Serpent Surprise

So we were sitting at lunch when one of the Crofters noticed something strange about the window. It appeared to be moving, gliding...

...and then we saw this:

A Ladder snake, Elaphe scalaris, had squeezed in behind the window. She or he was moving too fast to measure, but must have been more than a metre long.

Green Glasssss ssssnake

She was quite insistent on coming in, and even when we had closed the window, kept on trying to get in. She scaled the grape vine outside the kitchen, and seemed to be heading for the roof when I gently picked her up and put her back into the field.

Nature is so close, here at the Croft. If we were to leave, Nature would happily take over.

Hypodermic murder

Every time they leave the safety of the hive, the bees are exposed to dangerous, bloody, unforgiving Nature. Fly too high, and the beautiful bee eaters (Merops apiaster) will catch them. Hang around outside the hive, and the imported Asian Hornet (Vespa velutina) will capture, and then disect them.

But I'd never seen this before. An Assassin Bug, Rhinocoris iracundus, killing a bee, by stabbing it with its hypodermic mouth parts and then - I assume - sucking the insides out like some honeyed cocktail:

Fly-by dinner

Juiced in time for tea

Table setting, with orange blossom

 It's rough, out here at the Croft.

Living on Others

It's all interconnected, is Nature. And here is the perfect illustration; a parasite from the plant world, broomrape (Orobanche sp.). It might be Thistle Broomrape, Orobanche reticulata, but then it might be quite a number of similar but different broomrapes. The lack of any green makes them very obvious, in this year's wet and sunny Spring:

No greens for me, chum

The wet spring has also meant a bloom in funghi, and this, I think, is Tremella mesenterica, growing on a felled oak in the woodlands. In a few years, the funghi will have liquidised the tree, enriching the humus and helping recycle the nutrients back to the new trees already growing around it.

 
We are alive thanks to these cycles and recycles...ad infinitum.

Lockdown Veggies

We are very lucky to be here at the Croft in these strange times of lockdown and quarantine. Lucky because of the space to move around outside, lucky because we have livestock that require us to get outside, lucky because we are naturally isolated from the outside world, 4km up a dirt track from the village, and lucky because we have helpful, kind, thoughtful neighbours - people who look out for each other in difficult times.

Just before the lockdown, Hester, the daughter of a friend from Cornwall, and her friend Kerry, came to stay for the night before dashing across the border to France, and then back to England.

We devised and then built an experimental raised bed in the vegetable garden, using hazel poles:

A sticky situation

Hester and Bed

 It's been a total success. We planted it with courgettes (zucchini) and they have bloomed, with the fruit just forming now.

To Marrow is Another Day

Thanks to brilliant planning by Hester and Kerry (or, possibly, good luck), the bed is 1.4 metres x 1.4 metres - in other words 2 square metres*. So if I'm bored in the lockdown I can measure precisely how much water the plants are getting, by emptying 4 litres into the bed - 2 litres per square metre. 

Covid does seem to bring out the obsessive gardener in me...

*Thanks to my dad, a civil engineer, for a correction here

Glorious Gloria

Gloria, the storm that is currently passing over Catalonia, has left its mark at the Croft. We've had more rain in one night than we've had since records began (my records, anyway), with 128 litres per square metre (128mm) which is the maximum that my rain meter can read. My neighbour up the  track emptied his 45mm rain meter three times during the night, so likely ours ran over. The last rainfall to get near this figure was on 12th September 2006 when we had 122mm.

The donkeys don't like it:

Jings it's gey dreich here, pal

...and for the humans,  there is currently no way in, or out, except on foot. The track has been washed away, and is currently on the way to the Mediterranean:

Sink or swim

But the house is fine, we've got supplies and plenty of wood to keep us cosy, so nae worries, hen.

Update

The storm has gone, leaving us to clear up the remains. The good news is that we  now have a beach by the stream, so will be offering sun 'n' sand holidays to anyone who wants them:

Just add sun umbrella and a pink gin

Rotten beauty

It's been an autumn and winter full of fungi. Here are a couple:

A jewelled field mushroom

This might be a Pleurotacia, but then it might be a lot of other species too. It is a parasite on the stump of a dead pine tree:

Gilded gills

Sticky end

This is what happens when you try to raid honey from my hives. You get got:

Caught in the Matrix

I found this hawk moth (Sphingidae) corpse when I was cleaning out the hives this winter.

Beeched Marten

We have a Beech Marten  (Martes foina) who takes the occasional chicken. I've seen one - at least her ears - in a night-time photo in my camera trap, but had never seen one close up.

Until Boxing Day, that is, when an individual who had probably been on a blinder the night before was a wee bit slow to react to the  noises of me waking up and letting the dogs out...and so ended up in our persimmon (Diospyros kaki) tree.

Persisting in the Persimmon

She (or he, I'm not up to sexing Martens up trees) stayed there all day, disappearing only at night when the dogs were safely shut up. She is welcome at the Croft - I'm sure that it is she, with the owls, that keep the rat population at bay.

Salamanders in my Salad Spinner

We had a veterinary visit before Christmas, from a vet who is an absolute amphibian admirer. On a wet and blustery night, she headed down to the stream to count salamanders (Salamandra salamandra). In November there are lots of salamanders moving around...so she picked up a few to photograph them...

Too many for the Tupperware

...and then picked up more, and more, until we had fifteen chunky salamanders in the only container with sides that were steep enough to prevent them climbing out - my salad spinner.

We're all in a spin

Hence the aliterating title, with due respect to Lucy Daniels, the wonderful children's author of Llama on the Loose, Puppy in Peril and many other aliterating animal titles.

We photographed the salamanders - not easy, when they are warm and start to move fast - and plan to do a recapture in a month or so. Their patterns are, I think, unique to each individual so we should be able to do a population estimate with a few captures and recaptures. All of the salamanders were returned to their homes after the short spell indoors.