With two storms in quick succession being forecast for last week, we had to grab a fair-weather window to carry out the October dormouse tour in the wood.

At this time of year we were hoping to find that the dormice were fattening up ready for hibernation. You would normally expect adults to weigh somewhere between 15 and 22g for most of the summer, but they need to put on weight by eating foods rich in calories and oils to get them through the winter. I am pleased that our wood has been able to provide them with hazelnuts, acorns and other nuts as well as blackberries and woodland fruits so that they have been able do this.

The dormouse on the left below from box 15 was 34g, but it was the dormouse on the right, from box 5 and missing some of his tail, that took the prize weighing in at a hefty 36.5g.

The dormouse in box 10 below was interesting. As he has a very distinctively short tail with long black hairs at the end, I know for sure that he was in the same box on the September tour. Back then he weighed 19g and was sitting in the box with very few leaves:

By the October tour he had filled the box up a bit…

…but the main difference was that this same animal was now 30g rather then the 19g he had weighed in September:

Box 18 was particularly lovely. In it was an adult female and her four juvenile young that all exploded out of the box and into the containing plastic bag when the lid was opened:

The tour took a long time because twenty-five of the thirty boxes had dormouse nests in them and needed closer investigation. By the end of the morning, we had found twenty-two dormice which is a record number for the wood. The previous highest number was the sixteen found last month.

The dog patiently accompanied us around the first half of the boxes but she found it all a bit boring and went into the back of the car for a sleep during the second half:

Some autumns there are a lot of toadstools to be seen in the wood but, after this year’s dry summer, there seem to be very few about:

I have a few photos from the woodland trail cameras this week:

There could well be dispersing young tawnies looking for a new territory in the meadows as well, and we did indeed see one recently inspecting the barn owl box that we have up here:

We decided to get a tawny box up in the meadows as well as this barn owl box, and so ordered two from the Barn Owl Trust. These arrived this week and we are delighted with what fantastic quality they are. They are also enormous and really heavy:

One of the boxes is destined for the wood and that is going to have to wait for a while, but we have now got the other one up in a copse of trees in the meadows.

Dave first made a former to work out where the best place was for it to go. It was decided that this holm oak would work well:

He then pulled the box up on a rope slung over a branch higher up the tree…

…and then nailed the box onto the tree, with a couple of extra bungee cords as well for good measure:

We also hacked down the hedgerow alongside the copse to give a clear flyway up to the box:

This is the newly-created view from the box out across the second meadow:

We haven’t got a camera on the box yet, but I expect that there is no rush whatsoever and we will have to wait a good while before anything interesting happens.

John caught a greenfinch in his nets here this week – a species that hasn’t been ringed in the meadows since August 2021

In the short spell of sunny, calm weather between Storm Austin and Storm Boelo, there were large groups of house martins and swallows flitting over the meadows. I was inwardly shouting at them to not be halfway over the Channel when Boelo arrived. A pair of stonechat were in the meadows as well. Female on the left and male on the right:

They also went onto the perches and had their pictures taken by the trail cameras:

Stonechats are partial migrants. They mostly breed in the west and north of Britain and then about half of the population will move south for the winter. Some just travel to southern England but others go further to the warmer parts of Continental Europe. I suspect that these stonechats in the meadows this week were on their way over the Channel.

A group of around thirteen goldfinch descended on the feeder at the corner of the allotment and I got some photos of them through the kitchen window. It has been well over a year since I put any food in this squirrel-proof feeder though, because the magpies worked out that they could swing it violently to make the seed fall down onto the ground.

I liked the composition of this next photo below so I sharpened it up:

On another day we hosted a murder of crows who spent the day noisily interacting with each other in the skies over the meadows:

Three other species of birds were also here this week, but we really wish that they weren’t:

Hopefully the young pheasants will disperse soon, before they strip the meadows of all its amphibians and reptiles.

Our autumn jobs are now nearly done. All the meadow cutting is finished although, as usual, some areas have not been touched to protect overwintering invertebrates:

Dave has been into the pond and pulled out much more of the vegetation. That, and the recent rains, mean that the ponds are beginning to look like themselves again:

We have been working hard on the allotment which once more got wildly out-of-control this summer. It is now weeded, the broad beans and onions planted and cardboard put down to impede the demoralising amount of weed growth that goes on in there. We are going to start afresh next year with a clean slate:

The rains have come and worm casts are at last starting to appear in the meadows as the ground softens. This is good news for the badgers:

It seems a very long time indeed since I’ve seen a badger looking mucky like this.

