Saturday 14th June 2014
Peace reigns. All is quiet in the glen - apart from the busy lawnmowers and the builders who are renovating an old house across the road. The locals like to complain about the disruption to their lives but there is always a vague feeling of anti-climax after TT.
So, no more racing bikes screaming around the Island roads. The noise of their engines doesn't disturb us when we are at home. We just hear a distant buzz - like a swarm of angry wasps. Now there is just the gentle hum of the bees in the garden . . . and the constant twittering of baby birds.
We do have occasional visits from wildlife other than birds and bees. I saw this little wood mouse on Monday evening.
But the baby birds are still the big news of the week. The first baby blue tit was spotted outside the kitchen on Tuesday.
Two arrived together. I didn't see the parents feeding them. Blue tit babies seem to be more efficient and capable of looking after themselves than the other juvenile tits. The only difference between the babies and the adults is that the young birds have a grey cap on the top of their heads instead of blue, and yellow on the cheeks.
The tits seem to be our only customers at the bird feeder that use their feet to grasp pieces of food when they are eating.
We have had some other baby birds as well. One little speckled juvenile robin has been fossicking for food under the feeders. It kept bouncing around and then diving under the raspberries and disappearing but I managed to get a photo eventually. They only get their red breasts after the autumn moult.
There have been chaffinch babies too. They are not so interesting because they look very much like the adult females. The only way I can be sure they are juveniles is if I see a parent bird feeding them. All my "feeding" photos are blurred because the birds are moving and the light hasn't been good enough to use a fast shutter speed - but this is a baby chaffinch with its father's blurred rear end disappearing off the left edge of the photo.
On Thursday we drove out to the Point of Ayre. We were met by the usual pair of ringed plovers. They seem to be walking around in the sparse vegetation near the old fog horn every time we visit the area - but are always just too far away for a really good photo.
Parts of the shingle shore were fenced off because the arctic terns are nesting. We stayed off the beach but the birds took exception to us walking along the grassy path above the beach and flew over us in a threatening way, making harsh grating squawks. I didn't get a photo of the terns in flight but managed to focus on one landing on the beach. I don't know whether the assortment of old seaweed and rubbish is a nest - or just happened to be there.
We had a good walk in the sunshine and on the way back to the car I noticed that the burnet roses are flowering.
Which reminded me that we have a mystery rose in the garden. It was here when we bought the property and is growing in about the worst possible place - behind the poppies, right next to the wall in front of the house, under the overhanging wistera and clematis. I left it there because I thought it would be impossible to move it to a better place; too difficult to dig out with all the competing roots in the area. But against all the odds it has survived and even produces an occasional flower. I have never taken much notice of the rose . . . until this year when I have been wandering round the garden with a camera, searching for something interesting to photograph. I thought I would try to identify it but had no success so I wrote to a couple of more knowledgeable friends. I suspect that it may be Peace - but I remember Peace as being paler.
The buds start out yellow with red stripes . . .
. . . and the first day the flowers appear to be yellow . . .
. . . but the next day the petals start turning pink . . .
. . . and the flower "fades" to a deeper and deeper shade of pink before the petals fall.
I think I will try taking cuttings and if they grow, I will risk trying to move the plant in autumn.
The "Manx palms" are flowering with gay abandon this year. Everything is doing well after the mild winter. I like using the local name because it is so absurd. They are not Manx and are not even palms. They were brought here from New Zealand and are also known as cabbage trees (Cordyline australis). We have two and they were given to us by our neighbour from across the road when they were just babies and looked like tufts of coarse grass. We didn't know what they were and had no idea that they would grow into trees. The flowers grow in huge bunches and remind me of clusters of white starfish. The bees love them and the birds enjoy the small white berries.
The front garden is looking subdued now we have come to the end of the poppies. The last stragglers are flowering in front of the skimmia in front of the house. One of our Manx palms is in the background - on the right hand side.
There are a few new flowers and weeds this week. First the weeds. The ragged robin is spreading on the lower terrace. It likes damp shady places. This is a magnified image of the flowers.
These campanula do not need magnification. I bought a packet of seed more years ago than I can remember. The flowers in the picture on the seed packet were blue but just one of the seeds produced white blossom. Both colours have been coming up in various parts of the garden ever since.
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