an act of great stupidity ...?

Baby robin

A cold wind from the east. Drying the ground and bringing no rain. At night sharp frosts.

Male lesser redpoll

The garden is still burring with bramblings. Quite exceptional. Bramblings are the vikings of the finch world, raiding our feeders from their homes in the north of Europe in winter and vanquishing all opposition. Mostly male birds. Our guess is that, like their chaffinch cousins, when migrating they form largely single sex flocks. Linnaeus named the chaffinch Fringilla coelebs - coelebs (the bachelor) - due to this winter segregation. Perhaps the same is true of bramblings as we caught fourteen males and only one female in a brilliant ringing session led by Rich today.
Lesser redpolls too, remain for the time being but in small numbers.

In size contrast, feral greylag geese have taken a liking to George's Pond, honking in this morning at after dawn. Perhaps they'll help me out by gorging on the Parrots Feather (Mycriophylum aquaticum) invasive aquatic pond plant infestation. I can't remove it now for fear of damaging strings of toad spawn that may be tangled within it. Purple snakeshead fritillaries hang their pretty chequered heads in clusters around the ponds edge.

Some of our early summer migrant birds are now here, singing whilst building themselves up after their migration from Africa: chiffchaffs and blackcaps. A chiffchaff we caught today weighed 7 grammes - the weight of two penny coins. They undertake a migration of thousands of miles from Western Africa each year.
Our resident birds get on with it. Today, our first tiny juvenile robin ringed. Barely able to fly, robins are frequently ground-nesting birds. Their young leave the nest early as predators may find ground nests easily. Hugely vulnerable, we hope to meet him/her in adulthood but the chances of survival for these little birds are always slim.

This was a vintage ringing session for us. We have been aware for some time how abundant birds are in the garden. Catching seventy three birds of sixteen species without the use of tape lures exceeded our hopes. Goldfinches were the most frequently caught on this occasion and none previously ringed. How many must there be in our nomadic goldie population? Four blackcaps and three chiffchaffs was also a surprise - we had assumed one male of each species. There must be many uncaught too.

Vegetable garden

There is a tawny owl in one of the nest boxes. In an act of what appears to be great stupidity, a stock dove tries to share occupation. Tawny owls will eat stock doves. Surprisingly, this behaviour is not isolated to our garden, in fact the opposite. Stock doves have been recorded attempting to cohabit with kestrels and barn owls too. Even more surprisingly, their numbers are on the rise.
Moles vandalise the vegetable garden beds and my hope is that the tawnies will help me here if not sated on stock doves. Tawnies depend on juvenile moles for a large proportion of their diet in early summer.
In the vegetable garden it is typically in those areas where seeds have been sown and watered that the moles are most destructive. Carrots have germinated but undermined and rows decimated. Parsnips won't appear for several weeks from the seed sown: I can guess their fate.
Multi-sown onions, beetroot and peas (for pea shoots) fare rather better; and especially so where they are protected by fleece from the drying cold wind and overnight frosts. Autumn planted broad beans, shallots, garlic and onions seem impervious although this long dry spell will affect their yield.
The garden continues to crop giving us 7.5kg of food since 8 March. Asparagus sensibly stays deep under cover, unwilling to emerge into this cold spring - while its rhubarb neighbours look across in some disdain.

Poo Pete came with a generous trailer full of horse manure on Saturday. 'Look out, it's a tsunami of shit!' I heard as the load slid down in an avalanche towards my feet. This manure should be composted for over a year but such is our need that we may be pressed to use it as we mulch the vegetable beds in autumn.