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Starting from number one there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number one there are five new photographs on the Photo Page. Not many more photographs to go onto the Photo Page.

Thornton eating bird seed outside of the cottage. Vicky.

Breeze and her friend grooming each other. Vicky.

Thornton with his head over the stable door of the cottage after some ginger nuts. Vicky.

Two more photos from my cousins collection I have.

Thornton is none the worse for yesterdays ordeal. Pity that I could not say that about the back seat of my car. There are perfect foot prints of Thornton feet. If the Police were looking for a Sheep culprit he would be well of banged to rights.

As you may have seen we had our driveway hedges cut back today. It will make the Reindeer’s Field easier to see and hopefully for you to be able to see more of the Reindeer. As I was not about whilst it was being cut the contractor was unable to go into the Field to make a better job of it. He will be returning in the next week to finish off the job.

At 6.37pm whilst writing the Diary I caught a glimpse of an Owl swoop down on what I can only think was a Rat. It was over so quick if I had blinked I would have missed it. As you know one of my biggest fears are Rats. As much as I would want to poison them, I cant in case an Owl catches a poisoned Rat for it would kill the Owls. When you do see the Rat being taken by an Owl it makes up for having to suffer seeing the Rats. With a bit of luck the Owl will return. We purposely do not do any work in the Badger Field. One reason is that if any heavy vehicles go over the Badger sett it is liable to go into the hole causing damage to the vehicles or injury to the operator.

We will be unable to do a Diary of renew the Photo Page until Thursday as essential work on data base needs doing.

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Starting from number six there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number six there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.

Here

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Starting from number one there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number one there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.

Here are a few photos for the photo page. The ones from Minnesota are all from 1958 or 1959. I was looking at the old slides my brother put onto a DVD and was amazed at how these places have changed. My aunt still lives in the cottage but they redid it and added more bedrooms and a second floor over one side, but that is where some of the pictures of the lake and sunset I had put on the gallery earlier were from. The view from the drive at the farm was unchanged until this very last summer, when the farmer who owned the field across the road sold it to a developer who broke it into smaller 1 acre lots and put little ranch style beige houses on each one, except for the one closest to the county road. That parcel he got zoned commercial and sold to man who has a used vehicle lot on it now. The beautiful view now has used junk boats, cars, trucks of every size and shape, heavy equipment, farm implements, and metal sheds (weird but true) in it. And I guess that is progress.

The anemone is from my garden, and I just put it in. It is supposed to bloom in the fall, and it is just really pretty. Penny, Chicago x3

Cottage in Miltona.

Insperation Point, Minnesota.

Central, Minnesota.

View from Drive, Farm, Minnesota. 1952.

Anenome, September Charm.

Not a lot to write about so I will tell you a few other things that Thornton gets up to.

When Thornton want to come in he knocks on the Kitchen door three times with one of his front feet. If he is not let in he will sometimes open the door as does Tass by pulling the door handle down with his front foot. If that fails he does not nag, he will lay down outside and tries again later. Thornton will often knock on the Holiday Cottage doors to be let in.

Most late afternoons Tass, Kye and Thornton are taken for a walk, some of you may have seen them in the Valley. The most obedient is Thornton. He will walk to heel unless he fancies a nibble of grass, when he gets left behind a bit. One call and he returns to heel. On returning to the Farm House Tass and Kye get a doggy treat, Thornton get a Horse Herbal treat. He waits by Kitchen units where they are kept looking in the direction of the treats until he is given one. Just recently as soon as we start the Quad Bike @Thornton come to see if we are going down the Valley and now follows, waiting patiently until it is time for us to return. If we start the Quad Bike and go without him he will soon be following.

Unfortunately Thornton is not House Clean and will leave his droppings and wet on the floor, so we do not allow him in any rooms where there are carpets. Sheep dropping and wet do not have any unpleasant odours and are easy to clean up. He will how ever let you know when he wants to go out by standing by the door and looking at you.

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There are five photographs on the Photo page starting from…

There are five photographs on the Photo page starting from number, one sent in by Sue.

Five photographs from the Deep, the last one is a diver bringing a female nurse shark back into the tank after routine blood tests. Sue.

We are fitting a new kitchen into an additional Holiday Cottage that we are getting ready. On removing a partition we found a water pipe that has been leaking for probably for a few years. When I went to tighten it the leak got worse. Because of the work there will not be a Diary for a few days.

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It must be well over a week since the Swallow…

It must be well over a week since the Swallow chicks left their nests and they are still returning. The first fledglings from the first nest perch on the wire every night, and sometimes in the day if it is raining. The fledgling from the roof nest are going back to the nest of a night and when raining. It could be that the nearest perching place is at least six foot below the nest. Now and then they perch there. They all seem to be managing well in this bad weather. I have not managed to find any other nests to watch, but again it is still not to early.

