A Slow Day

The predicted southeast winds failed to materialise and prevailing conditions indeed prevailed with a southwest wind and frontal conditions that had moved through by the afternoon. I had planned to go birding today so stuck to the plan and checked out Ferry, Long Pool and the Tramway HERE. Not much different to previous days with highlights including the summer plumage Spotted Redshank, 2 Little Ringed Plover, plenty of singing warblers including Willow Warbler and a showy Water Rail. Shoveler numbers are down further as were Blackwit numbers. 

I then went back to the lodge and did some paperwork and work in the garden before a visit to Church Norton to time with the high tide and a chance to pick up the terns. The plan worked out with Little Tern and Common Tern sat out on the mud amongst the 250+ Sandwich Tern HERE. There was also a Whimbrel, couple of Willow Warblers singing and a male Wheatear on the spit. The terns put me on 151 for the local year list. 

The night temperatures were mild so I put the trap out and had a couple of migrants. Again all pretty slow going. 

On another slow moving front, also been keeping an eye out for any new pan-species ticks for the garden and recently added Great Silver Water Beetle (moth trap by-catch) and a couple of spiders including Common Sheetweb Spider and Common Stretch Spider. Now on 191 species HERE. 

A good way to get some sense of speed when things are going slow is to flit around the front lines of lots of different slow moving fronts. That's basically what I did today to get some sense of being productive. The weather forecast isn't great for birding either although there were some north easterlies on the horizon which can be good for sea watching this time of year.  

Little, Common and Sandwich Terns 

Spotted Redshank and Redshank on Ferry 

Sedge Warbler 

Silver-Y. The first for the year. Also Angle Shades and a presumed Tuta absoluta (retained for dissection). Also had the first Cinnabar for the year. Only on 41 species this year so far. 

The front garden ditch is coming on nicely with some lush vegetation creating some nice insect habitat

The fruit hedges we planted last year are coming along nicely 

On the food growing front we've got Spinach, carrots and Rhurbarb ready for harvesting at the moment and got Tomatoes, Peppers and Sweetcorn in the green house to go out later and potatoes are in already. Meanwhile the perennial fruits- berries and strawberries survived the winter well and seem well established. The garlic (above) also got through the winter well. Still need to replace the birds after the fox attacks. 

We've been putting our nettles to use. An attempt at creating a plant food (above) that I saw on the internet and good old nettle soup (below). After 18 months I've also started using the compost that we started when we first got here- its not quite ready but good enough to go.