new home. These two are best buddies already. as the video from their meet and greet yesterday clearly shows. 🥰❤ 🥰  |
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25th: Water levels We have capped the original outflow pipe in the pond as we felt it was too low and instead have installed one from our 'shelf' here (you cannot see it is the photo). The idea is that this shelf will be a mini pond with warmer water where the frogs may be happy to lay their spawn, and then in the autumn/ winter when we get more rain it will also act as an overflow.... time will tell if our cunning plan will work... We hope to build at least one more of these mini ponds - they will also be a good place for animals to get in and out of the as they are only 5-6 inches deep.    |
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26th: Nuthatch Not the best photo but very chuffed to see that the nuthatch is now becoming more of a regular visitor to our bird feeding station.  |
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27th: A riot of activity Our bird feeders continue to be a riot of activity every single day.. We are up to 14 species who now visit to feed: tits - blue, great, coal and marsh; starling; blackbird; nuthatch; dunnock: house sparrow; finches: gold and chaffinch; greater spotted woodpecker; robin, wren. And in total we have now seen 50 bird species on our land in the eight years we have lived here..... so lucky!! |
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28th: This autumn Devon County Council were offering 45 free trees: oak, cheery and silver birch for anyone with a bit of land. We applied and were successful 😄, and today I got them all planted in Goat Field (don't worry, goats no longer live here 🥲🤣). The dogs helped. 😳🤣 The middle photo is Jack knackered but happy! They are altogether in a random group with the view to becoming a mini copse.. All very exciting - and more trees and hedging are due to arrive early next month... Our nature recovery/ re-wilding is definitely all in track at the moment. #savedevontrees     |
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29th: Deadwood We are starting to make piles of deadwood around the land.. and this quote from the Woodland Trust explains why: 'It may not look like much, but fallen branches, rotting stumps and dead trees are the lifeblood of any woodland. Decaying wood recycles nutrients back into the soil, provides food and nurseries for animals [such as Saproxylic beetles], and hosts spectacular collections of fungi.' Check out the full article  |
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30th: Mud!!! And there's us thinking e had escaped the mud now we are no longer smallholders.... 🤣🤣 Digging out shelving in our pond and covering over our in-flow pipework... it was a tricky one.. the land slopes up to the pond so in order for the barn run off to go 'in to' it, we had to create a mound so the piping would slope downwards (as shown on 7th). Hopefully by next year this will all look lovely and you will never know it was once a mud pit!! 🤣    |