I cant remember if I told you when I had converted the holiday cottages. We had a booking for a holiday in the four bedroom cottage. In the kitchen area a Swallow decided to nest in the ceiling space. We hadn’t noticed it until we went to put the plaster board up. We couldn’t remove the nest as the eggs had hatched, There wasn’t long before the booking. Every morning we would check to see if the chicks were ready to fledge. Of course when you want them gone they seem to stay longer. We finished the cottage as best we could. We were fortunate that we had stable entrance doors fitted, so the was little chance that any creature could have got into the cottage, as we were able to close the bottom part, allowing the adults to get to the chicks with the top part of the door opened. We also had to make sure that no other birds tried to nest in the cottage.

There was no way that the cottage could have been used with the Swallows nest still in the ceiling space. You don’t realise how much mess they make until you experience it. To us it looked even worse. The day before the holiday guest were due we found the fledglings sitting on the kitchen worktops. They weren’t given the opportunity to go back to the nest. That came down real quick, the plaster board up and painted over, having to plaster it at a later date. We left the door open until the day the quest were due to arrive, and on the first opportunity when all the Birds were outside we closed the door. An Orthodox Jewish family with eleven young children had booked the cottage for the fortnight. No television was allowed, but the children enjoyed the Swallow fledglings flying in and out of the cottage. Mum weren’t best pleased though.

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Here at Denbury it has just been like a Autumn…

Here at Denbury it has just been like a Autumn day, windy, cold and showery. Don’t like it one bit. It has made clearing up the farm after the flood more miserable. The weather really does need to break so that we can make hay. The way it is going the grass is going to start to rot at the roots. You cant make good hay when it is like that. A lot of potato crops could be in danger of being lost, being under water. The blackberries that have been nearly two months early in flowering have come to nothing, the flowers are dropping, but no fruits are forming at all. Although the hazel nuts are quite large for this time of year.

The lake has gone back to it normal colour, if I get time tomorrow I will see if there is any fish eggs left. I saw the Mallard in the reeds but could not count how many Ducklings she had. The sacks Alex asked about, are full of barley straw. I wrote about them some time back, some of you saw the performance we had putting them in the lake, with one of my Lads in the rowing boat. They were meant to sink with two concrete blocks attached at the bottom. They must have untied, for sure they are not lifted the blocks. The barley straw helps to prevent algae. I think that the lake is now mature enough to control the algae, but I don’t like to take the chance. The flood did bring into the lake a lot of duck weed, I can only hope that does not establish in the lake.

Two of the cottages have dried out really well from the flood water. We managed to get the wet carpets out of those very quickly and put in air mover fans and dehumidifiers. It worked very well and were able to have the new carpets fitted in them today.. The other two are going to need a good few weeks of drying, with the air movers and dehumidifiers, before they can have the carpets laid. One of them was nearly two feet full of water. The kitchen units have swollen with the water and a false wall looks that it may have to be renewed. That will stop the cottage from being used for a good while.

Six ton of new stone has been put onto the cottage car park area. A large amount of the stone that was there, was washed into the stream. Although the load was spread out reasonably well by the tipper lorry, it still had to be levelled out. I like a bit of rain when I am levelling it out, the puddles show you where the holes are. I wouldn’t have been to put out today if it had stayed dry.

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There was a little bit of sun about today made…

There was a little bit of sun about today, made a change. It gave me the chance to walk down the valley to to look at the hay grass. A good deal of the grass has been flattened when the stream went from being two foot wide to thirty foot. The flattened grass is going to take a long while to dry, as it will be stopping the ground from drying underneath it. Could well be that we will not be able to cut the flattened grass. Unless this weather changes, we wont be able to cut any.

We have family staying at Minehead for their holiday, so with the weather being a bit brighter we went and had our fish and chips on the harbour with them. We have only been going to the harbour part of Minehead since we found the cottage for the family to stay in. They are getting on a bit and like the seaside. We found the cottage a couple of months back, when we had that really warm spell. We had purposely made our way to the harbour area to find a holiday cottage for them, and was fortunate to have seen a local fisherman, who we asked if he knew of any holiday accommodation. He pointed us into the direction of a lady’s cottage who had a holiday cottage next to hers. She only had this week available. It has turned out to be the perfect little cottage and location for their holiday. All the widows overlook the harbour, that is under twenty feet from their front door.

We sat out on harbour eating our fish and chips. We were sitting in the shade, it was absolutely freezing, so I suggested that we walked around the harbour wall, to the area where the sun was shining on. When you visit a place regularly you tend to take little notice of the area. Today we realised what a very pretty and picturesque little harbour it is. Looking straight over from the harbour wall you can see the cottages that they holidaying in, one of a long row of period fishermen cottages, that sit at the bottom of a massive rocky mound that levels out at the rear with the contours of the land, that must be a quarter of Minehead. Part of it has roadways leading up to homes, that I reckon that I would suffer from vertigo, if I lived up there. The side that their cottage is on, is nearly a sheer rock face drop, with pine trees growing out of it. From the distance of the harbour wall you can see a retaining wall behind their cottage, that you would hope would stop any landslide, although I was not convince that it would.

