We have been spending some of this Easter weekend sheltering in a gazebo in the garden to reacquaint ourselves with our children. The weather has been cold and windy but it has been lovely to see some of them in person again after what feels like a very long haul.

As we walked down under our local chalk cliffs this week, we saw that Kestrels have started nesting in their accustomed cavern in the rock:

There was a second Kestrel nest as well last year, but it looks like this might have Stock Doves now:

Our meadows are not far away and we frequently see a pair of Kestrels here. I would love to know if these are the same birds that are nesting at the cliff. We sometimes meet a nature photographer who photographs the birds of the cliff and I have now asked him to keep an eye out for our female since she is ringed and distinctive.

We also see Sparrowhawks in the meadows but have no idea where they nest either:

In fact, we haven’t ever found a raptor nest in the vicinity of the meadows. Or in the woods either, although there was a Buzzard nest there the summer before we arrived that hasn’t subsequently been reused.

I am envious of my sister who lives in Berkshire and has a pair of Red Kites nesting next door. She is enjoying seeing them flying around her garden and has dusted off her camera to send me this photo:

Although we occasionally see Red Kites here in East Kent, they haven’t started nesting yet although hopefully it is just a matter of time.

Perhaps we don’t have raptor nests here but we definitely have nesting corvids nearby. Ever alert to interesting or entertaining new camera positions, we stuffed a wire cage with the some wool packaging and put a camera on it to see if any birds would take some as nesting material:

We also have Magpies nesting in a Holm Oak. I feel that Magpies are doing just too well around here and try not to encourage them if I can help it. Seeing this group of seven of them this week only serves to increase my feeling of unease about them:

I try to put the sandwiches and peanuts out for the Foxes and Badgers at a heavy dusk when birds might be expected to have roosted for the night. I was a bit too early here, though, because I was feeling sorry for how long the Old Gentleman had been waiting for me:

Magpies can and do fly in extremely low light. I am always really cross when I see them get a sandwich.

On Good Friday, I decided to start putting medicated honey sandwiches out to treat this pretty vixen who probably has mange on her tail. My thinking is that I will act fast before she has a chance to infect other of our resident foxes who might be more tricky to get sandwiches into.

When I last treated the foxes here a year ago, The Fox Project charity recommended that I tried a week’s course of Psorinum 30c pills – just one pill, dissolved in a little bit of water and then that water sprinkled onto the sandwiches. This is a medicine made from natural ingredients and it doesn’t matter if a non-infected fox or any other animal takes it, or if the fox is lactating – it will not do any harm. Last year it worked like a dream and so I am hoping that it will do so again.

We have been seeing some summer visitors arriving here after their long journey up from Africa:

It is lovely to have them back in the country, although they are will probably not be stopping with us for long here at the coast.

The pair of Herring Gull are waiting for us every morning up by the feeding cages. One of the birds is colour-ringed so they are easy to recognise:

It is fantastic to hear so many Yellowhammer singing along the hedgerows this spring:

Not all of these birds in this photo below are Yellowhammer, but most of them are:

We found this specialist Woodlouse-eating spider, Dysdera crocata, in a damp, dark nook.

It has disproportionately large mouthparts for grappling with its Woodlouse prey. Last year I got this photo of one:

There are forty species of Woodlouse living out in the wild in the UK (twenty more species only found in heated greenhouses). Having attended a couple of recent Zoom talks on Woodlice, I now realise that there are several different species here in the meadow and I am starting to try to work out what they all are – but this is a subject to look forward to in a later post!

It was a murky day on Good Friday but we were treated to a sighting of the biggest ship in the world, the Pioneering Spirit, sailing by. Owned by Allseas, it is the biggest ship in terms of gross tonnage, water displacement and also its width which is an amazing 124 meters. It is a twin-hulled, oil rig lifting ship, slotting the rig into the space between the two hulls so that it can lift it without tipping sideways.

Here is a photo from its Wikipedia page, showing an oil rig in position between the hulls:

The ship was finished in 2016 and was originally going to be called the Pieter Schelte, after the father of the owner of Allseas. However, this caused controversy because of Pieter’s service in the Waffen-SS during the war so the name was changed to Pioneering Spirit. However, the ghost of the previous name can still be seen on the hull.

I see from the weather forecast that we are to expect an Arctic blast at the beginning of next week. Last year, it was just about this exact point in spring that we had several days of strong and bitter north-easterly winds that raced in off the sea. They hit the 300m of hedgerow at the top of the meadows, burning the tender new foliage to a crisp. This meant that the Hawthorn didn’t flower last year and consequently had no berries in the autumn to provide winter food for the birds.

The hedgerows are now in exactly that same stage as they were last year – the Blackthorn is in flower and the tender young leaves of the Hawthorn have just come out.

We are really worried that we will have a repeat of last year. But it looks like the winds are expected to be much less strong, and northerly rather than north easterly which would make a big difference – we have our fingers crossed but there is not a lot more we can do than that.

The reptiles have already emerged but they will have to keep their heads down as this Arctic blast passes through.

The insects will also have to find a sheltered spot to see out the cold snap::

In our garden we have this south facing bank. Last year we decided not to cut the grass on the bank, leaving it to merrily flower away for pollinators. Although it looks very grassy at the moment, in a few weeks it will be covered in flowers. In the spring, this southern aspect of the bank hosts a large colony of mining bees and is alive with their constant activity.

The bees rarely rest up and consequently are really difficult to photograph but here is one of them – a male Yellow-legged Mining Bee (Andrena flavipes).

This is a common mining bee in southern England but what I find exciting is that the Painted Cuckoo Bee (Nomada fucata) is a parasite specifically on this species and I would really like to find one of these hanging around the colony. Once the Arctic blast has gone, I too will be hanging around the colony trying to find one of these cuckoo bees.

The wood is putting on a fantastic Easter display of Primroses in its regenerating areas:

Magpies have been gathering in the wood, too:

Last year we had twelve small nest boxes up in the wood and all were used.

We now have eighteen up. We looked in one and it already had a soft mossy nest within:

So, there you are. That is about it for the nature round up this Easter other than wishing everyone a happy, long and chocolate-filled weekend.