Month: May 2007

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The Lock of the Lowe s Osprey Diary reported that…

The Lock of the Lowe’s Osprey Diary reported that the last born chick had died last night. For a few days, a number of those using our Forum, could see that it was struggling to get the food that it needed. The Manager of the Centre told me that nearly every year, all the chicks have fledged. Yesterday was a very wet and cold day at the Lock, the female had a choice of feeding the chick or letting it get cold and wet. What ever she chose the Chick was likely to die.

When I checked on the Locks camera two this morning, there was a view of the Lock. I thought that the new cameras had been installed. The camera that was looking at at the tree, that the Osprey nest is in, had been moved to show the lock. The camera has quite a wide angle, so you can see how close the Lock is to the centres building. The camera when showing the Lock, is showing the place where the Osprey has been seen to fish. When the new PTZ camera does get working there should be some spectacular viewing.

One of the baby Swallows was not in the nest when I turned the camera on this morning. They seemed very restless last night. It seems that the nest was to small to hold the five chicks, and one must have fell out in the night. I did spend some time looking around the barn to find it. The other nest I have a camera looking at, is a bit of a mystery. When I found that the nest was being used, I thought that I had counted two eggs. On checking it again today, there were two eggs. I have seen the Swallows visiting the nest from time to time, and even one sitting on the nest, but for not a long, as maybe they should. Alex’s Chloe, reckons that the chicks look funny. They remind me of the American Boxing Promoter Don King. Any other people that they or any of the other animals remind you of? Be careful I wont put up any thing to derogatory.

Quite a number of Bats were flying around the lake last night. When I put the new IR lamp up, I had not expected to see such a display of Bats, as I did last night. You can see them flying around the fields on the valley camera, but not to the extent, and as close as last night on the lake. We have Bats in our loft and in the barns that have not been converted, although when I look for them in our loft, I can never find them. We know we have them, as the fly out from different places of the roof space. When it gets dark, if we look into the roof space with a torch, there are always Bats flying about.

The Telescope is nearly ready to start again, I didn’t try to finish getting it completely ready, as the forecast was against clear skies tonight. Wrong again Mr.Met Man. To be able to set the Telescope up, I need a align it to two stars, when that is done it will follow what ever it is being tracked, more accurately. There is a piece of equipment called a SkyScout. I need one. It is very clever. All that you need to do is to point it to a Star and it tells you the name of that Star. The stockist in the UK, have not had them delivered as yet. They are manufactured in the USA. There suppliers are not allowed by the manufacturer to send them outside of the Country, or they will lose their franchise. However they are able to be paid for outside the USA, as long as they are posted to a USA address. They can then be sent to the UK. Is there anyone in the USA able to help. I have found a supplier who will take payment with my credit card and I will of course send the postage. If so please email me at info@denburyfarm.co.uk.

What a lovely surprise we had in the post today, addressed to Mr & Mrs. Farmer. A very pretty Thank you Card. I hope you don’t mind me mentioning your name, but it was very kind of you Alex. The card was what you would call a pop-up card, depicting a Blue Tits nest with chicks and a Blue Tit with springy wing flying to the nest. Very appropriate. And again thank you.

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Lady and the Foal will be at the Stud for…

Lady and the Foal will be at the Stud for about another week. She was unable to be mated on this cycle. I do not want her to be at the Stud any longer than necessary, so she will be induced to cycle early, in a day or so.

I had a phone call from the Butterfly Farm this morning, from the person who is fitting two new cameras. He needed some information on the the wiring. I was given the impression that they would have been broadcasting on their pages today. They must have a small problem, as only one of them is working tonight. I will phone them in the morning to find out what the problem is.

Sheep and Dogs normally don’t go together, other than when the Sheep are being rounded up with a Dog. Ky doesn’t seem to understand that, or she believes that because they have four legs and a tail she is the same as all the other animals, on the farm. We have noticed for a while that she has been trying to be friendly with the Sheep, that are in a pen in the barn. She will often goes missing when we are preparing the Horses feed and hay. More often than not, she has been found by the pen looking at the Sheep. The Sheep initially would bang their feet on the ground, to warn her off, Ky did not understand that the banging was a threat, and would take no notice of the feet banging. I suppose that she may have thought that it was a friendly gesture.

