27 to 30 May

The mystery of the disappearing hedgehog pellets.

27th May to 30th May 2016

Friday.  After a break of two days we put our hiking boots on again this afternoon.  The morning was overcast with thick hill fog, but the sun finally emerged and, if we are lucky, it has ushered in a spell of warmer weather.  But chickens cannot be counted because tomorrow is the first day of TT practices and we never know what to expect from the weather during TT fortnight.

We walked down to Poyll Dooey and the Sulby.  The bikes are starting to gather and we had to wait for a group to speed past before we could cross Lezayre Road.  

There wasn’t much new at Poyll Dooey. I tried to photograph the flowers on a whitebeam but the light was too bright. Then  I thought I saw an interesting bird on the far side of the river but it turned out to be a supermarket packet, suspended from a gorse branch above the water.  Before we left I pursued another small tortoiseshell butterfly around the edge of the meadow near the car park.  It kept moving just before I managed to get it in focus but I persisted and it eventually settled.

The only other thing of interest was a pair of swallows sitting on the power lines above the glen road.  I love watching them flying.  Their displays are better than the Red Arrows but they move far too fast for me to photograph.  The light wasn’t ideal but a sitting swallow was my only chance of a photo.

This reminded me that we saw two swallows perched on the wires above our gate a few days ago and wondered whether they had returned to nest on our neighbours’ porch.  A few years ago some swallows built a nest on top of a light fitting outside their front door.  The swallows weren’t ideal house guests because they dropped a lot of dirt on the doormat and got quite aggressive about people using the front door but our neighbours missed them when they stopped returning. While I was watching the birds  I could almost imagine the one saying to the other “See that porch over there . . . that’s where I hatched!”.

Saturday.  There was a message in my Inbox this morning.  One that I was half expecting but hoped that I wouldn’t receive.  It was from the “Hedgehog Lady” . . . to let us know that the little sick hedgehog, which we had nicknamed Spike (he was subsequently given the far better name of Fingan, because we found him near St Fingan’s chapel), hadn’t survived.  So sad.

Later we had a morning walk up Skyhill. The bluebells near the road were fading fast but they are still flowering up above Cartwright’s glen.  The seasons are about a week later up on the Lezayre tops.

I will remember it as a rabbity walk - if I remember it at all.  On the way up we startled a brown furry creature on the path ahead.  It hopped off into the undergrowth.  I only saw it for a second.  It was too small to be a wallaby and rather big for a rabbit.  Perhaps a hare, or maybe just a big rabbit.  Then we met a baby rabbit on the path alongside the Skyhill farm fields.  And when we passed the top Ballagarrow paddock we saw two more rabbits and a pheasant.

And that wasn’t the end of the rabbits.  On our way back we saw the baby rabbit (or one of his friends or siblings) for a second time.

After taking the photo of the rabbits we walked up to the Skyhill farm boundary and then along the path that passes the corner of the plantation near the keeill before turning downhill.  We made our way through the tall conifers and stopped to look at one of the old “Grannies” which must have been growing here before the other trees were planted. This one had been almost uprooted by the gales and was leaning at a drunken angle on the neighbouring trees.  I usually assume that the "Grannies" are Scots pines but the cones looked too big.   I took some photos of the bark, cones and needles and we now think this one is a Monterey Pine.

This part of the plantation can be quite eerie when the wind is blowing and the trees are creaking and groaning. My note describing the route on my list of walks reads “Skyhill and top path around Goblin woods”.   Dorothy once described these woods as the sort of place where one wouldn’t be surprised to meet goblins.  

Instead of the usual hoarse cooing of the woodpigeons, and song of the robins and chaffinches,  the soundtrack to our walk was the continuous macho full-throttle roar of motorcycles racing up the mountain road on the far side of the glen. There is no speed limit on the mountain road and there have been so many accidents up there that for the past few years the section of road from Barrule Park to Creg ny Baa has been restricted to one-way traffic for the TT fortnight - to make it slightly safer.

In the afternoon I mowed.  It needs to be done at least once a week at this time of year.  The list of “things that need to be done” like trimming edges and hedges (and the ever necessary weeding) is getting longer and longer.

Sunday started off sunny, and warm with just a hint of a breeze.  A perfect late May morning.  I was standing in the kitchen admiring the hawthorn blossom and the newly mown lawn.  Lawn mowing is rather tedious but I try to milk the procedure for small pleasures.