After all the recent barn owl activity in the meadows, we have trained a camera onto the barn owl nest box that is up in one of the copses of trees. Two weeks on now and there have been no signs of a barn owl at the box. A tawny owl, however, did drop by one night:

I read that a tawny owl is unlikely to breed in a barn owl nest box, although it is not unheard of. We decided to have a check inside the box in case there were sticks, leaves or other detritus in there which would prevent an owl of any species from using it:

It was mostly clean in there, with just the sawdust on the floor that was put in when the box first went up two years ago. But a single owl pellet was lying on the floor in splendid isolation, suggesting that an owl had roosted within at some point this year:

You could see a lot of fur and a pair of orange rodent incisors sticking out of the right hand end of the pellet:

We dissected the pellet and entered into the wonderful world of trying to identify small rodent bones. As far as we could tell the pellet contained the remains of several field voles. The teeth that had been protruding were attached to this skull:

Below are several other skulls (on the left), lower jaws (in the middle) and hip bones (right) that were extracted from the pellet:

And shin bones (top left below), curved ribs (right) and, finally, thigh and arm bones (bottom left):

We don’t know whether the pellet was regurgitated by a barn owl or by a tawny, since both species are frequently hunting in the meadows at the moment. But it does seem like a good idea to get a tawny nest box up as well as the barn owl one, and we have chosen a location in the other copse of trees. A big old holm oak and whitebeam form the centre of the copse and there are several smaller trees at the edges:

I have now ordered two new tawny nest boxes from the Barn Owl Trust, one of which will go up in this copse of trees in the meadows. The second one is going to go into a new clearing that we plan to create in the wood this winter. However, we do know from experience that it may well be several years before anything happens in them.

I reported last time that there was something terribly wrong with the ringed female kestrel’s left eye:

The same thing happened last autumn as well, although on that occasion it was her right eye that had the issue. I don’t know what this problem is, but happily it doesn’t last for long and she is now back to full health:

The male is actually around the meadows more than her at the moment:

I noticed that WordPress now has the ability to generate a photo for you – you just tell it what you want. I asked it for a male kestrel on a branch and this is what it rustled up for me:

I find this a bit depressing. The generated image is so good that I think I might as well give up now and no longer bother trying to take photos of things myself!

But these days I do find myself using AI a lot, particularly to assist with moth identification as I go through the trap. It has speeded the whole process up hugely and made it far more enjoyable. It doesn’t always get it right, and I do still need to carefully check its ID, but it mostly gets me into the right area and is a sound starting point.

I have finished moth trapping for the year now, but am very much looking forward to recommencing operations next spring.

It is lovely to have this number of badgers around:

The mother pheasant and her six chicks are still wandering around the meadows. These chicks have also grown a lot and are now more noticeable since the meadows have largely been cut with fewer places to hide:

It has been interesting to see how long these chicks have stayed with their mother – apparently they will go around with her for 10 to 12 weeks as she teaches them how to survive in the wild. In stark contrast to this, a staggering 31 to 50 million pheasants are raised in hatcheries each year and are then released into the British countryside for recreational shooting. These unfortunate young birds will never have even seen their mother, let alone have the opportunity to learn anything from her, before being liberated into the great outdoors that they will have never seen before and be expected to fend for themselves. It is a very sobering thought.

Dave has nearly finished cutting both meadows now. The area below had a problem with vigorous wild parsnip growth, but, after several years of work, we have managed to sort this out. To celebrate this success, Dave has cut it especially short this autumn and it has been seeded with wildflower seed:

Emorsgate wildflower seed of various lovely native plants that do well on calcareous soils were scattered onto this area:

I thought that this next photo was very interesting. It is of one of our garden benches a few hours after some rain:

The lichen lacks a waxy cuticle and has acted as a sponge, absorbing and holding the rainwater and only slowly releasing it. Wherever lichens grow they thus create a damper microclimate, providing important habitats for wildlife and boosting biodiversity.

Over in the wood, the goshawk has returned for another visit:

A ghostly image of a tawny owl flying towards the nest box reminded me that we also needed to clean this owl box out.

The tawnies nested in this box this spring but, once the owlets had fledged at the beginning of May, stock doves moved in and raised their young in there too. A look in the box at the end of July, just prior to ringing these stock dove chicks, shows how many sticks the doves had brought in:

As we saw in the meadows this week, tawny owls do start prospecting potential nest sites very early indeed but they will not be able to use the box with those sticks in there. So here is another photo of Dave up a ladder, this time in the wood:

There is a camera on this box and so, after John had ringed the stock dove chicks in July, I knew that the doves had then gone on to attempt a second brood. Unfortunately it appears that this second, late brood had not been successful and there was a dead, unringed squab in the box.

There was also a sexton beetle in there, attracted by the smell of the carcass:

The sexton beetle will have been trying to bury the remains in the ground and then lay its eggs on it so that the beetle larvae will have food once they hatch. However, since the dead bird was in a box, this was never going to be a feasible plan.

This box is now cleaned out and is ready and waiting should the tawny owls decide to nest in there again next spring. I really hope that they do.

I would like to dedicate this post to Conor and Maddie since both my sister-in-law and my sister have lost their beloved labradors in the last month. Dogs become such a treasured part of the family and bring immense comfort and pleasure, but their lives go by way too fast.

There was great excitement when, back in August, a honey buzzard came down to one of the shallow ponds in the wood:

Honey buzzards are summer visitors to the UK, leaving for tropical Africa during September. So this bird will have left now but we really hope to see him again next year.

