Nature Notes

[poliphilo]

The horses have eaten the fields down to the roots and will be moving to their summer quarters. The fields will now have several months to recover and the horses will be back in the autumn. I didn't know it, but apparently this is exactly the regime you need to follow if you want to create a wildflower meadow. The chap with the big farm was explaining it on Countryfile a few days back: horses get rid of the tough knotty grasses and give the more delicate wildflowers room to grow.

Some critter- almost certainly big corvid- keeps waltzing off with the peanut feeders. Usually I find the feeders a short distance away but this morning one of them had disappeared completely. I had a replacement to hand (because we bulk buy everything) and this time I've tied it in place. But can crows undo knots? I wouldn't put it past them.

Comments

[cmcmck]

We had one of our feeders wired shut because jackdaws.

They worked it out.............. :o)

[poliphilo]

Clever, clever, clever!

[pouco_abacate]

LOL!! Them corvids are smart eh?

[poliphilo]

Certainly are.

[pouco_abacate]

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

EAP -- if not the best writer in history.