I was counting the birds on the feeder and thinking that the hawthorn had flowered later than usual this year - just in time to live up to its common name of May blossom - when Tim came into the kitchen and we started discussing whether the siskins and chaffinches were competing to be the most numerous birds in the garden.  Then Tim asked whether I had cleared up the hedgehog food under the feeder.  I had intended to take the newly opened packet of “Spike’s Dinner” down to Peel in case the “Hedgehog Lady” could use it but I forgot.  So I sealed up the packet and tipped the food which had been offered to Fingan onto the ground under the Kowhai tree to see whether any of the birds were interested.  They weren’t.  I intended sweeping up the pellets but didn’t get around to doing it.  Anyway, this morning the little pile of pellets had definitely shrunk.  Someone has been eating it.

There are three possibilities.  

1.  The birds have discovered that it is edible (unlikely because I think it was eaten during the night).

2. Number 2 Ratty has decided to eat Spike’s Dinner instead of stealing the sunflower seeds.  Maybe I should explain.  We had what is locally known as a longtail living under a piece of plywood underneath the bird feeder during winter.  We called her “our friend out the back” or Ratty.  She was joined a couple of months ago by “small Ratty” or Number 2 Ratty and I decided that they needed to be discouraged in case they multiplied.  I replaced the plywood with some paving slabs.  Sadly our original Ratty developed health problems.  She lost patches of fur and one day I found her under the tree - obviously seriously ill (possibly someone living nearby has been putting out poison).  I gently herded her towards the stone wall until she climbed in between the stones - safe from trespassing cats.  She hasn’t been seen since.  Number 2 Ratty is still around and is very athletic.  He (or maybe she . . .  we do need a singular gender neutral pronoun in English apart from it) climbs up the bird feeding station pole and eats sunflower seeds out of the mesh bowl. 

He,she or it is quite bold and won’t run away unless I threaten him, her or it with a bamboo cane.  Maybe we don’t need a new pronoun for these genderfluid times.  We could just change the rules to allow it to be used for animate beings when gender is unknown.

3. This is my favourite possibility.  Just maybe the hedgehog food has been discovered by a hedgehog.  I have noticed a cluster of hedgehog droppings near the azalea mollis so there must be a regular visitor to the garden.  I think I will put out a small bowl of pellets tonight and see what happens.

After shopping and morning tea we walked in Brookdale plantation.  We have decided to restrict our walks to the glen until the end of TT because we don’t want to be mowed down by speeding bikes on Lezayre Road.  So this is where we will be walking for the next two weeks.

That is a photo of an aerial photo of the glen which was taken some years ago - before the service reservoir was built in the field in the bottom left corner.  We bought a framed copy and I tried hard to eliminate reflections on the glass but wasn’t completely successful.  We also have an aerial photo of the garden, taken on the same day but it isn’t very flattering because the photographs date back to a hot, dry summer and all you can see, apart from trees and the roof, are patches of dead grass in the lawn.

There are a lot of TT enthusiasts on the Island but others hate it and take their annual holiday to coincide with the festival so that they can escape the bikes.  The majority of the population, like us, probably have mixed feelings.  We enjoy the air of excitement but tend to batten down the hatches and emerge from the glen as seldom as possible. Fortunately most of the biking fans are not early risers and we can nip out to the shops while they are sleeping off the excesses of the night before.

There was a worrying silence from the Mountain Road while we were up in the plantation so I checked the Isle of Man Constabulary media page on Facebook when we returned home.  It was nothing to worry about -  just a broken down car and an oil spill.

We only walked as far as the view site - about two thirds of the way up to the top gate.  It was rather hot and there was cricket and motor racing on TV.

The track was littered with these featherlight little things which had obviously fallen from the conifers.  I had seen them before but hadn’t given them a thought - assuming they were something to do with the pollen-bearing cones which are a similar colour.

Then I looked closely at a small conifer by the side of the track and their purpose became clear.  They are the leaf sheaths from the Sitka spruce.  They  protect the new leaf buds and are discarded as the needles develop.

