Something rather special has been going on in the wood this spring because a pair of tawny owls have chosen to nest in one of the owl boxes:

For several weeks now the male owl has been bringing prey to the box by night. The incoming rodents are mostly carried in the bird’s beak, leaving his feet free to land on the box:

Although sometimes he carries them in his talons instead:

Whilst the two rodents above are mice, the photos below are of a vole and a rat that are also being caught:

And no doubt dormice as well but it’s hard to tell in the dark. It is asking a lot of the male to catch enough prey to feed his entire family.

These night time arrivals were going on throughout the 28-30 days that the female was incubating the eggs, and are carrying on still to feed both the chicks and the female since she continues to spend much time in the box. This week, though, there has been a big change in behaviour because she is now sitting for long periods in the entrance to the box. Mostly awake…

..but sometimes asleep:

Her eyes are the deep, black pools of a nocturnal animal:

I have been reporting what has been going on at the box to John, the bird ringer, who will be acting under licence to ring the chicks. He has also taken advice from experts who regularly ring tawny owls here in East Kent. As a result of all this information, the decision was taken to look in the box this afternoon:

The normal number of chicks for tawny owls is two or three and so it was very surprising to find four chicks in the box. Thankfully there was no adult in the box, but there was one watching on from not far away.

By the next post I should have a bit more detail on the chicks. Once John had returned them to their box, he took a photo of them snuggled back together – there’s not much room in there:

Elsewhere in the wood, I am really pleased to see that the green woodpeckers have decided to nest in the same hole that they have used for the previous two years. It is only about a metre and a half off the ground and easy to get a camera on:

Last year we found numerous beautiful white helleborines in the wood:

We have been looking for them again this year but have only found a couple of small sprouts, nothing like the tremendous display of last year. We did, however, stumble upon a previously-undiscovered second patch of common twayblades, another type of orchid:

It is buttercup time in the meadows. We love this time of year when our shoes are yellow with buttercup pollen as we come in from the meadows:

There are over thirty different species and hybrids of buttercup to be found growing in the UK. The great swathes of buttercup that flower here in early May, particularly where the grasses are cut shorter, are all bulbous buttercups, Ranunculus bulbosus. These grow from a swollen underground corm that gives them some drought resilience, useful because they are found in dry chalk and limestone grasslands such as the meadows.

The taller meadow buttercups, Ranunculus acris, are now just starting to appear along the hedgerow edges as well.

Small copper on a bulbous buttercup:

Meanwhile vast numbers of oxeye daisies are waiting in the wings to have their moment of glory shortly.

We have had some rain, an event so rare of late that I feel obliged to mention it. As the first few plump drops fell after such a dry spring, a frog appeared seemingly from nowhere:

Having the soil softened by rain is really good news for the birds and badgers who need to get at the worms to feed their young.

It has been some time since I’ve seen all three badger cubs together and I fear that we might already have lost one of them:

The daily peanut feeding time remains a very popular event, eagerly anticipated by the badgers, foxes and unfortunately also by the magpies:

And here is a magpie with another of the slow worms. However, slow worms can shed their tails to distract predators and, happily, it looks like this might just be the tail of the reptile:

There is something very interesting going on in one of the bushes in the meadows. A rare wasp, Polistes biglumis, has made a nest in some wild privet. Rather unimaginatively, we are calling her Big Pol and have been keeping an eye on her to see how she is getting on. This species is usually to be found in high-altitude meadows in the Alps and Apennines but, in 2020, several individuals were found nectaring on flowers at Samphire Hoe Country Park just down the coast. But, so far as we can tell, this may be the first time that a Polistes biglumis nest has been found in this country:

A scientific paper was written in 2020, following the discovery of this species at Samphire Hoe. The authors speculated that a mated female may have been carried from the Alps on a tourist car arriving at Dover. This car’s first stop was then the country park for the occupants to have a walk around after their long journey

Big Pol spends a lot of time guarding her nest but, when she was away, I was able to take a macro photo into it, showing that a single egg has been laid in each cell:

These eggs will hatch into larvae in due course and Big Pol will feed them with chewed insect meat, particularly caterpillars. Then, when the larvae become adults, they will switch to feeding on nectar.

Small blue butterflies have arrived in the meadows:

Wall butterflies seem to be having a jolly good year here and there are many more around than normal. Here is a mating pair

There are also lots of these small but silly moths fluttering along the hedges this year. I say they are silly because the males really can’t fly very well with those ridiculously long antennae:

All across the country swifts are now arriving back at their breeding sites after their long journey up from Africa. Our boxes, however, remain resolutely empty:

As I anxiously check the cameras several times a day, I remember myself as a parent of teenage children, trying not to fret as I awaited their return from a Friday night out. Well, my children always rolled home eventually and I do hope the swifts will too.