In the ten years that we have lived in East Kent, more and more south-facing slopes have been planted up with vines as wine production in the area has blossomed. These days there are more than fifty commercial vineyards in Kent and, with similar soils to the Champagne region in France, it is sparkling wines using the traditional méthode champenoise that they are particularly known for. Two of our children are very interested in wine and have just passed their Wine and Spirit Education Trust level 3 exams. They were staying with us over Easter, so we all visited Gusbourne near Romney Marsh for a wine tasting and vineyard tour.

Spring frosts that would damage the fresh new buds are a worry at this time of year and the vineyard has some of these frost protection fans, imported from the Napa Valley in California:

Lots of pots were hanging from the hedgerow around the vines. These are apparently to monitor the levels of the Suzuki fly in the area:

The Suzuki fly, Drosophila suzukii, is a native of SE Asia but is now established in Britain and poses a significant threat for our soft fruit growers including vineyards. In contrast to other Drosophila species that only infest rotting fruit, this fly lays her eggs into the ripening grape using her saw-like ovipositor to get in under the skin. The fly larvae then develop within the grape, ruining it for winemaking.

It was interesting to learn that the vines will generally be planted on south-facing slopes with the rows orientated north-south so that they don’t shade each other. When the individual plants are pruned, a single shoot is left, also reaching towards the south if possible. Often this single stem will be on a ‘watershoot’ coming directly up from the roots as in the photo below. When the main rootstock eventually gets old and needs replacing, it is cut away leaving the watershoot as the stem.

Gusbourne is a relatively new Kent vineyard since the first vines were only planted in 2004. But their wines are already highly acclaimed, often winning awards, and we very much enjoyed tasting them.

Back in the meadows, we are pleased that the badger cub is being brought straight up into the meadows rather than onto the cliff, because this is giving us some unimpeded views of the sweet little thing:

The cub is not yet allowed up for long and stays close to its mother:

She is not bringing it to the peanuts with the other adult badgers at the moment:

There are three adult badgers living in the meadows, the original parents and one of last years cubs:

This is a ridiculous photo of two of them lounging around whilst still eating the peanuts:

We have now discovered a second fox family, this one somewhere on the densely vegetated cliff:

There has been a lot of food being taken in. Whilst most of it is unidentifiable, I can see that this is a fish:

And this is surely a rat:

And we have had early sightings of one of the little cubs of this family:

Another mammal being frequently seen in the meadows at the moment is the weasel. I have been looking closely at this next photo in case there is evidence that this is a lactating female, because wouldn’t it be amazing to see weasel cubs?

The bird ringers have done two more sessions with the whoosh net in the meadows and are very pleased with the number of linnets they have caught.

Yellowhammers are also coming down to the seed at the whoosh net but so far have evaded being captured:

A redstart was on the trail cameras as well this week, no doubt newly arrived in the country and on its way inland to breed:

And this is our first common whitethroat of the year. Whitethroats do nest here and so I hope that this one will stay around:

Several starling are in the meadows at the moment and will also hopefully be nesting here. This bird is ringed as well:

As ever, sparrowhawks have been active in the meadows as evidenced by several piles of feathers. This one is taking a break from hunting to take a bath:

Nice to see a different kestrel here. This is a male with his grey head and the single, broad black stripe at the end of his tail. He has caught some prey although I’m not sure what that is:

The normal ringed female kestrel has been around as well. A photo of her from February shows how different her tail feathers are from that of the male:

The pair of mallards are still coming in for a very early morning swim whilst they are egg laying:

I carried out a rescue of a tawny mining bee trapped inside the house and took some quick photos before I released her:

Nice to properly see the three dots on the top of her head – these are her ocelli. They are simple eyes that can detect light and shadow, helping her to judge her direction relative to the sun and also to avoid predation:

A tawny mining bee nest like a mini volcano has appeared in the orchard:

There are a lot of celery flies, Euleia heraclei, around at the moment. They are amazing-looking little things:

These small things look like they have come straight out of a science fiction film:

There were several of these on some ivy leaves and I include a photo of a second one as well because it more clearly shows the shaving brush coming out of the end of the abdomen:

These nymphs will have developed into adult planthoppers by June:

We found a nest of brown-tip moth caterpillars in a hawthorn bush:

The brown-tip moth caterpillar is very impressive to look at but is covered in barbed hairs which will irritate human skin and means that most birds will leave them alone. However, cuckoos specialise in eating hairy caterpillars, including these brown-tips.