Apart from the apricot coloured azalea mollis, most  members of the rhododendron family in my garden are not looking very healthy.  The one with pink buds, which fade to cream when the flowers open, is looking decidedly sick.  I am not sure whether it has been affected by honey fungus or by alkalis leaching out of the concrete and mortar in the retaining wall nearby - or a combination of both.  The leaves are small and anaemic.  One branch died last year and I won’t be surprised if the whole plant dies soon.  But where there is life there is hope and it still produces a few flowers.

The large crimson rhododendron near the gate is flowering well but its leaves aren’t a good healthy dark green.  I think it may be getting too much water.  It grows near the ditch and we have had two successive very wet autumns and winters.

This old plant has the same problem as it grows even closer to the ditch and the fact that it was almost uprooted in the winter gales over a year ago added to its tale of woe.  I cut back all the heavy branches to help stabilise it but the remaining growth hasn’t thickened out as I hoped. The few flowers are very pretty though.

In the evening I put out a bowl of hedgehog food  but the only thing to show any interest was a trespassing cat.  It jumped up into the “bird area” and sniffed the food but wasn’t hungry enough to eat any before I chased it away.   A Number 4 possibility has been added to the list.

Monday.  This morning the food in the bowl remained uneaten but the scattering of pellets on the ground has diminished again.  Very mysterious.

It is another glorious day, warm and sunny.  I took a few photos in the back garden.  First the Pieris which is changing colour fast.  The new leaves change from bright red to pink, to cream and finally to green.  This is how it looked this morning . . .

. . . and this is what one of the new shoots looked like ten days ago.  A reminder that beauty, like glory, is fleeting. The new leaves brighten up the garden but I value the plant more for the little white flowers that open early in spring and provide nectar for the bumblebees when they emerge from hibernation.

The beauty of trees lasts longer.  There are two large oaks in the plantation above our property.  One looks very old and has lost a couple of big branches over recent years.  The younger one overhangs our top boundary - and we can look up at its bright green new leaves above the row of  holly trees, remnants of an old hedge. As someone commented on the Isle of Man Constabulary Facebook page "It is a stunning day".

24 and 25 May

Another hedgehog!

Thursday 26th May, 2016

On Tuesday afternoon we returned to Brookdale with the intention of walking all the way up to the top gate and this time we achieved our goal.  It is a steep walk and was hot in the sun but pleasant in the shade.  I checked the gradient using the gmap-pedometer site discovered that our route climbs from about 150 feet above sea level outside our gate to over a thousand feet at the top gate into the plantation.  A climb of nearly 900 feet.  I don’t think we have walked all the way to the top since the heather was flowering last year - at the beginning of September.

I stopped near the top to take a photo of the flowering bilberry plants on the bank by the track . . .

. . .  and this new sign near the top gate.

While we were reading about the mountain bike routes through the “Brookdale Forest” a superfit mountain biker arrived at the gate. He had ridden up via the Mountain Road from Ramsey.   We had a short, confusing conversation about blogs and bike routes before he set off down the forestry track.  Most conversations that involve me are confusing nowadays.  It is my fault.  My hearing has deteriorated, I have no talent for using hearing aids, can’t lipread and I hate asking people to repeat something.  So I just  try to guess the bits of the conversation that I don’t hear - or smile and nod..  I have thought about wearing a warning badge.  It could say something like “I am not deliberately rude . . . or mad . . . just deaf”.  But the bit about not being mad may not be strictly true.

On the way home we enjoyed the bluebells for a second time.

As we walked down the Fern Glen road I saw a little hedgehog lying at the edge of the tar near an old stone wall.  It didn’t have any obvious injuries but something was wrong.  It shouldn’t have been out during the day.  I thought it might be traumatised or dehydrated.  Also hedgehogs are notorious for their lack of traffic sense - so we thought the best thing would be to take it home and release it up at the top of our garden where we saw another hedgehog last week.

We weren’t sure how to handle it but Tim suggested using my old sunhat as protection from the prickles.

I put “Spike” (which seemed to be the obvious nickname for a hedgehog) down near the ditch which still has a trickle of water running down it, in case he was thirsty.  He didn’t move which worried me and I wondered whether he was under-nourished.  

I tipped him gently off the hat and went inside to consult Tim.  Tim  asked me what hedgehogs ate and I went back outside to dig up an earthworm to see if that would appeal to Spike.  But when I arrived at the spot where I left him, he had gone.  I was delighted that he was obviously well enough to walk around.  Later we saw him moving through the plants under the hawthorns and thought that might be the end of the hedgehog saga.