But a different rare and rather wonderful bird of prey has visited the wood this week and stepped in front of one of our trail cameras – a goshawk:

Goshawks are powerful avian predators and, as such, are vulnerable to persecution and egg theft. They were unfortunately driven to extinction in the UK in the 19th century.

An increase in records in the 1960s is thought to be because of escaped or deliberately-released captive birds, and it is from these birds that our current population grew.

The goshawk is now a scarce but widespread bird across Wales and southern Scotland and in other areas where there are large expanses of woodland such as the New Forest, Thetford Forest and Dartmoor. The population in the United Kingdom is estimated to be around 620 pairs.

The British Trust for Ornithology shows its breeding distribution as below, although this is only up until 2011:

These birds are Schedule 1 protected but, sadly, persecution still remains a threat and exact nest locations are kept secret. A bit of further research, though, suggests that there are now a few pairs breeding in the large woodlands of Kent – maybe even in the Blean which is quite close to our wood. Goshawks have been sighted there showing territorial behaviour during the breeding season.

The goshawk is new bird for the wood and comes in as number 52 on the list.

Sparrowhawks are frequently seen in the wood and here two of them are visiting the water together:

The meadows have had their share of thrills as well this week, starting with this photo of a short-eared owl at 6pm one evening, just as dusk was starting to fall:

The much better image below was taken by John the bird ringer who was driving back from a meeting at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory in February 2024 when he spotted the bird. Luckily he had his camera with him in the car:

These owls are famous for coming out to hunt during the day. It is speculated that the individuals that do this fledged in the Arctic where there is no darkness at all during the summer, so they became used to being out and about in daylight.

The most reliable place to see a short-eared owl locally is in the winter at Elmley nature reserve on the Isle of Sheppey and we are looking forward to staying there again this January.

Last week I realised that there are at least three different barn owls visiting the meadows. The bird on the left below appeared to be ringed on both legs, another one was ringed on the right leg and the third one was not ringed at all:

I sent the photo of what I presumed to be a colour-ringed barn owl to the other John who regularly rings here. The bird appears to have a metal ring on its right leg and a much bigger ring on its left:

John was intrigued because barn owls never travel very far and so are an unexpected species to want to colour ring. He spoke to a friend of his who has a lot of experience ringing barn owls in Kent and they both suspect that this might be an escaped captive-bred bird and that the ring on the right leg might be a ‘closed’ ring. Closed rings are seamless metal circles that are slipped onto young chicks legs when they are very small and can’t be put onto older birds with larger feet. They therefore act as evidence that the bird was bred in captivity and has not been taken from the wild.

I am hoping that this bird turns up again and that we can gather some further information on it but so far this week I have only seen unringed barn owls on the cameras. I would love to know where the barn owls that visit here are roosting and breeding. We do have a barn owl box up in the meadows which has a camera trained on it and I can tell you now that they are not roosting and nesting in there:

Here is an action shot of a tawny owl, the third species of owl seen here this week:

Tawny owls are also very active in the meadows at this time of year and we love to hear them atmospherically calling around the house once it gets dark.

Back in the spring we found a tawny nest less than a kilometre away from the meadows in an area blessed with many lovely old mature trees, so there has to be a good chance that the tawnies that come here are from that family:

And I can’t talk about tawny chicks without also mentioning the four tawny owlets that fledged from a nest box in the wood this May. John had ringed them all a few days previously:

John has been ringing in the meadows a couple of times this week:

He has been catching a lot of blackcaps and chiffchaffs:

This is a male firecrest weighing only 4.9 grammes:

And a goldfinch that looks a bit ropey because it is going through its post-juvenile moult:

Every evening I put a few peanuts out which allows me to keep an eye on the health of the resident foxes and take action if necessary. Mange is a terrible thing and is a recurring issue around here, but it is a relief to see that all of the regulars are currently looking in fine fettle:

With the addition of two of this year’s cubs, our badger numbers are up to six which looks like quite a herd:

This badger below was in the process of cleaning its armpit and having a good old scratch. Badgers really know how to loll around:

We are making progress on many of our autumn jobs. The first meadow is now cut and Dave has embarked on the much larger second meadow, rushing to get it finished before the weather breaks:

He really enjoys spending time out in the autumn sunshine, sitting high up on the tractor with far reaching views out to sea. I definitely do not feel the same about getting into his over-large waders and sinking into the sludge of the wild pond to pull out its overgrown vegetation:

I have made a bit of a difference and some open water is now visible, but I am the first to admit that there is still a long way to go:

This is also a time-critical job that needs to be completed before male frogs start to hibernate in all that mud at the bottom. But the problem is that there is not yet enough water in there to make the plants easy to pull. Perhaps all the rain that is forecast for the next few days will actually materialise and sort that out for me.

I finish today with our tile art installation which has just had its annual maintenance overhaul:

Made by Ellie, our daughter-in-law, a few years ago, I love how it looks now that it has aged and is becoming colonised by plants. A peep between some of the tiles shows that many invertebrates, small mammals and reptiles are happily living there amongst the tiles, which was exactly what we had hoped for. I cannot think of a better thing to have done with these surplus roofing products.