Crow RIP

Sadly there was a dead crow under one of our Oak trees. Only the day before I was admiring the way one of our Crows was seeing off a Raven and maybe such a mismatch in fighting weight led to the death. All I could find was a cut at the base of the belly less than half an inch across as a possible cause. Later I saw a single Crow feeding in the West Field whereas normally there are two. My favourite birds.

Trees at The Beeches

The trees here are mostly Beech, Oak, Ash, European Larch, Holly, Hazel. Hawthorn and Blackthorn. In addition there are two Wild Cherry trees on the boundary with the woodland and also a Sycamore. However behind the garage there are also four Willow trees and I have been trying to tie down the species of Willow which is not as easy as it looks. On the face of it they are all female Goat Willow trees based on the length of the catkins but it seems that there are hybrids which are difficult to identify. I will wait for the leaves to develop and see if that sorts the matter out. Meanwhile the catkins are attracting lots of bees and hoverflies (also difficult to identify).

The Owners

As humble tenants of this wildlife site it is always a pleasure to welcome the owners close up to the house. This visit was to mop up some seeds I had tipped from the bird feeders, whilst cleaning them, onto our millstone. Good to see they got there before any of the rodents.

White Rabbits again

In 2018 we had a couple of white rabbits on site - there is a story that some white rabbits escaped decades ago and white is now in the gene pool locally. Well they are back - we have two more now advertising their prescence to Buzzards, Foxes etc. I hope these two don't go the way of the last two who got Mixy.

New Species - False Puffball (Reticularia lycoperdon )

Not just a new species but a new Kingdom as this is a Slime Mould and is in the Kingdom 'Protista' and I haven't recorded and Protists here before. This is on a conifer stump about 2 metres above ground height. In identifying it I came across this blog entry from 2014 on a Carmarthenshire Fungi blog that extended my knowledge of Slime Moulds and this species so I have quoted it below. "Slime Moulds are a strange class of amoeboid protozoa, previously thought to be fungi but now known to be Myxomycota, which are organisms which prey on microbial food webs. This particular species is a bacterial predator and usually very tiny and unlikely to be seen, but this particular stage of it’s life cycle is a fruiting body known as a sporangium. This is a globular formation which swells up to around 50-80mm"

New Species - Green Cellar Slug

I turned over a large rock and found these two large slugs underneath. I think they are Green Cellar Slugs (Limacus maculatus) which is a fairly common slug to find here apparently. The blue tentacles distinguish it from the Leopard Slug and lack of a yellow line on the tail from the Yellow Cellar Slug. They like Lichen so that would be a good location for them near an old Moss and Lichen covered wall.

New Species - Redwing

We had a small flock of about a dozen Redwings foraging the the East Field alongs side the usual pair of Mistle Thrushes. I cannot remember seeing one before here so it counts as a new species - my attempt at a photo through the scope didn't work before they cleared off.