But on Wednesday morning, when I walked into the living room at about half past six, the first thing I saw was a rolled up pin-cushion in the middle of the front lawn.  

I read up about hedgehog behaviour and rescue on the internet and found out that (a) they are usually in trouble if you see them during the day and (b) they are highly likely to be suffering from hypothermia.  It was a cold morning so, as advised, I brought the hedgehog inside.  He appeared to be fast asleep with his paws neatly folded and his nose tucked in.

I filled two bottles with warm water.  Then I settled the hedgehog on a towel between the water bottles and covered it with another towel.  

When the pet shop opened at nine thirty, we drove to Ramsey to ask for advice about feeding hedgehogs.  We returned with a bag of moist pellets aptly named “Spike’s Dinner” and moved the hedgehog from the laundry basket to a large cardboard box with enough room for food and water bowls.  

After a while he moved around a bit but he was rather wobbly and didn’t seem interested in the food or water.  I tried offering him a small slug and a couple of earthworms but he just ignored them.  By lunchtime I was getting really concerned.  I was prepared to do my best for the little creature but was worried that my best wouldn’t be good enough and that he needed help from a more experienced person.

Back on the internet, I found a phone number for a lady in Peel who looks after hedgehogs.  She was out at work but I spoke to her husband and arranged to drive Spike down to Peel and leave him in their expert care.

Last photo of Spike - before leaving for the hedgehog hospital.

Having devoted most of the day to worrying about hedgehogs we decided to rest when we got back from Peel.  It was a rather cold windy day anyway - not ideal for walking.

This morning I found an email from the “Hedgehog lady” in my Inbox.  It had arrived the previous night.  She wrote “Thank you very much for bringing the hedgehog over . . . He’s now conscious, and eating, trying to get out of his cage as I write - (he is a little  boy by the way).

He’s still not out of the woods I’m afraid, and frequently I find they tend to rally a bit when they first come in only to go downhill again and die within a few days, but where there’s life there’s hope so we’ll keep everything crossed for him. He’s certainly got an upset tum so I’ll test a faecal sample and see if he needs worming – that may just do the trick.”

We can’t expect miracles but I am certain that her expertise will give poor little Spike the best possible chance of survival.

20 to 23 May

Yet more bluebells . . . and a redpoll.

Wednesday 25th May, 2016

Friday again and more rain was  expected but not until the evening.  There hasn’t been much rain so far this month but it comes in dribs and drabs and we try to avoid getting wet if possible.  It is still too cold for enjoyable rainy walks and the camera doesn’t like them regardless of the temperature.  

We set out after lunch for a brisk walk up through Brookdale plantation.  We hadn’t gone far when Tim noticed that one of the old overgrown paths had been cleared recently.  So we decided to experiment with a new route.  Apart from being a bit wet underfoot at first it was a great improvement on our old Brookdale route which was partly blocked when they cut down most of the larches a year or two ago.  Using the “new” path we can avoid climbing up a steep bank and scrambling over the trunks of some of the felled larches which block the old path. It also adds a bit of distance to the walk and zig-zags up the steep section at the beginning of the climb.

Another bonus of the new route is that it goes through an area of broadleaf woodland which we can see from our living room window.

And where there are broadleaf woodlands there are bound to be bluebells. The banks at the side of the path and the slope beneath the canopy of oaks, sycamores, beeches, wild cherries and rowans, etc. were a joy to behold.  The bluebells have put on a wonderful display this year.

After we rejoined the main track, I stopped to take a photo across the glen to the fields near the service reservoir where we walked last week.  

I felt a few drops of rain and put my camera inside a plastic bag.  The drops were reasonably big but there were very few of them so we continued up the hill to the view site and then carried on past the top mossy pool.  

I saw a bird which looked like a small hawk, possibly a sparrowhawk, fly across the track and perch on a conifer branch but it flew away before I could unwrap my camera.  We were thinking of walking all the way up to the top gate but the rain got a little harder so we turned back. Island weather is notoriously perverse, so the rain stopped soon after that and the sun came out before we got home.  

