There has been a diminutive but exciting visitor to the meadows recently – a weasel, a pocket-sized predator, which has now been seen several times crossing this gate. It is a small mammal specialist, cashing in on the abundance of mice and voles that have been around this autumn.

We last saw a weasel on the gate in the autumn of 2022, when the weather was less drab and grey than it has been recently and the image is therefore sharper:

Weasels don’t make their own den but use a nest of their prey, often lining it with dry vegetation and rodent fur. We know where our weasel’s den was because the dog had a non-contact confrontation with it there before it shot back down underground. I was pleased to be nearby because it was very special to hear the extraordinary calls of a weasel for the first time.

I rushed to get two cameras trained onto the den, knowing the weasel was down there:

I didn’t know that rats also preyed on rodents smaller than themselves but here one is with a vole:

But it is not just weasels and rats eating the voles. They have also been taking a hammering from the birds of prey that have been hunting here this autumn. Each of the photos in this gallery below is a different rodent being eaten by the ringed kestrel over this last fortnight:

A barn owl has been successfully catching them in the dark….

..and a tawny owl is also out hunting for rodents at night:

This buzzard is after them too, although it would also be prepared to go for something larger such as a rat or a rabbit:

It has been wonderful to see so many predators arriving to cash in on the small mammal population here this autumn. The vole population is naturally cyclical and this seems to have been a very good year for them.

The sparrowhawk is the only bird of prey around here that isn’t interested in the voles:

The barn owl has been visiting the meadows every night recently. But what I was really excited to notice was that there is no sign of a ring on the right leg of this bird:

This is interesting because we have recently seen a ringed barn owl as well, so we now know that there are two different animals. The ringed bird is on the left and the non-ringed one on the right below:

Another photo of the ringed bird eating a vole:

They are certainly magnificent animals:

And nice to see it using the haypile to look for rodents:

Of course I haven’t been able to resist ordering a barn owl nest box now that they are regularly using the meadows. It will probably arrive too late for next year’s breeding season but we are forever optimistic.

Jays are very busy collecting and burying acorns from the holm oaks in the autumn:

Jays can carry one acorn in their beak and about five more in their crop. This jay below is certainly carrying acorns in its distended crop as well as in its beak:

This can be be seen more clearly in this photo from 2021 of another jay with a crop full of acorns:

The badgers are continuing to drag more bedding into their sett in preparation for the winter to come. Badgers do not hibernate but instead slow down into a winter torpor:

Reptiles and amphibians, however, do hibernate and we found this pit of hibernating lizards tucked away under a sampling square:

Unfortunately this most unwelcome visitor is able to pull hibernating frogs out from the bottom of the pond:

We’ve seen it take three or four frogs from this pond in the last two days:

We are going to have to get our scarecrow, MacKenzie, out from the shed and put him on duty by the pond. We didn’t need him at all last winter, so goodness knows what state he will be in and he may need some refurbishment first.

Over in the wood, a toad is once more hibernating under a large sheet of corrugated tin where it will at least be safe from herons. We had specifically gone to look for it because it was there last winter as well and that was the first time we had seen a toad in the wood:

The strange, contorted white saddle fungus has come up both in the wood and in the meadows:

A beautiful nuthatch has been coming down to this woodland pond a lot recently. We don’t see nuthatches in the meadows so its always special to see them in the wood:

Several winter visitors are now being spotted by the cameras in the wood. The first woodcock was seen on the 8th November. These birds have travelled from Russia and Finland to escape the harsh weather there and spend the winter in the gentler temperatures of our wood where the ground is not frozen hard for months:

Fieldfares, too, have now arrived:

As have some lesser redpoll with that lovely claret red patch on their heads:

We have gone round the large raptor boxes in the wood to empty them of nesting material. Every one of them showed signs that squirrels had nested this year.

There is a camera on a pole trained on this tawny owl box below and I had already looked at its SD card and seen that it showed no activity. So we were therefore very shocked indeed when Dave knocked on the box before opening it, just to be on the safe side, and a tawny owl flew out. I hope it comes back again soon – we would like it to nest in there next year instead of the squirrels.

We met a forester in the wood this week to discuss some hazel coppicing that he is going to do for us over the winter. On our way to show him the hazel, we passed the lovely stand of silver birch in the centre of the wood which has now reached maturity:

He advised us that, if nothing is done with these trees, they will soon start to fall over, at which point they would look awful and can no longer regenerate from their base. We would eventually need to clear them all away and replant.

But if these trees are harvested now, the stumps will regrow to form coppices and the cycle naturally continues. This silver birch wood is commercially viable as fast-burning firewood and he would buy it off us to help finance the coppicing work.

This all seems very sensible and we are now considering commissioning a woodland management plan from an expert which would set out a plan of works going forward over the years. We would then need to apply to the forestry commission for a felling licence to take these silver birch down next winter. This would be a very bold step to take and I love those trees and will be so sad to see them felled. But it does sound like it might be the right thing to do for the long term health of the wood.

One day this week we returned to Hawkshill Freedown, an area of 13.5 acres close to home that is now being managed for nature by the community. Back in early September we had walked up to see how the flower meadow there was getting on, and found it looking rather lovely:

But the Hawkshill meadow has now been cut and the arisings needed to be moved off the land. A heart-warming number of local people had turned up to assist:

It was actually great fun to help out. A large hay pile was created off to the side which will provide a habitat for invertebrates and reptiles:

A great sense of satisfaction to have got the job done.

Dave saw a house martin swooping over the meadows on Monday as it made its way south. What has stopped it leaving until now? I do hope it hasn’t left it too late, all on its own, battling its way down the length of Europe as winter starts to take its grip. The swifts left nearly four months ago at the end of July and I like to think of them now, swanning around in the heat of Central Africa as I zip up my coat and put on my gloves to go out into the meadows. In just over a month it will be the shortest day and then I will allow myself to anticipate them returning to the meadows once more next year.