Monday 16th May to Thursday 19th May
On Monday morning I went out into the garden to photograph pignuts before the sun got too bright and saw that the first buttercups were opening on the wild flower bank - another sign that it won’t be too long before summer arrives.
The pignuts are putting on a good display this year and, together with the yellow poppies and red centranthus, help to hide the unsightly dying leaves of the daffodils.
We walked down to the Sulby after lunch. The only ducks on the river were a couple of males. Not a baby in sight. When we reached Poyll Dooey we heard a small bird making an alarm call in a holly tree near the car park. Something had obviously disturbed it. Before it flew away we got a brief glimpse of its grey breast and distinctive black cap . . . it was a male blackcap. We usually only see blackcaps in our garden when the raspberries are ripe. This was the first time I had seen one in spring. I read that they arrive in Britain in April and May and leave in September or October.
On the way home there was a cacophony of rooks at Milntown - in the tall trees near the road. I was surprised because there are no nests there. The rookery is the other side of the MIlntown grounds near the golf course. The birds were too high up for us to get a clear view of them but I saw one of the birds begging for food and realised that it could be a fledgling. When we got home I did a bit of research and found out that young rooks fledge when they are about 33 days old and leave the nest. They then roost in nearby trees to remain close to the parents and continue their relationship with the parents for several weeks until they are fully independent. So all the noise was probably due to hungry youngsters shouting at their long-suffering parents for food.
A grey heron flew up from the river as we crossed the bridge on our way home. It perched on a branch of one of the old Scots pines overhanging the water. So I did get one bird photo.
On Tuesday morning I had a long session of murdering dandelions. Technically it isn’t murder. It is better described as attempted murder or GBH because I never get the whole root out - so the plants don’t actually die. But it does inhibit them for a while and stops them spreading seed.
Some weeds are welcome in the garden, like the white stitchwort near the elder tree in the daffodil bed by the wooden fence. The only things which have been planted in this bed are daffodil, snowdrop and crocus bulbs. A pheasant ate most of the crocus bulbs but a few survived and are spreading again. The wild flowers like the stitchwort, bluebells and primroses just moved in without being invited.
Other weeds are not so welcome. I try to keep the garden free of most of the weeds which produce wind dispersed seeds - like dandelions, willowherbs, and ragwort. I also have an irrational dislike of some others like the tiny hairy bittercress. And I spend hours weeding out ferns - apart from the ones by the ditch, and on the banks and next to the stone boundary walls. I cut these back in autumn to reduce the spread of spores but it doesn’t help much because the garden is so damp for most of the year that ferns grow almost too well.
The bottom of the garden has recently been invaded by a tiny weed that has defeated me. It is a creeping oxalis and must have moved in from a neighbouring garden. It has tiny yellow flowers and I think it is oxalis exilis and originates in New Zealand. I suppose it is fair enough for New Zealand to send us some annoying weeds because they did inherit a lot of weeds from Britain. When we visited our daughter in Balclutha many years ago, nearly all the weeds in the neighbourhood gardens looked familiar.
The oxalis may have moved here from the cottage garden across the road. The small garden was “landscaped” a few years ago and some weed seeds may have been introduced in the soil around new shrubs from a garden centre. I suspect that garden was also the source of the fox and cubs or orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca). This came up under the hedge first and then moved into the bottom of the garden. The orange hawkweed has quite pretty flowers so I didn’t try to eradicate it. But I may regret this because it is already spreading.
We went for a fairly long walk after lunch. We decided to walk up Skyhill and follow the path along the top of the plantation. We crossed the mountain bike bridge between the two sections of the plantation and ended up walking further than we intended - all the way to the northern end of the hill. We wanted to find out the route taken by the bike race. The walk was interesting but not very photogenic because it winds through conifers most of the way. There were just brief glimpses of the northern plain on the west side of the hill.
The route followed paths that we had walked along in the past apart from a short section approaching the stream below the bridge - where it wound between the trees above the old path near a wall. We turned for home before the Cyclefest route turned downhill - apparently to join up with the forestry road down to the Millennium Way.