On Saturday we went for another fairly long walk in Skyhill plantation.  I wanted to walk along the rest of the mountain bike route through the northern side of the plantation as far as the Millennium Way.  It wasn’t a long section of the race route.  Most of the walk involved getting there and then returning home.  We started from the house and walked up our usual route through the plantation as far as the bridge across the stream before heading downhill to connect with the race route at the point where we left it on our Tuesday walk.    Before continuing, I stopped to take a nostalgic photo of a muddy puddle.

I think of it as Alice’s puddle.  We used to walk along the old earth wall above the path to avoid the puddle but the Schippies always headed straight for the water.  They never remembered that it was an unusually deep puddle and that there was a thick layer of almost liquid black mud under the water.  So they ended up with muddy legs and sometimes even muddy tummies and needed to be rinsed off in the stream.

I had thought the race route might follow the main path down to the gate by the Millennium Way but it turned off onto a lower path which used to be overgrown and almost blocked by rhododendrons in places.  We hadn’t walked along it for some years but used to refer to it as “the scenic route”.  A lot of work had gone into clearing it.  Most of the rhododendrons had been cut down to ground level but they are tough plants, seemed to assume that it was just hard pruning, and were enthusiastically sending up new shoots.  

A few plants, far enough away from the path to avoid the chainsaws, were flowering.  They are so pretty that it is a shame they are an undesirable invasive alien species.

After we joined the Millennium Way we passed the plaque describing the Battle of Sky Hill.  Perhaps I should say “The first Battle of Sky Hill” now that the mountain bike race has appropriated the name.

It reads:

BATTLE OF SKYHILL   1079

THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF MAN AND THE ISLES RECORD

THAT IN 1079 A NORSEMAN, GODRED CROVEN, MUSTERED A GREAT NUMBER OF SHIPS AND CAME TO MAN WHERE HE JOINED BATTLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND.  DEFEATED TWICE, ON THE THIRD ATTEMPT HE LANDED HIS ARMY BY NIGHT AT RAMSEY AND HID 300 MEN IN THE WOODS ON SKYHILL.  THE NEXT DAY AT THE HEIGHT OF THE BATTLE THE HIDDEN FORCES ATTACKED THE MANXMEN FROM BEHIND AND VICTORY FOR GODRED WAS ASSURED.  HE TREATED THE ISLANDERS MERCIFULLY AND ESTABLISHED A NORSE DYNASTY THAT RULED MAN UNTIL 1265.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE MANX COUNTRYSIDE

AND ENVIRONMENT.

These must be the wooded slopes where the Norsemen hid although not the same trees as they will have died or been cut down and replanted many times during the intervening 937 years.  It is hard to imagine a furious battle being fought in this peaceful field.

And this is another view of the woods above the Magher y Troddan (Field of Conquest) from Brookdale plantation on the far side of the glen.

The good news on Sunday morning was that I managed to mow the grass even though it was still rather wet.  There was only intermittent sun and no wind to dry it out.  The bad news was that the midges started biting - a little earlier in the year than usual. They love calm, overcast days.

After lunch the clouds departed  and we walked down to Poyll Dooey in warm sunshine to have a closer look at the trees in the Legion Wood.  It was hard to determine exactly which six species had been planted because the boundaries of the “wood” were not defined and there were other trees which had probably been growing there before the sixty Legion trees were planted.  We tried to find six varieties of tree that appeared to have been planted at the same time and eventually decided that the six species were most likely to be oaks, whitebeam, birch, Scots pines, rowan and flowering cherries.

Scots pine and whitebeams (probably Sorbus aria lutescens)

A group of trees including rowan, whitebeam, cherry and Scots pine.

On our way home we saw some Canada geese sunbathing on the far side of the Sulby river.

There were a few butterflies flying - some unidentified whites on the walk down to the river, some speckled woods and one small tortoiseshell in the park.  That reminds me - I saw a couple of white butterflies in the back garden a few days ago.  They were flying around together and then one settled.  It was a female green veined white - so perhaps the other one was a male.

On Monday morning I got very excited about a small bird.  I spotted a male lesser redpoll on the bird feeder.  We have seen a female on a few previous occasions but this was the first male that we have seen. I took some photos of him through the rather dirty kitchen window.

Then I noticed that he had company - a female was also eating niger seed that had fallen on the ground under the feeder.

We just did a short walk along the roads at the top of the glen after morning tea because Tim had a hospital appointment in the afternoon.  There was nothing new to photograph - so I took a snap of our newly mown front lawn when we returned from our walk.