Ravendale House

It’s always good to start the year with a good news story, so here’s a small one to get things going.

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When we lived at Ravendale House and it said on the news that the number of sparrows in the UK was falling, we used to laugh and say, “no it’s not, it’s just that they’re all living in our garden”.

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Having lived at Ravendale House, with a large garden, for 15 years, I think it would be fair to say the most unusual creatures we saw in all that time were a few Shield Bugs (Palomena prasina) and a Lousy Watchman (Geotrupes stercorarius ). The latter giving me quite a scare when I bumped into it whilst weeding. We’ve only been here 2 weeks, and I can already trump both of those sightings.

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Eleven days ago we had the kitchen window replaced. The old one had developed a fault in the double glazed unit and it was like looking out through a thick fog.

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I’ve mentioned before how a lot of our garden birds seem to go missing in August. The wood pigeons are still around, as is a ‘this years’ robin and a handful of sparrows, but that’s pretty much it apart from a blackbird.

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It’s no surprise that we have hedgehogs in our garden, and the good news is that I get to see them pretty close, as they like to come and eat the cat food I put out by the back door.

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A few days ago, between showers(!) I decided to collect some seeds from one of my favourite Aquilegias, ‘McKana’. They were tiny, ripe, jet black and very shiny. I was amused to see one being carried off by an ant, and childhood memories of cartoon ants raiding picnics came flooding back.

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I’ve written at some length recently about the starlings who nest in and around our house. It is a few weeks since they all fledged and some pairs are now busy tending their second brood.

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At 3.37am this morning, as I made my customary mid-nightly trip to the bathroom, I could hear a blackbird singing in the garden, even though dawn was barely visible. Don’t birds lead an extraordinary life?

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Well I’ve been waiting a week or two now for this years starlings to arrive, in fact I was becoming a bit concerned about them given the recent poor weather.

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