A strange continuous buzzing noise caught my attention. I then quickly got my camcorder and film this encounter. Two bumblebees mating. The strange thing is that they seem to be from different species. It it also quite funny to listen to the male's noise as the pitch of its noise gets increasingly higher. He looks like he is having fun but I don't know anything about their mating patterns. Sorry the quality of the video is not the best but hopefully you will still get to enjoy it.

Fish - Starting a pond

I would like to write about our pond fish, not for the benefit of any of my readers but simply because I would like to keep a record of it for myself.
We started our pond in 2013.
In the garden of our newly purchased property, we found a disused water tank covered with a layer of flint stones. It was originally used as a water reserve in the event of fire as fire engines would not have been able to reach the property which is located near the end of a narrow lane.

So, we got to work, We opened the tank ...

 ...emptied it, cleaned it...

...and filled it with water. We then bought one water lily (at £15 the plant, it had to be only one!) and 6 water hyacinths (they were on special offer, 6 for £6, I think)...

The exciting moment was when we purchased 6 comets ( comet goldfish)...

 ... and let them free into the tank.

Things did not seem to go well after that. By the autumn, the water lily and the hyacinths had died and we saw a heron at the edge of the tank. From that day onwards, we never saw any fish and concluded that the heron had eaten them all.

What a disappointment really after all our hard work....

Wildlife at Bletchley Park - Heron spying on cygnets

As we went to visit Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, we stopped by the pond to eat our sandwiches.
The grass by the pond was busy with wildlife. Ducks and their babies, swans and their babies and even an opportunistic heron hoping to get a tasty snack....
The keeper said that the heron would happily eat a duckling but as I was filming, I saw the heron get closer to the two cygnets which were swimming at the edge of the pond with their mother.

As the heron gets closer, you can see the female swan opening her beak and telling it to keep away from her babies. But it ignore her so she goes for it and scares it away.

I hope you enjoy this small clip:

Rescuing a lamb with its head stuck in fence

Before I tell you my story about the silly lamb, I would like to give some information about sheep, information that I have learnt just living next door to a field.

Every year around Easter time, the farmer brings his ewes and their newly born lambs to the field at the back of our house. They spend the whole summer there feeding on the grass. Then, in autumn, when the lambs are nice and fat, they are taken away from their mums to be slaughtered. The ewes are left on their own in the field for two or three weeks, after which time the farmer brings the ram. They will stay together until just before winter arrives.
So, now let's get back to my story!
Sometime back in August 2015, we heard a lamb crying on, and on, and on.... Hearing sheep is not an unusual occurrence as these animals are quite vocal, ewes and lambs regularly calling each other day or night.
But, on that occasion, the noise was a constant pitch and seemed to come from the exact same place.
Having found a dead ewe in the river a few weeks earlier, we assumed that another ewe had died and her lamb was crying for her.
As we climbed over the fence to investigate, we saw a lamb across the field with its head stuck in the stock fence.
As we were approaching, the lamb seemed a little agitated but then, it calmed down. It could not go anywhere anyway.

Have a look at the video clip below to find out how we managed to free the lamb.
What the clip does not show (because I stopped my camcorder too early!) is that the lamb then ran up to its mum and vigorously suckled milk from her.
This lamb is so big that you can mistake it for a ewe but seeing it suckling just prove that it is just a baby.

King Fisher stealing my fish

I was looking at the garden through my kitchen window while on the phone to my mother-in-law when I saw an unusual bird sitting on one of the small branches of our apple tree. I had never seen such a bird in my garden before. How beautiful!
 As I was describing it to my mother-in-law, the bird flew down to the pond and retrieved one of my fish!!It then sat on the edge and hit its head on the stone before flying away.

Suddenly, that bird was not beautiful anymore... You thief!!

Red kyte eating

I caught a female red kyte on top of an electrical pole eating a small rodent (mice or  vole), On the video below, you can see her pull the flesh off its victim with fur flying around them.
After her meal, she peens herself and then has a little rest. This video was taken in January 2016.

   

December 2015, food is getting scarce so a bird feeder full of peanuts is a great treat for this jay.
See the video below to view how this jay collects and hides its peanuts.