Meet Isaac

This is Isaac. He lives here at Falcon Cottage. Isaac is in fact a Smooth or Common Newt photographed here sitting on the edge of the pond. He’s new to the world at barely an inch long. Although the pond is only three years old newts were using it within the first year. That begs the question. How did they find it? Situated here on the top of a hill, amid a sea of cereal crops with no body of water within many hundred of metres did they just wander here in anticipation of finding a pond? In other words was it just random; or is something else at work? Can they sense the water? Who knows.

Thunderbirds are go!

Something broke my concentration. It took me a while to realise it was a commotion in the garden. The panicky alarm call of a Blue Tit took me to the back window. I could see an adult alarming in the back sycamores moving from one side of the garden to the other. She was worried about something. I was looking for the Stoat or perhaps the neighbours cat. Nothing. What was she alarming over? It took me a while to see the splashing in the corner of the pond. A bit of an International rescue was called for. When I perched her recently fledged youngster in the sunshine to dry off it wasn’t long before his mother came down to gather him up.

 

 

Empress

While looking over the wildflower test patch I put in at Falcon Cottage I got buzzed by a Dragonfly. It was a female Emperor, or should it be Empress? She immediately began egg laying in the pond.
Sitting on the vegetation she lowered her abdomen into the water and deposited her small white cargo; individually sticking the eggs to the stalks of the plants. Even before she had finished another female came and joined her.