Progress is being made – Spring is not here yet but there are signs that its on its way.

The hedgerows are starting to come alive:

The frogspawn in the pond is developing into little tadpoles:

And deep underground in their burrows in the cliffs below the meadows there should already be baby foxes and badgers born. Looking forward to seeing what we can capture on our trap cameras once they come above ground in April.

We have been feeding jam sandwiches laced with medicine to the foxes on a daily basis for the past 6 or 7 weeks, hoping that it is doing something to help improve the mange that many of them seem to have. A trap camera is trained on the sandwich area but the images aren’t good enough to properly see whats going on. However, this image was taken a few days ago:

Is this cause for hope? Is this the hair growing back?

We have decided to stop putting out the medicine now – the advice was four drops of medicine per day per fox for 3 weeks minimum but up to 6 weeks if necessary. We  will continue to monitor our foxes to see if the situation is getting better or worse.  I think that they will miss the sandwiches though – they had started waiting for them to arrive.

Another feature of right now is the enormous flock of wood pigeons that is feeding on the field of Brassicas next to the meadows. When the flock goes up, it fills and darkens the sky, there must be 500 of them. They have then been resting up in the hedgerows surrounding our land and it feels slightly unnerving seeing so many:

Surely this concentration of pigeons cannot escape the attentions of a peregrine or a sparrow hawk?

Finally for now, we also continue to enjoy the daily visitations of the Kestrel and the Grey Heron:

So all sorts going on here – just need this bitter, eye-wateringly cold east wind to die down a bit and we can get out there and enjoy it.