Green hairstreak butterflies have now appeared in the meadows. I am hoping that they will have a good year because we have seen so few here for the last two springs:

I was excited to see my first ever furrow bee on the sun-baked moat wall at Walmer Castle. I believe that this is the bronze furrow bee, Halictus tumulorum:

You can see the notch at the end of her abdomen that gives furrow bees their name:

In the wood, I think that I can now say that green woodpeckers are nesting in the same hole as last year. Perhaps it is the same pair but I cannot be sure:

I am looking forward to watching their progress as spring progresses.

In my experience it is a very rare occasion indeed for the wildlife here to perform as you want it to. Therefore, I was especially pleased when I managed to show our Easter visitors the enthralling spectacle of male smooth newts displaying to females in the pond.

The sun shone over Easter, the wind mostly stayed away and the fruit trees in the orchard were in glorious blossom, fit to stage the annual Easter egg hunt, which gets very competitive now that the children are adults. Our family is spread wide across the south of England and it’s so lovely to see them when they get the opportunity to travel to these outermost reaches of Kent.

As we approach the end of April, it shouldn’t be long now before swifts start arriving back in the UK to breed. As we wait with bated breath to see if our pair will make it back, my last photo for today is of the inside of the nest box where two swift chicks were successfully raised last year:

The box has come down from the wall this week for Dave to install a new and improved camera, but everything is now back in place and we are ready for them. I am keeping everything crossed for their safe return.

It has been some time since there has been any bird ringing in the meadows because John and John, the birdringers, have both been unwell. But thankfully they are now recovered sufficiently to start doing what they love again. This week John and another ringer Becky were in the meadows trying out an alternative way of catching birds to ring – whoosh netting:

There are now plans to do more whoosh netting in the meadows this coming week.

Meanwhile, somewhere tucked deep within the thorny hedgerow at the end of the meadows, a litter of fox cubs is being reared. This vixen is clearly feeding young and has been going in and out of the hedgerow:

She has also been taking small mammals in. I suppose this must be a rat:

The pressure is now on for the parent foxes. Not only do they need to feed themselves, they also have other hungry mouths to find food for. There is often plenty of potential fox prey around, but first they have to catch it:

I can now properly introduce you to this year’s single badger cub who was first allowed above ground on 11th April:

Some other interesting photos from the meadows this week:

Now that it is April, it is time to recommence the monthly monitoring tours around the dormouse boxes in the wood. This week we did the thirty boxes in our wood and I will do the twenty boxes in our neighbour’s wood with her next week. Male dormice are thought to emerge from hibernation two weeks before the females and in fact we did only find males this time. We found two of them, both in otherwise empty boxes – I suppose they have not yet had time to make any sort of nest for themselves:

Twelve of the thirty boxes were found to have tit nests in them, although only one clutch of eggs so far. Blue tits do only have one brood a year and they will have finished with the boxes by the end of May, leaving them available once more for dormice. In box 28, however, a wren had filled the box with moss:

I feel that there should be a drum roll before this next photo. This is the first time that I’ve ever caught a snake on a trail camera:

Sparrowhawks also come to this pond daily to bathe. However, like all the ponds in both the meadows and the wood, it is getting rather low on water – we do need some rain:

On 10th April there was still a redwing in the wood. I have noticed before that the redwings are always the last winter visitors to leave:

I finish this week with tulips. For several autumns now, I have been planting a hundred or so tulip bulbs in the allotment to use as cut flowers in the spring. However, I have had an ongoing problem with rats who view these bulbs as a good food source over the winter. The autumn before last I rolled the bulbs in chilli powder before planting which proved to be very effective at deterring the rats. Flushed with success, I repeated this last autumn as well. Although initially this approach seemed to be working again, towards the end of the winter I started to lose a lot of bulbs once more. I am guessing that the chilli had been washed away, allowing the rats to get going. Now, in April, although I do have still some lovely flowers to bring into the house, there are nowhere near as many as I had hoped.

Walmer Castle grows tulips at this time of year and they never seem to lose a single bulb:

Back in February, I noticed that, not only were the tulip beds at the Castle covered in a protective mesh, but a humane rat trap baited with bulbs was also being used:

This is something that I would not want to do and so have decided not to battle with the rats anymore. I will still plant some tulips into pots by the house this autumn but from now on there will be no more bulbs going out into the allotment. The rats will just have to find something different to eat this winter or perhaps, even better, go elsewhere.