Just recently a few of the Sheep have been coming up close to the side of the pen, putting their heads out of the bars, in Ky’s direction. The first few times, she went a little closer to the Sheep, that would make them jump back, mostly in fear of Ky. For the past couple of days we noticed that Ky has been licking a couple of the Sheep, as she would with Tass or Jade our other dogs. The Ram wasn’t best pleased, he charged at Ky. Of course he wasn’t able to get her, as she was on the other side of the pen. Again this afternoon Ky went missing whilst we were making up the Horse feed. We knew that she was more then likely by the Sheep pen. On finding her, we could hardly believe our eyes, for she was in the pen with the Sheep, laying down next to two of them, that we had yesterday seen her licking. The Ram could not have seen Ky, or I don’t believe he did, for I am sure that he would have butted her.

Ky is an active dog, when outside on the farm yard, she is 24/7 on the go. A little while back we were sent a photo of one of her brothers. He is so much fatter than her you would think that we did not feed her. The recent way she has found to stop putting on weight, is to help with the hay. When we move the hay, we use one of those big builders merchants sand bags, even with hay they are heavy. It is easier when two people pull it from stable to stable, but it mostly tends to be one. Ky wont allow that, She gets hold of one of the lifting handles and helps to pull the bag along, and really does try.

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Our first Swallows nest that was abandoned a few weeks…

Our first Swallows nest that was abandoned a few weeks ago, has now got residents. I saw the Swallows were going in the barn, that is being converted, On investigating I found that there were eggs in the nest. I wasn’t able to count them as the adult birds were causing a bit of a rumpus, with me being to near the nest. I will try to count them tomorrow. I will show the nest from time to time on the same page as the current Swallows nest.

Most of the morning we had a Jenny Wren chit chatting away as if something was disturbing her. I had found her nest a while back, in the same barn as the Swallows nest, that I found the eggs in today. She had managed to build her nest in between the old ceiling beams where they join together. How she managed to get in there, I don’t know. This afternoon we found why she had been making such a commotion, for just outside our door were six tiny Wren chicks, that must have fledged very shortly before. The Wrens have normally nested within inches of our house door for many years. I may have stopped them from nesting there this year, when I put a camera above the nest, although it was very lucky for the Wren, for four days ago when we opened our door in the morning, there was a large amount of nesting material on the ground. Some thing had pulled the inside of the old Wrens nest apart. It was more than likely a Magpie looking to eat the eggs or chicks.

Some of you may have seen that I had got the new IR lamp working around the lake. The lens on the lamp needs to be changed to widen the beam. The lamp will then light up more of the view. I watched it on and off for two hours or so, and managed to see two Moorhen or Coot. I should think that it will be a good watering hole for other animals in the night. The grass around the lake is thick, so I am unable to see any animal tracks. When I turn the lights out on the Swallows of a night, I will put the lake camera on.

The orange bags on the lake, are bags of barley straw. The chemicals in the straw stop the lake from forming algae. The bags are meant to be submerged, but it seems that we made a bad job of weighting them down, so that they would sink to the bottom. As some of you have noticed the Ducks are using it as an island.

Woody is having a good spell at the moment. As you have seen, she is grazing quite happily, but I am not holding my breath for her to get better. She has lost so much weight. With the feeds we give her every morning and night she should be putting on weight, rather than continuing to lose it.

I have been trying to phone the Stud where Lady and the Foal are, for most of the day, to see when they are going to bring her home. I haven’t managed to get an answer, I shall be trying again tomorrow, from the morning.

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If the rain had not stopped in the night the…

If the rain had not stopped in the night, the outcome of the Swallow Chicks could well have been a little different. The adults Swallows have been working hard feeding the chicks all day. Late this afternoon we started to get some quite heavy showers. I can still see that the chicks are being fed even through the showers, Whilst I was fitting the new IR lamp by the lake I could see the Swallows skimming the lake to catch the flies. The showers have stopped me from finishing installing the new lamp. If the sky clears I will try to finish it tonight, but as I am writing it is getting blacker all the time, with again heavy showers. The weatherman has got it wrong again. I do not think that the Swallows will be out looking for food if it carries on as it is. I will have to remember to turn the light off in the barn where the nest is. With the light out, the chicks very quickly settled down.