In the evening we had an unexpected visitor - a very inquisitive one. While I was preparing supper I noticed the plants moving on the wild flower bank and watched closely because I suspected a cat. Then I saw a spiky back and rushed to call Tim and fetch my camera. At first I couldn't see the hedgehog and thought I had imagined it - but then I saw it up by the ditch near the summerhouse. I followed it with my camera but didn't get any great shots. The light was fading and it spent most of the time snuffling around in the plants with it head hidden by the leaves.
After a while it turned around by the summer house and walked back towards me. I kept absolutely still and it had a good sniff at my old slippers and then stuck its nose under the hem of my jeans to check my ankle! Luckily it decided that I wasn't edible.
Wednesday. Another Poyll Dooey walk after lunch. We have had very little rain recently and the Auldyn River looked more like a stream than a river.
After passing the turning circle near the new houses we saw that the first hawthorn flowers were opening.
We listened for the blackcap near the car park but couldn’t hear it and decided to take advantage of the dry conditions underfoot to walk all the way through Poyll Dooey to the salt marsh area to see whether the thrift and scurvy grass were flowering. There were some flowers but they weren’t putting on much of a show so I just took one photo of some thrift . . .
. . . and then we walked back through the Legion Wood. I hoped they might list the trees on their sign but there were only photographs of the birds that we might hope to see there.
They did mention that sixty trees of six different species had been planted to represent the six years of the war and the sixty years since it ended. I shall try to identify and list the six species of trees in this part of the park during our next visit.
On the way home we heard the raucous cries of rooks again. There was a small group in the sycamores across the river but they flew away when we approached.
We arrived home to find that our annual confetti time which started a few days ago was now in full swing. Drifts of pink cherry petals were blowing down the road and the shallow water in the ditch by the old stone wall had turned pink.
On Thursday we left earlier than usual for our walk because rain, heavy at times, was forecast for the early afternoon. We drove to Maughold Village for a Brooghs walk. This was our second recent “outside the glen walk”. I have an unexpected ally in my low-key campaign for more varied walks . . . the blue Golf. We were going to use it to drive to Tim’s appointment at the hospital in Douglas last week but it refused to start. It didn’t matter because we have the old red Golf as backup. The problem occurred because we both prefer driving the old car and the blue Golf had been sitting in the garage for so long that its battery had gone flat. After having its battery recharged we are trying to use it more.
I didn’t think it would be worth taking photos because it was cloudy and grey skies mean grey sea but I must be addicted because I ended up with 41 new photos. After the last post I resolved to stop taking bluebell photos. But my resolution didn’t last long. When we turned down the Brooghs footpath from the parking area I couldn’t resist North Barrule and Maughold churchyard (with bluebells in the foreground).
And Maughold Head (with bluebells in the foreground).
The path winds along the a slope with fields of lambs to our left and a slope down to the top of the cliffs on our right. At times we walked through a corridor lined with flowering gorse.
Next we passed the old Scots Pines - still standing on the windy slope (with bluebells in the foreground).
The Brooghs walk is usually good for birdwatching and Thursday was no exception. We saw ravens, great black-backed gulls, cormorants, herring gulls and choughs and nesting seabirds on Stack Mooar and on the cliffs. I wondered whether the choughs would be nesting in the old ruins at the top of the cliffs near the slate quarry where we have seen them in previous years. Sure enough a pair appeared. One flew straight down into the ruin and the other waited on top of the wall.
As we approached the road we passed this view of Port e Vullen with Ramsey in the background (and the inevitable bluebells in the foreground).
The road back to Maughold village passes fields of sheep and I was interested in this one which looked a bit like a cross between a loaghtan and a Jacob. So I did some sheep research on the computer and now I think it may be a rare breed from the Netherlands - a zwartbles.
We weren’t sure whether to walk the extra loop down to Port Mooar and back along the coast but the wind was getting stronger as we approached the car and we decided that it could bring the rain earlier than expected. So we left that part of the walk for another day and headed home. It was a wise decision because the rain started as we drove through Parliament Square in Ramsey.
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