We have been enjoying an extended spell of sunny, dry spring weather although, here on the cliffs overlooking the North Sea, this has often been accompanied by a strong and chilly north-easterly wind.

As part of the newly-formed volunteer wildlife monitoring team at Walmer Castle, we have been patrolling the Castle grounds once a week looking for signs of spring. This fox didn’t seem overly concerned about us:

The gardeners have managed to plant mistletoe onto the low fruit trees in the orchard, providing us with an opportunity to get a proper look at it. Mistletoe is a hemiparasite – although it can photosynthesise itself, it also takes water and nutrients from its host tree.

It is dioecious, having separate male and female plants. The flowers on the male plant on the left below produce pollen. The flowers of the female plant on the right will form into berries if they are pollinated by insects bringing that pollen across to them from a male plant.

A few berries still remain from last year:

The Castle’s moat has stone walls, providing ideal habitat for jumping spiders looking for prey to pounce on. We spotted two different species – I was already familiar with the zebra jumping spider, Salticus scenicus, because we get them in the meadows:

But the other jumping spider there was new to me. This spider was even smaller at only 2-3mm which presented a considerable photographic challenge:

We also saw a tawny mining bee in the Castle grounds. These bees will have spent the winter as pupae in their underground nests but now, in early April, they have triumphantly emerged as adults. The females are absolute stunners:

The meadows lie just to the south of the Castle and there are tawny mining bees here too. I do find bee identification difficult but think this next bee is a female yellow-legged mining bee, Andrena flavipes. She will have long yellow pollen-collecting hairs on the thighs of her hind legs, although these are covered in yellow pollen in this photo:

The next three photos are part of my ongoing project to get a half decent photo of a hairy-footed flower bee as she feeds from the pots of ‘shrimps on the barbie’ pulmonaria by the back door. The problem is that she is in constant motion, but I whacked the camera speed up to its highest setting to see what that would do.

A definite advance on last year’s efforts, but much room for improvement still.

As she approaches a flower she sticks out her mouthparts to probe into the flower:

Bee-flies, also sweet little things, like to visit the shrimps on the barbie flowers as well:

Dave took these mating dotted bee-flies on his camera phone. I had absolutely no idea that they went end-to-end like this. They can even fly around when they are joined up, with one of them having to fly backwards:

The first butterfly that hasn’t overwintered as an adult has appeared in the meadows. The speckled wood is the only British butterfly to hibernate both as a chrysalis and a caterpillar:

Other photos from the meadows this week:

At this time of year, I love to see the bee-flies feeding from the masses of primroses now flowering in the wood:

Sparrowhawks love this pond out in the open of the marjoram grove:

This next photo was taken in the very early morning when there was still dew on the camera lens, but I include it here anyway because it shows a pair of mallards that briefly stopped by. This is a new species for the wood:

A buzzard has once more been sitting by the tawny owl box that has nesting squirrels in it this year. Although buzzards mainly eat smaller mammals, they can and do eat squirrels as well:

Stock doves are hole nesters and a pair of these lovely birds have looked into the box to see if it was available for them. Unfortunately it wasn’t:

The hole in the old cherry tree hole continues to attract lot of interest. Nuthatch and great-spotted woodpecker here:

But it is the green woodpeckers that are now making the majority of visits to the tree:

You can just see a second green woodpecker on the other cherry tree as well:

Our wildlife monitoring tours of Walmer Castle grounds are usually rounded off with a cup of tea from the cafe. We like to sit up on the bastion, surrounded by cannons and with a view of the sea:

This week we were entertained by watching the lorries carrying shingle from the north end of the beach back down to the south again as part of the annual sea defence repairs:

This is a thankless task because it will soon be pushed back up again by a relentless sea. Beaches provide good defence against the sea because they take the damaging energy out of the waves – but the continual erosion of the beach around Kingsdown is leaving the houses there unprotected. This annual transportation of shingle to re-nourish Kingsdown beach to the south might seem bonkers but is currently considered to be the solution with the least harmful effect on the environment as well as being an economical one. Until a suitable alternative is found, it looks like we are destined to have these lorries driving up and down our beach every spring for the time being.