Tag: swallows

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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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webcams

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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webcams

THIS SATURDAY MAJOR WORK IS BEING…

THIS SATURDAY MAJOR WORK IS BEING CARRIED OUT ON THE SERVERS THAT BROADCAST THE WEB CAMS ON THE WHOLE SITE. FOR SOME HOURS, POSSIABLY GOING INTO SUNDAY YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO ACCESS THE WEB CAMS. WE DO APOLOGISE FOR ANY DISSAPOINTMENT THAT IT MAY CAUSE YOU.

Looking by what looks like egg shells in front of the Swallows nest, I should think that the eggs have hatched. Unfortunately as the Swallows nest has been built close up to the roof of the barn, I an unable to get the camera looking any more into the nest. It only needed to be a little lower and it would have been a much better view. The chicks should be showing their faces for food in a day or so.

I think that we have found who killed the Goslings. When the hedges of our drive were cut back some weeks back, the tractor driver reversed into a wall of a bridge, under which a culvert runs under the drive. Part of drive was also knocked away. It needed a major repair. Today after returning from a shopping trip, we stopped to speak to the workman who was doing the repairs. Our driveway runs along the side of the lake and the bridge is very close to where the Geese with their Goslings would lay when not in the lake, the same place they use every year. Whilst talking to the workman a rat ran from the lake across the drive in front of us. I commented about the rat to the workman, unconcerned he told me that they ran back and forward all day long. Water and rats go together, but I never thought that we had a problem in that area. We will start putting down poison in that area tomorrow. I think that I will have to bait around the Bird feeders, or we shall have a major problem there.

When I went to feed the Badgers tonight the Badger Cub was at the entrance of the sett, when it saw me it scampered down the entrance of the sett, then popping its head around corner to look at me. Although I was not long there it managed to repeat the same procedure a few times, before starting to walk towards the food as I was leaving. I don’t know how far it got out, as it was not out when I returned to the farm house, and looked at the monitor. It seems that there is only one cub this year, such a shame as when the youngsters play together they seem to have so much fun. It is possible that other cubs have not come out yet. But I wont be holding my breath.

Being such a warn and sunny evening we went to Minehead for a fish and chips supper on the beach. I don’t know where every one was, as there was no one about. Even the treasure hunters with their metal detectors looking for peoples lost pounds and jewelery on the beach, were absent.

We where asked a while back if we had heard the Cuckoos this year. Since then I have been listening out for them, but I have not heard any this year. I know that it is not to early now, normally every year we hear them.