A Winter Snowdrop Tour - Part 1 (Hidcote)

 Photo 1: Snowdrops at Upton House (26/2/23)We recently visited The Weir Garden, a 10-minute drive from home, to see the spring bulbs and especially the snowdrops. Last weekend we stayed with our son & fiancee near Bicester and took the opportunity to track down even more snowdrops on 'un Petit...

Cardboard - Compost or Recycle?!

 Another Amazon delivery and another example of excess packaging. This box (Photo 1) arrived this morning ...Photo 1: Amazon delivery... and this (Photo 2) is what it contained ...Photo 2: Oversized Packaging?I suppose I should be grateful they hadn't filled the empty space with that brown paper...

First Garden Butterfly of 2023

 And it was...Photo 1: Red Admiral in the Garden (19/2/23)First spotted on the 14th of February when 'it' paid a fleeting visit. Recorded on Nature's Calendar. The next appearance was on 19th February when it lingered long enough for a photo.The Red Admiral is a somewhat enigmatic butterfly. Originally...

The Weir Garden - Second Visit

 Photo 1: River Wye from The Weir GardenWe last visited the National Trust's Weir Garden towards the end of January (28th) when the first snowdrops were beginning to appear. It was time for a return visit yesterday (19th February) to see the snowdrops in full bloom. There was an encouraging sign...

Storm Otto

The 2022-2023 storm season (September to August) had its first named storm today. Otto, named by the Danish Meteorological Office, hit the northern part of the UK today. The last storm to hit the UK was Franklin just under a year ago.  The previous 2021-2022 storm season had already had four storms...

Garden Wildlife Cameras - Part 2

 In the last post, I described my initial attempts at recording garden birds using CCTV and trail cameras. I noted an issue with the stuttering video obtained when using slow frame rates (e.g. 15 fps). I have upped the frame rate on the CCTV to its maximum of 25 fps and the video quality is definitely...

Garden Wildlife Cameras - Part 1

Figure 1: Peanut bird feederAttracting wildlife into the garden has many benefits including pest control and mental health well-being. Gardening is also great exercise; I can easily do 15,000 steps just pottering about all day in our not-very-big town garden. Enticing wildlife into the garden also...

Beast from the East II??

 The best thing about a British Winter is the cold weather, real fires, frosty mornings. I love living somewhere that has proper seasons.   Jane FallonFigure 1: The Wild/Secret Garden (8/2/23, 10.00 hours)There is talk of, potentially, another 'Beast from the East' event last seen in...