We really do not deserve to get on. As
I am sure you will remember, we moved in on the Monday before last.
Well, last Monday, a week later, we realised that the door from the
sitting room into the garden was STILL unlocked. I say 'still'
because we have been in and out lots of times but neither of us
thought about locking it. Luckily nobody had tried it or . . .
This reminds me of a similar happening
at our old home. There the front door was very visible from the road
and we came back after being away for most of the day (we had been
down in Cornwall - this was when Marcia was writing Echoes of the
Dance) to find it not only unlocked but wide open. Then there was the
time that Marcia left her handbag in the porch on the windowsill in
full sight. As I said, we really do not deserve to get on.
You will not be that surprised to hear
that one of the first jobs was, I felt, to put up a bird table. To be
a little more accurate, to make a bird table and fix it to a fence
post that a kindly removal man had rammed into the bank behind the
house where Marcia can see it when she is working and we can both see
it when we are in the sitting room. From there being only one stray
blackbird that looked in now and then (encouraged by Marcia throwing
odd bits and pieces out for him) within a day the garden became very
busy. Regular visitors include the blackbirds (obviously a pair).
Blue tits, great tits, coal tits, dunnock, house sparrows, a
chaffinch and a greenfinch. We have heard a great spotted woodpecker
drumming down on one of the trees by the River Dart (which is only a
couple of fields away) so I have high hopes that we shall soon see
them on the nuts here.
Staying on the nature theme, we had
been out in the garden doing a little cleaning up and had returned to
the kitchen. There, on Marcia’s arm, was a ladybird. Now, you will
remember that on the blog of 13 March I put up a photograph of our first
Dartington ladybird. Well, that one was a native known as the Seven-Spot Ladybird but the one
here is, unless I am mistaken and I hope I am, a Harlequin. I put it
that was because that is quite bad news.
 |
| A little out of focus, I fear. The beetle was on Marcia's sleeve and I was able to get it onto a piece of paper before grabbing a camera and taking the picture. As always, you hit the button immediately (just in case) and was only just in time: it flew away before I had time to do anything else. |
We have forty-six species of ladybird
here in the UK – there are about five thousand worldwide and I
think well over four hundred in the US (where I think they are called
ladybugs) so we have quite a small number by comparison. The
Harlequin is not a native in either the UK or the US and is proving
to be rather a nuisance. It was deliberately introduced, of course,
to control aphids but what was not known at the time was that it is
incredibly invasive. They are posing a real threat to the true native
species and now some are facing extinction.
Another introduction in Devon is the
European Beaver. This species was a native here but was hunted to
extinction about five hundred years ago. There was a furious debate
about the whole thing in which I became involved – if only
peripherally – three or four years ago. Some beavers had escaped
from a wildlife park very close to Roadford Lake, a reservoir near
where we used to live. There had been a large planning application to
build a holiday complex beside the lake which some of us felt was out
of scale. As a result, a Roadford Lake Society was formed and I was
the first secretary. Thus we became involved when the beavers escaped
– the whole thing divided the community into the “fors” and the
“againsts”. Now there have been sightings on the River Otter (a
touch of serendipity here, one feels) which is about eighty miles to
the east of that lake. Someone has managed to get a photograph of two
of them together and so some people are hoping they will breed this
summer. I rather hope so too but I do have a few reservations: we
really don’t know what will happen any more than the people who
released the Harlequins did. Has there been another escape or have
these two travelled that far? No good reason why they shouldn’t.
One species we can be fairly certain
will not face extinction just yet is the dog. This week’s blog dog
is Billy who belongs to Brian who sells things in the market at
Totnes on Fridays. The week I took these photographs, one of those
“things” was a three piece suite. No idea how well this went down
with the punters but Billy thought it was great.
