As the Newt flies.....

The number of Siskins in the garden has decreased this week....no doubt the initial batch having moved on and being replaced by the following crowd all heading ooop north....

There hasnt really been much on the feeders in the garden this winter.....very few tits or finches in fact....the biggest invasion has really been the Siskins....so I decided to feed sunflower hearts, which they seemed to like....slightly annoyingly the Goldfinch have taken to them too and left the nijer seed mostly alone....

This week I have been lucky enough to have a solitary Redpoll visiting with the Goldfinches which is rather nice....also, a neighbour gave me a squirrel proof (ha ha ha, tell the squirrel!!) peanut feeder...so I purchased some peanuts (havent done for a couple of years) and a single Long Tail Tit was seen on them....

Whilst I have been, almost daily, popping to the shed at the bottom of the garden to top up the feeders I have noticed the abundance of blanket weed gradually increasing...well...ive noticed over the winter period I suppose....ho-hum....so I thought I would get on top of it before the return of the Frogs....but...

too late....Frogs spawn.....appeared in the last 24-36 hours...

I knew it would be a bit of a risk leaving it this long....ah well....anyway, the Frogs seemed to have been most productive, looks like more than last year....but at least it spurred me on to get out and start the usual preying mantis look that I have to adopt throughout the year over the pond to remove this green invader....

So I picked most of it out by removing large clumps of pond weed which is another task that has to be undertaken regularly as it seems rather at home and grows rapidly....then I sifted through it to remove any pond life...such as dragonfly larvae, several of....freshwater leeches....several of...and....a rather splendid....

Common Newt