We have returned from France to discover that inexperienced, young fox cubs were wandering round the meadows on their own and, before very long at all, there was an unfortunate incident with a fox cub in the dog’s mouth. Thankfully she doesn’t have many teeth these days and we were close by, so we quickly had the little cub on its way again, scampering back onto the cliff with no damage done. But it was all very stressful and we are now having to strictly control the dog to avoid this happening again.

The dog is now only allowed out on a lead until these cubs grow up a bit:

They are ridiculously sweet:

This cub is from the den at the top of the meadows.

Although this next photo gave me a bit of a shock:

There is a second fox den in the lower far corner, in the area that we call the amphitheatre. There are at least four cubs here and it is one of these that was recently found in the dog’s mouth:

A camera looking at the hole under fence is giving us some lovely views of these amphitheatre cubs:

I particularly like this photo of two of the cubs viewing some pigeons with interest:

There has been a lot of food being carried in. This looks like it is some sort of bird:

And this looks like a little chick:

The third den is on the cliff below the house and we are seeing these cubs in the back garden. They have a slightly different look to them:

One of the fox families relaxing by the pond in the early evening:

Back in 2022 it was another sort of cub that was causing us problems as we tried to keep it safe from the dog:

In June of that year the dog discovered one of the cubs fast asleep above ground in the shrubbery flanking the garden. We decided that this was such unusual behaviour that we called the RSPCA who took it off to a vet to be checked over. It was declared to be fine and released back into the meadows a couple of hours later:

But sadly things didn’t end well. There was a terrible drought here that summer and none of the three badger cubs survived.

This year there is a single cub and to date it has remained firmly underground during daylight hours, thank goodness. It’s an absolute fluff ball:

The mother is holding it down here so that she can clean it:

But the cub is really being rough-housed by its father here:

A lovely photo of last year’s cub, now nearly an adult:

And I think this is the mother badger emerging from the burrow by day:

My sister who lives in Berkshire often has lots of dogs visiting her. One of them must have discovered a mallard nest in long grass at the bottom of her garden and scared the female duck off the eggs:

The garden is in a rural location near the River Loddon and I am envious of their bats in the attic, red kites nesting in their trees and barn owls perching on the floodlights on the house. But a mallard nest was a first for them so they took advice and put a wire fence around the nest to protect it from the dogs. Initially the female duck did return and resume incubating the eggs, but unfortunately subsequently abandoned the nest despite their best efforts.

Whilst we were in France our pair of mallards continued their daily visits to the pond in the meadows just before dawn. They will have had a nest with eggs tucked away somewhere like the one in my sister’s garden. Before leaving the nest each morning to come to the pond, the female duck will have hidden her eggs with feathers plucked from her own breast to protect them from predators:

The two swifts are settling back into their box again after their long journey up from Africa:

So far they have added some strands of dried grass and a single feather to the black circle of last years nest:

But no egg has appeared as yet.

Now that it is May, more butterfly species are starting to emerge:

Two ‘blue’ butterfly species have been seen so far. The holly blue:

And the small blue:

We should also be seeing common blue and brown argus as well at some point.

I have an on-going project to attract more species of blue butterflies to the meadows and I am targeting my efforts on the adonis blue and the chalkhill blue, neither of which have ever been seen here. The larval food plant for both of these species is horseshoe vetch, plugs of which I planted onto the new chalk banks constructed during the building of our garage two years ago. This vetch is now doing really well and flowering profusely:

Over in the wood, I like this set of three photos taken by a trail camera looking at a hole in the ground:

A photo taken elsewhere in the wood shows a vixen that is clearly nursing young. There are no rights of way close to the wood and these cubs of hers should at least be safe from dogs:

Bullfinch always nest in the woods:

I have been seeing a firecrest at this pond throughout the winter and was really pleased to see it still visiting in May. Could it be nesting? Although our wood doesn’t have conifer trees, there are plenty in the wider wood:

I think there are squirrels nesting in this owl box although there has been very little recent action on the camera. A stock dove did visit to see if it could nest in there though:

In contrast there has been a lot of activity at the green woodpecker nest:

But I can offer no explanation for this next photo showing the male bird flying away from the nest with an egg. What is going on?:

This little robin was singing so loudly and so beautifully in the wood that I stopped and listened to it for ages. It even posed for a photo:

My last photo today is this one which made me smile: