Keen as mustard

Along the base of our garden hedge there's been a surge of growth as garlic mustard  has shot up and it's now flowering. I spent a bit of time looking at the flowers today and taking a few photos - the new leaves looked beautiful in the morning sun.

Garlic mustard is a plant with plenty of folk names like Jack-by-the-hedge, sauce alone and penny hedge. Looking it up on the Postcode Plants Database on the National History Museum's website (which tells you about plants that are native to where you are) I was surprised to find it dismissed as "not gardenworthy". 

That seemed a bit harsh, but then I'm at the extreme end of relaxed when it comes to gardenworthiness. I'm more than happy to give garlic mustard garden room if only because bullfinches come looking for its little black seeds in early winter.

But it also serves another purpose. It's a food plant for four of the white butterflies - the orange tip, the small, the large and the green-veined.

What I didn't know until this morning's Googling is that I can eat garlic mustard too apparently. I'll have to give it a try.

Bee happy

Bee news doesn't tend to be that good, but here's a couple of reasons to be a bit more cheerful. Firstly, there's been a plan in the offing for a while to re-introduce the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus), but now it looks like it's actually going to happen.

The bumblebee was last recorded in the UK in 1988. The project will bring bees in from Sweden and release them near Dungeness, Kent.

Reason to be cheerful no.2 is the (fairly new) news that the government is now re-thinking its position on neonicotinoid pesticides. It would be good to know that those Swedish bees will be safe from harm in the find the Kent countryside.

Rules of engagement

What counts as a 'spot'? At the beginning of the month I decided to start a year-long garden bird list so that I could keep track of the number and variety of species that drop by.

Photo: Michael Steinbeck-Reeves

I'm certainly no twitcher. Not even a 'proper' birder either really - more a general naturalist with an interest in just about everything.

So, I could do with a bit of twitching guidance here. Should my list include birds that I hear, but don't see? And how about ones that fly over - or close to - my garden without touching down?

The over-fly question is particularly relevant today. I was busy in the shed at the bottom of the garden and heard the angry squawking that crows go in for when they're mobbing a bird that is seen as a threat.

With a quick glance out of the shed door I first saw a jackdaw doing aerial acrobatics and, second, the focus of its attentions, a red kite. On spotting me the jackdaw beat a hasty retreat, while the red kite kept up a steady pace heading north along the valley.

Its line of travel took it above, and parallel to, my boundary hedge. So, I'm wondering is that a bird for my list or isn't it?

Really looking

My week in Jersey was great, but it was a real treat to be back on my own patch yesterday. I spent much of the day down by the Cych waiting to see kingfishers. With no bankside vegetation and trees still mostly leafless, they're relatively easy to see just now.

In the garden everything is on fast-forward, the rate of growth is remarkable. The birds are busy too; a wren is sitting on eggs in the garage, the great tit is coming and going to the nestbox on the old apple tree and more and more swallows are arriving.

But the pond was the focus of my 'really looking' moment. As I say, there's been an explosion of plant growth and that includes pond algae. So, I thought I'd spend a bit of time fishing some out.

I use an old tennis racket for the job. It works really well, pulling out clumps of growth that can then be examined for trapped animals. 

Usually each scoop of green has one or two newt tadpoles in it, but yesterday I pulled out an adult newt. I popped it into a container to have a 'real' look and got a bit of a surprise.

At this time of year I take a look into the pond most nights and do a newt count - there are usually seven or eight in the shallow end. I 'd assumed that they are smooth newts, but may accidental catch was clearly a palmate.

My picture isn't good. OK, it's dire - but it does show the tiny filament at the end of the newt's tail and webbed back feet that are ID clinchers for a male palmate newt. Just goes to show that you shouldn't assume you know what you're looking at.  

Double first

It's been the perfect spring day here today; the wind has had an edge to it but when you're sheltered from it the sun is hot. My 'followed' is no surrounded by hedgebank plants that are growing at an incredible pace, but it remains closed up, with buds that are still as tightly locked down as they were in January.

While I was studying them an orange tip butterfly came by, a first for me this me. Later I saw my first swallows - a couple on telephone wires - so it feels that spring is really kicking in here in north Pembs.

Photo: Guido Gerding

I'm away tomorrow for a few days in Jersey. It will be an interesting contrast, but though I'm keen to be going I'm also sorry that I'll be missing almost a week of spring on the Cych. It's a shame I can't be in two places at once.

Hot news

The first swallows have been spotted here in the valley. Not by me, sadly. I've been stuck in front of a computer all day, but I trust this particular pair of eyes.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the pair of swallows that use the old nests in our garage drop in. There are three old nests up in the roof beams, but the best of them has now been converted into a wren nest.

The nest-builder, who we've decided to call Christopher, is spending much of his time in the hedge close to the garage door singing at top volume. And, I think I can just make out the tip of a bill in the nest entrance - his mate sitting on eggs?

What will happen when  the swallows turn up? Will they make do with one of the other old nests or will Christopher have a fight on his hands?

Yellow peril?

Do you care about bees? Of course you do, so you'll probably have noticed that bees - and other pollinating insects - are  scarcer now than they were years ago.

And this could be one reason why. It looks like tiny amounts of pesticide in pollen grains collected by hard-working bumblebees could be poisoning their colonies.

A study at the University of Stirling has found that when bumblebee nests and their queens were exposed to one of a group of pesticides called the neonicotinoids they grew more slowly and colonies raise fewer queen bees. Neonicotinoids are put onto seeds and then spread through a growing plant, which means that some of the chemical is found in pollen and nectar; they are often used on oilseed rape crops.
The levels of the chemical the bees were exposed to was relatively low - just what you'd commonly find in the UK countryside. The researchers say that foraging bees can gather poisoned pollen from as far away as a mile from their nest and bring it back to their nest, where it is fed to grubs that should go on to become queens.
Queen bees establish new colonies in spring, so fewer of them has a big impact on bumblebee populations. Other researchers have highlighted the impact of neonicotinoids on bees and other pollinators and campaigners are calling on the government to ban their us.

The Easter bunny

There's some very intense nest-building going on here at the moment. Just around the house there's the old swallow nest that's being refurbished in the garage, blue tits have moved into the sparrow terrace box (why not?) and a pair of sparrows are busy coming and going to a hole in the eaves of the house.

At the centre of all the activity is our rabbit hutch, where one of our pair of rabbits is moulting. The rabbit, a grumpy-looking, flop-eared veteran called Sweep, is shedding fur and it's caught on every surface of the hutch and run.

Of course, the timing of his moult is proving very convenient to the neighbourhood's birds, which are collecting beakfuls of the fine hair. This morning I've spent half and hour watching and seen a wren, a great tit and a female chaffinch all come to gather what must be top quality nest liner.

Nest recycling

Just a hint of movement in my peripheral vision suggest something had flown into the garage. Swallows nested in the roof beams last summer, so could it be the first swallow of the summer? On the first day of April?

Who am I fooling? When I went in to take a closer look the bird in question was up there among the beams, but of course it wasn't a swallow. It was a wren.

For wrens nest-building is a male chore and this particular cock wren has discovered last year's swallow nest and added his own touch, a roof of moss with a neat little entry hole. It  dawned on me that I had noticed bits of dry moss on the floor over the last few days, but hadn't thought to look up.

Now as far as I understand a male wren builds a number of nests around his territory and it's then down to the female to decide which one to use. Will she pick this customised swallow nest? 

And if she does, what happens when the swallows do turn up. It could be interesting.