I must admit I was also a little concerned about the little Badger Cub last night. It was getting very wet, it was also quite cold last night. Just the reciepe for hypothermia in a young animal. There must have been three Badger Sows that had Cubs this year. The cub out last nighr was to small to have been out of the same litter as the others. It will be interesting to see if it has a sibling.

It is no good me complaining about the rain, I was praying for it a few weeks back. I didn’t think that prayed that hard though. But it has made the grass grow. If we get a five or six day period of hot sunshine, I will take a flyer and try to make the hay early, as we have so much grass. We don’t usually make the hay until the end of June, when the seed is about to drop. You people who get hay fever will know the time. There is more feed value when you make the hay with the seed still on the grass.

Web cams for sure really do bring home the reality of the hard times that wildlife has to endure, to keep their off springs alive. They give us the opportunity to experience every minute of wildlife’s ups and downs in real-time as it happens. Until I installed the web cams, I would never have had thought twice about what would have happened to the Swallow or Blue Tit nests. I would never have known what a close knit family the Badgers were, or even how the Osprey Chicks could have been harmed by the Eel that their parent had took to the nest for their feed.

Soon we will get broadband speeds that they do in many other countries. It will allow us to broadcast so much better, that when you use the full screen or use your computer through your television, the quality of the pictures will be as good as what you get on your television. It wont be to long.

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I have turned the lights off in the barn that…

I have turned the lights off in the barn that the Swallows chicks are in. Hopefully it will stop them expecting food every time they hear a noise and calm them down. The light now showing the nest is an IR lamp. The light is timed and will go out in about forty minutes. I will try to remember to turn it back on. Later I will put another camera on.

Like most of the country, it has been a miserable, wet, cold and windy day at Denbury, not the sort of day that I want to be out and about on the farm, in fact I have been out very little, other than to feed the Horses and Badgers tonight.

The weather is of course the reason you are not seeing the Swallows chicks being fed. The Swallow and the Birds in that group, prominently catch their food, insects, flying ants, aphids etc, on the wing, across grazing land and ponds and the like. Unfortunately when it is raining constantly, as it has been today, there is very little food about for them to catch. I would hope that the food that they have had over the past days, will be sufficient to keep them going until tomorrow, when we are promised a break in the weather.

Swallows are also known to me as Barn Swallows, because on farms they will mainly nest in old barns and out buildings, very close to cattle and other livestock. They will return to the same nesting sites, and even to the same nests year after year. With farming rapidly changing, lots of buildings that they traditionally use to nest, are disappearing. At Denbury we have converted buildings, so we are not innocent, but we did not realise the impact that it might have on the Swallows, Although I don’t believe it would have made us change direction, if we had of known. Fortunately we have a couple of old stone barns that we have not converted, they now nest in these buildings, we have no plans to convert them. With less livestock farming, mainly dairy, the grazing fields have less flying insects. Although you would not think it on the hot sticky days of the Summer. We are lucky that we have the lake that the Swallows use for a lot for their food, to feed their chicks and themselves.

The Foxes have stopped coming to the Badger feeding area at the feeding time, as the hide is being used some nights by our holiday quests. I saw a couple later on in the night, but by the time they came all the food had gone. The Foxes normally hang around for up to half an hour before I put the feed down. Our quests go to the hide about ten minute before I feed, so the Foxes see them go into the hide, their sense of smell is also very good, so they are more aware of humans being around than the Badgers, who only have to walk a few steps from the sett to eat what food that I put out. Maybe tomorrow night after I feed the Badgers, I will go into the hide with the quests. Foxes cant count, when I leave they may think that there is no one in the hide, as long as they do not smell the scent.

When the hide is being used, the slightest noise will spook the Badgers, and it is that which causes them to race back to the sett. They soon seem to get over it, and return to feed, that could well be that I go up to the area to feed them every night.

