When I was a child I wanted to keep a capybara as a pet and enthusiastically started to draw up plans to convert the back garden of our family home into a wetland for it to live in. But this was only ever fanciful – I had no idea how to source or look after the World’s largest rodent from South America and my parents would never have sanctioned the conversion of their Berkshire garden into swampy capybara habitat. Many decades on, I still retain a soft spot for these lovely animals and was delighted to find one amongst The Natural History Museum’s exhibits on a visit up to London this week:

As well as the capybara, I came across other intriguing animals such as this giant golden mole from South Africa:

I recall being mesmerised by this dodo from Mauritius when I visited the museum as a child. The species had been hunted to extinction by the late seventeenth century:

I also remember being both repulsed and fascinated by this Victorian case packed with so many species of stuffed hummingbirds:

The beautiful Natural History Museum building was built in the mid nineteenth century as a ‘cathedral to nature’:

Hope, a 25m blue whale, now hangs above the visitors’ heads in the main hall:

I was at the Natural History Museum this week primarily to meet my children and together visit the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 Exhibition. As usual, the standard of the photographs was pretty amazing and can be seen on the Natural History Museum’s website here:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery

This year I find myself disagreeing with the judges over what the overall winning photo should have been. I would have chosen this fantastic image by Agorastos Papatsanis of Greece:

It is really easy to get ourselves up to London these days with the high speed trains now operating between East Kent and London St Pancras. Whenever we do go up, we always enjoy ourselves and wonder why we don’t do it more often.

Back in the meadows, frog spawning happens a little later in the garden pond than in the others and is still ongoing:

But it has been all over for a while in the wild pond and the tiny tadpoles have been developing within the jelly:

In fact, this week the tadpoles have hatched and congregated together to form black masses surrounded by aureoles of empty jelly:

Whilst we were looking into the pond, it was surprising to see two small collections of leaves moving around quite quickly in otherwise still water:

I was able to photograph the second protective case from the side showing more of the caddisfly larva itself:

We are constantly amazed by the life going on the ponds, most of it unseen by us

Some slow worms came above ground on 7th March, although I expect they reserve the right to go straight back down again should things deteriorate weatherwise. Two beefy males here:

A tiny neonate slow worm that would have hatched last autumn:

So far this year, it is only the corvids that have been starting to nest. Here a crow is carrying a stick that will surely not be of much use:

The magpies have been collecting mud for their nest:

All this mud collecting leaves them in a bit of a state and in need of a bath:

Both of the magpies below are ringed. Last year the pair nesting in the meadows flew into the nets and were ringed, and it looks like they are our breeding pair this year as well:

Although at the moment there are also some others around:

It’s not always the big bully birds on the perches. Sometimes smaller birds use them too:

And it’s always exciting to see a tawny in the meadows

A very normal sight here is for the back half of the dog to be sticking out of this badger hole. There is a camera trained onto the hole and, when I look through its photos, so many are of the dog’s rear end:

But some of the photos are of the badgers themselves:

The woodcock still remain in the wood for now, although they will be leaving soon to breed in Finland and Russia:

The redwing also have not left yet:

Squirrels are very happily ensconced in the tawny owl box and sadly there have been no recent sightings of owls. Other birds do come and peer in from time to time though:

A heavily pregnant vixen:

Any elder that there is in the wood usually has the jelly ears fungus on it:

I finish today with the very appealing capybara that one of my daughters gave me for my birthday this week:

Unlike its larger South American counterparts, this little capybara will be no trouble whatsoever to look after whilst still bringing me lots of pleasure.