Walking back with the family to their cottage, we bumped into the Fisherman who had told us about the cottage. Every time without fail that we have gone for our fish and chips, we meet the Fisherman. A little bit of banter passes between us, finishing up with a little laugh. On one occasion we helped him lift one of his fishing boats, of which he seems to have many, a bit of a lump it was to. How come I keep on meeting you, what are you doing here today, he joked, I couldn’t stay away from you I replied. We got into conversation and I asked him about any landslides. Yes there have been a few he told us. He had lived at the harbour all of his life where he was born and bred, and earned his living from the sea, as did his family and most of the people who occupied the fisherman’s cottages. A stone fell on the cottage that your family are staying in, maybe a little bigger than a stone, more a rock, he continue, indicating with his hands, a rock of about three foot square and telling that the weight would have been about half a ton, went through the roof, smashed through a rafter and crashing to the ground. Had to use a jack hammers to break it up. He told of another incident when a rock went through the roof of the cottages that he was born in. The family who lived there at the time, were lucky to be alive, when a landslide of about three hundred ton crashed into their home. The occupants were found in a protected area, that miraculously somehow had been left around them.

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I am putting up a Swallow nesting camera in Stable…

I am putting up a Swallow nesting camera in Stable Barn/Cottage. It should be working tomorrow. We intended to have this cottage finished by now, but the clown who did some work on the roof, has done it wrong and I am waiting to have it redone. In the mean time at least one pair of Swallows have squatted in the cottage.

They are in the process of building their nest on a live 30 amp electricity junction box. How they came to choose such a place I cannot imagine, as there are a lot more suitable places in the cottage that they could have nested, It is only a foot or so from where a pair nested last year that we had on the web cam. The wire that is either side of the junction box/nest is where the fledglings perched after leaving the nest last year.

The Pied Wagtail has nested in the cooker hood outlet pipe in one of the cottages, I had seen them in the area, although until today I had not seen them go into the hole. I have the lights I need to light up the hole. Tomorrow I will try to see if I will be able to put a camera in a position to be able to see them.

Woody is still very unwell, and still does not show any signs that she is to foal next week.

To my surprise on checking the sheep today, the four Ewes and lambs that had got out of the area that I had electric fenced at the end of the valley, had put themselves back behind the fence. Although I had tried to find them, I had not seen any sign of them for a few days. I still have not managed to catch any more of the Sheep, I will try again on Monday.

The Geese are still sitting on their eggs. Over the past few day the other pair of geese have been returning, landing in the field close to the Farm House, before flying onto the lake to a nag at the sitting tenants, they don’t wait long before flying off. I saw a pair of Moorhens with six chicks, as I was mowing the grass around the lake. Most years a couple of the chicks survive.

Elsie asked, have we any Buzzards on the Farm. We have a pair that nest every year. I did a diary entry on the 29th of March about them. Tass and Ky are doing great. They are the best of friends and don’t stop playing with each other. We will try to get them on camera, down the valley in the next couple of days.

JoAnn from New Jersey asked what signs were there when Lady is to foal. Unfortunately not a lot, but if she is looking behind herself a lot is the one sign I look for, that you are also able see. I also check her udder, and different signs at her rear end, but nothing is for sure.

Any more about the Magpies, superstition and how you react. Those you have put on the forum are interesting. Keep them coming.

Denbury Farms URL got put in the Daily Mail Magazine today, in their Big Brother Goes Wild editorial. I am a little disappointed, it was the meanest of mentions for our comprehensive wildlife site. When someone from the Magazine spoke to me two weeks or so ago, they gave me the impression that the article would have had a lot more in it about The Web Broadcasting wildlife, and about our real time web cams.

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The Barn Owl Trust camera will not be working for…

The Barn Owl Trust camera will not be working for two day, whilst alterations are being made to the barn.

You may have seen Woody on camera today, you would never have guessed that two days ago she looked at deaths door. There was no point in having the Veterinary look at her as she was today, he would not have found anything wrong with her.

I have been trying to get the ducklings on camera today, there are still ten swimming about. The excitement on the lake today has been with the Canada Geese. There are still two pair trying to gain the territory and the island. One pair had taken residence on the island, the other pair will not accept it, and have been trying to chase them off. The Goose who is trying to take over, challenges the other Goose by swimming close to the island and even chasing it off across the island. and is seen off. Neither will give up trying. I should think that is why the duckling are not about, they must be keeping out of harms way. I hope you have seen it on camera. Every now and then when it is warm, you can see the fish in the lake. there are some weighing 12lb and maybe more.

We have seen a Pied Wagtail and one of the Tit family, start nesting, both in awkward places around the holiday cottages. The Pied Wagtail has chosen the cooker hood extractor fan hole to nest, the fan will not be able to be used until the fledglings have fully fledged, or they will find it a little drafty. The Tit is nesting in a hole in a timber lintel, that a few years back we found a wasp nest in. I will try to show them on camera.

When we converted a barn some years back, we had a Swallows nesting in the kitchen ceiling timbers, before we had plaster boarded and plastered it. Holiday guests were due, it did not look as though the fledglings were going to leave the nest before they arrived. There was no way they would have accepted sharing the cottage with the Swallows, especially as the cottage door would have to be left open. Luckily they fledged the day before, we quickly finished the cottage by boarding the ceiling and painting the board, we did not have time for the plastering. The guests never noticed, or at least didn’t say they had.