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After seeing the posting on the forum about the Blue…

After seeing the posting on the forum about the Blue Tit nest, I phoned the Centre Manager at the Lock of the Lowes site. After the call, he confirmed that the Blue Tits chicks were dead. He had checked the nest earlier, although he had not seen the adult, the chick were alive. He was able to to look back at the recordings that he had. The adult had not returned to the nest to feed the youngsters, since last night. There had been a Sparrow Hawk around at the site, it is believed that it is the culprit.

The Manager at the centre told me that just before I had phoned, the male Osprey had returned to the nest with a large Eel, it was still alive and lashing about, they were concerned at the centre, that the large Eel may hurt the Osprey chicks. Eels have a very interesting start to their their lives, their lives start in the Sargasso Sea. It is not known how the babies called Elvers, manage to find their way to the rivers of the UK, they are so tiny, it is a wonder that they don’t get swept on to the sea shore and eaten by Gulls and other Birds. They also travel across land to get from one water course to another, they are a very interesting creature, they taste great to. I like any type of cooked Eel, but my favorite meal is stewed jellied Eels and mash.

Whilst driving down our drive, scurrying in front of our new holiday quests car, was a Weasel, it would have been close to where I was intending to poison the Rats around the lake, so it is going to give me a problem, of how do I now get rid of the Rats without killing other animals. I had hoped to have got the new IR lamp up today, so that I was able t see what was eating the bread that I put into the trap. My drill that I was using to drill a hole through a 14″ post is not working to well, and I am having to do a little drilling at a time.

Val asked about Lady. Yes Generous is the same Stallion who won the Derby as well as other Group races. The Filly Foal at foot, is by Lucky Owners, a Group one and two race winner and highest earning son on the racetrack of Danehill. Bliss is also Lady’s off spring. Bliss is a three quarter sister of a Group two winner called Captain Hurricane. After mating Lady will be scanned at twenty one days. we will then know if she is in Foal. I should think the Bird you enquired about, would have been a Greater Spotted Woodpecker.

GJ, I am sorry if one of your entries did not get posted on the forum. As you can tell by the the entry by Mr Straight Talker. Although I did have to think twice about if I should post it, for obvious reasons. I will never allow email addresses to be posted. I am also reluctant to post a URL of any website, that is a direct competitor to any of those represented on our website. At times, certain issues discussed on the forum, need to be referenced, such as a drug prescribed for a pet, they of course will be allowed.

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The Buzzard knows that it has a good chance of…

The Buzzard knows that it has a good chance of a meal by the Bird feeders. The Birds when feeding on the feeders always drop some of the seeds onto the ground. There always seems to be a Pheasant in the area and they mop up some of the seed. But it is also a good food source for the Rats. That is why I have a problem about using Rat poison to get rid of them. There is always the chance that a poisoned Rat, that the poison has not worked fully on, will be eaten by an Owl or a Buzzard.

The Buzzard although protected, is still liable to be shot by people who rear Pheasants for game shooting. They believe that the Buzzard will kill Pheasants. They may rarely kill the odd one. The main food source for the Buzzard are Mice, Rats and Rabbits. I wish they would work a little harder on the Rats.

The Rats problem has got to be sorted out on the lower Badger feeding area, and around the lake where the Goslings were taken. I am not to worried that any other animals or birds will be poisoned by eating a poisoned Rats around the lake area. I have already started to make sure that the Rats will eat what I put out. I put out a cage last night with bread in it. This morning all the bread had gone. The cage will stop the birds from getting to the poison, but I need to know that it was Rats that ate the bread last night, and what I have put out tonight. Tomorrow I am going to put up a powerful IR lamp, it will allow me to see what is eating the bread. If it is Rats as I suspect, I can then put the poison in a container that the Rats can get to, so as they do not spill the poison where the Birds will eat it.

I purchased some years back a couple of Rat traps, but they were not to successful. I found one of them today. I will try that in the Badger area, for I know that I will kill the field mice and voles that also use the area, if I poison to kill the Rats. The Badger sett is quite close to the farm house. If I am not careful we could get Rats in the house.

Elsie asked what I pondering about around the lake this morning. I was seeing if the bread had been eaten, that I had left in the cage to poison the Rats, when I saw the Fish chasing to fertilize the eggs. I was watching them.

Angela I have not seen the person who is to shear the sheep. He was to phone me in the week. The sheep have been in the Horse field for the past two days. I bet they disappear when he comes.

I have never seen a Barn Owl on the farm.

The Stud told me that Lady is coming into season, She may have gone to the Stallion today. If she did, I would think that she will be back on the farm by the middle of next week.

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As I thought it may the Buzzard returned this evening…

As I thought it may, the Buzzard returned this evening, landing on the Bird Feeders ready to swoop on an unsuspecting Rabbit. The way that it flew down shortly after landing, it could well have caught one. That particular feeder is a good vantage point to face the camera. You can regularly see Rabbit and Pheasants in the background. For the past couple of days a Fox has been turning up in the morning, eating the sunflower hearts, that I scatter around the path to encourage the Pheasants, so that they are able to be seen on the camera.

For the past two or three days, the Fish in the lake has been spawning. I managed to catch a few of them on camera this morning. It seemed a bit frenzied, with what seemed like quite a lot of males chasing a female, trying to fertilize her eggs. When I walked around the Lake a little later, there were a lot of Fish in the reeds by the bank of the lake, spawning in the shallow water. It is when spawning in shallow water that the fish are vulnerable to the Herons. The Heron will not be able to eat the large Fish, but will pierce the Fish, that causes injuries and can kill the fish.. Needless to say that Herons are not my favorite bird.

I forgot to mention, that whilst we were at The Somerset Wildlife Trusts, Fyne Court site we heard our first Cuckoo. We have not heard any on the farm this year, I should think that by now if there had been any, we would have heard them by now. We also have not heard or seen any Tawney Owls for a while. We have two Tawney Owl nest boxes down the valley. You may have wondered if you have watched the valley camera, why I sometimes scan the trees on the left side. Very often last year I would catch the Owls eyes in the infra red lights. A number of those watching the Badger Camera last year, also saw a Tawney Owl swoop down to catch a Rat or Vole. I am sure if any of you had seen it recently, you would have posted it on the forum.

I managed to get the Telescope into the Observatory earlier in the week, today I have started to put the bits and pieces on that make it turn automatically. There is also the smaller Telescope and Solar Telescope to fit. The Moon is about at the moment, if I get the Telescope ready I will show it on camera. With the weather forecast that I heard tonight, it may not be until next week.

I managed to speak to a person who manages the wildlife, for one of the organisations that we are hoping to host their web cams, on the WBC site. We are going to discuss it further tomorrow. All I can say at the moment is that it looks promising. I also spoke to the other site last week. We are going to speak further in a couple of weeks time. They are interested, but they have a couple of issues that need to be discussed internally

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This morning when I went to fill the bird feeders…

This morning when I went to fill the bird feeders, I startled the Buzzard that had been perched on the feeders last evening. It was in the orchard close to the feeders, eating a freshly caught young Rabbit. The feeders are a good vantage position to swoop on Rabbits, that have many warrens in the banks along the side of the pathway, by the orchard. Now that the Buzzard has caught one Rabbit in the area, I am sure that it will return regularly.

There are also a lot of Squirrel that use the feeders, and they are as likely as the Rabbits, to be a dinner for the Buzzard. The Rabbit warrens are very close to where the Rabbits graze, and is a quick and easy refuge for them. The Squirrel when startled, will run the length of the path, about fifty metres in the open, to their drays, or where ever they hide out, so for sure if the Buzzard returns, the Squirrels will be a target. There were six Squirrels in the area today, so one or two will not be missed.

We tried to get Ky to swim in view of the camera this afternoon. If you missed it, you didn’t miss much. In view of the camera she had a paddle, with the water a litter deeper than the underside of her belly. We walked around the lake and out of view of the camera, she then decided to plunge her self into the water. After a quick swim and paddle she came out. We thought that she had, had her swim for the day, until walking back she decided to plunge herself in again. Unbeknown to Ky, it was quite deep, with no paddling area. A bit of panic set into Ky and ourselves, she was trying to doggy paddle and lunge herself back to the bank at the same time, but she was getting nowhere fast. It seemed like forever, but of course it was only seconds. One of us may have had to paddle out to rescue her. I don’t know if it would have been me, for she somehow managed to get back to the bank, to having to be unceremoniously dragged out of the lake by the scruff of her neck. Surprisingly it did not put her off, for although she did not swim, she did paddle once again when we got back into view of the camera.

Lady and the Foal went off to the stud this afternoon, for Lady to be covered by a Stallion called Generous. We have only sent her for a walk in covering, so that they are returned back to the farm, as soon as possible. As soon as she has been covered, hopefully within a few days she will be returned. We have purposely sent her to the nearest Stud to the farm, that has good Sires. It is in Dorset, a little over an hour away from us. I wont send Horses on long journeys if I can help it. Believe me some horses are sent on journeys of many hours, including overseas by ship and air. Lady and Woody will miss each other. I can hear Woody calling out as I write, and Lady wasn’t best pleased once she realised that she was in the Horse box, we could hear her calling out all the way, as the Horse box drove up the drive. Woody hasn’t been to good today, she hasn’t eaten her feed and has been laying down a good deal of the time that she was in the field. Her condition is up and down from day to day. It does seem that she is a little better, on the bad days. We will just have to wait and see how she goes through the Summer. It would have been nice if she had have been able to stay out with the other Horse tonight, but then it is not possible to keep a check on her. Branston is company for her, although she does put her ears back every time he puts his head into her stable. Without lady being around, she may decide to be a little kinder to him.

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Sorry that the Osprey web cam has not been working…

Sorry that the Osprey web cam has not been working for most of the day. The worse part about it was that at 12.30am in the morning the second egg hatched. I had checked at about 12.15am, before I went to bed, that all the cameras were working, it was working fine then. I must of just missed the hatching. The problem of the camera not working has been a lesson to me. One of the telephone sockets at the Lock of the Lowes centre did not have a micro filter on it. That is the box that you are supplied with, when you go onto broadband, it fits into your telephone socket that you then plug your phone and computer socket into. I knew that they were important, but this was on a telephone extension. It has been rectified now and the picture is a good as before.

I went to bed later than I wanted to last night. When I checked the cameras before going to bed a few of the Badgers were out. One that looked like a Sow was playing with a cub. The Cub was having great fun trying to get the other who were out to play with it. After seeing one cub out last night I am sure that two of the Sows had Cubs this year. The one we have been seeing for the past few weeks must be a single. The other two Cubs that I have seen in the past week, must be a younger set of twins of another Sow, as I am sure that they look smaller. Hopefully all three will show themselves at the same time.

Some of you saw a Bird of Prey on the bird feeder this afternoon and this evening. It was a Buzzard. I should think that it was a female, the male would be a fair bit larger. I would guess that it was waiting for a Rat or Rabbit for dinner. There are a lot of both in that area. Rats wait for the seeds to fall from the feeders as the Birds feed, and there are always Rabbits that can be seen in the back ground of the feeders. When I walk up to refill the feeders or feed the Badgers, there are always six or more along the path.

We went this morning to a couple of the wildlife sites that are owned by The Somerset Wildlife Trust, to see if there were any locations for web cams, hoping that we could incorporate the Starling Roost during the Winter months with other wildlife in the other seasons. At both of the sites of the Trust, that we visited, it would have been difficult to install the cameras, although for wildlife enthusiasts they are excellent sites to visit. We did enjoy our short time there, and have promised ourselves a few hours there later in the Summer. We were told of another possibility, of another organisation that have wildlife sites in the area of Westhay, that may have the facilities to host a web cam, so that we would be able to broadcast the Starling Roost. On our way to the site we asked a local, who told us that the site we were going, would be a good position to view the roost. The person who we met who seemed to be in charge, denied that it was a good site to view the roost, when I questioned him on the possibility, he told us that a web cam would not be allowed at any place in the area because he would not allow it. What a shame. I will try as best I can to show a roost this winter. If I don’t succeed or you want to see it live, Westhay in Somerset is a good location, not far from junction 23 on the M5.

Congratulation to all who use the forum. Today the forum past the thousandth entry. Thank you all for supporting it. There has not been time to get a fun forum going yet. I will get it up and running very soon. It was nice to see the 25th anniversary greeting on the forum this morning, I am sure that there would be no objections to this type, similar entries.