Bird Boxes, Pond Update, New Pond Nets and Something Else....

Hello there, welcome back. In this video I'm going to be quickly showing you a few signs of spring, a little update on what we've been doing around the place with regard to creating the space where I'm going to be working from and also I'm going to be fixing and putting up some bird boxes and bat boxes. Okay these are some of the ones that I've just repaired with hammer and nails and I'm going to be putting these ones up in various parts around the wood. You notice there's different types. Here we've got some with little holes in, probably about an inch and an eighth or an inch and a quarter in diameter. Here we've got ones with a big opening and they're just for different types of birds. I mean we've got a really tiny one here. I don't really know what's going to go in there because that is absolutely tiny but we'll stick it up anyway. And we've also got some little plates as well, some aluminium plates and again they have got different size holes in. There you go, we've got three different size holes. I think that one's an inch, that one is an inch and an eighth, and that one is inch and a quarter. But all of those have pretty much just dropped off the trees. I've been picking them up as we've been doing the work in the wood, so they're all repaired and they're going to go up in various places around the wood. And I'm going to try and hide most of these boxes in fairly thick trees or bushes. And that's because we've got two very active cats in the garden, and they are just a death squad. They're going to find it very difficult to climb up here, so hopefully anything that nests in here will be safe. There is some other ones that I'm going to put on other trees that the cats have got no chance of getting into, but we also have the problem of grey squirrels as well. Now here's one that's been attacked by a grey squirrel. The squirrel's come around here and it's basically just chewed its way into here. You can see how big that hole is now. That's what those plates are for. I'm going to stick the plates. Over here, to stop the squirrel getting in. But squirrels aren't the only problem. Unfortunately, this one has been targeted by a greater spotted woodpecker. The bird's basically landed on here and it's just pecked its way through here to get in and get the chicks. There's another one up there, victim of the squirrel. So all of those boxes are going to get plates put on to protect them from future squirrel or future woodpecker attack. It'll probably come as a little bit of a shock for people to learn that the woodpecker does get into the bird boxes and eat the little young birds, but it does happen, definitely does happen. Yet I still love to see the woodpeckers in the garden, a little bit like sparrowhawks. I like to see the sparrowhawk in the garden, but when it comes down over that hilltop, over the pond, and it hits where I feed the birds, it's just a murder hole. But looking at it objectively, I'm actually creating the environment to support more birds to feed more predators so it is a question of balance. That one up there is a bat box. It's a totally enclosed box with a little slit in the bottom. The idea is the bats land on the tree and crawl up there and they should actually breed in there. They'll certainly live there during spring through till autumn. And we've got another one up there and I can see that the screw that's been holding it at the top has actually come off. So I'm going to have to climb up and I'll nail that one to the tree because the nails don't shear off like the screws do. Alright, that's all of the bird boxes put up in various places around the wood. I'll not show you them all, but you'll no doubt see them in upcoming videos in the background behind me. I think in total I've probably got about 30 or 40 up in this little woodland. That's why there's so many birds about. The only one I've got left is this one, which is actually a bat box. That's got to go somewhere that's reasonably open and yet a little bit shaded as well. So I can't just put it right in the middle of the wood where it's nice and shaded for the bats because it's too dense. They're simply just not going to fly in there, you know. So I need to put it kind of on the outskirts of somewhere that we've opened up yet somewhere that's still shaded. The idea behind these is the bat will land on here, climb up here and it'll hang upside down from the top of here. And I've got one of these that's very very low and I was just about to pull it off the tree and put it somewhere higher when I saw something that's very interesting and it's a clear sign the bats have been using it. This is actually where I feed the birds. I've got three peanut feeders here and one grain feeder. Then all the grain drops on the ground and we get the pheasants here on a night clearing it up. But just above that feeder, probably no more than six foot up the tree, we've got a bat box and I don't know why I put it that low but I'm glad I did. We'll just take a look underneath where the bats climb up. Hopefully you can see these little light areas here, that's where the bats claws have actually grabbed a hold and just pulled little bits of wood up and they go all the way up inside there and that actually looks like it's been worn by the backs of the bats going up here and gradually wearing away that piece of wood so I think that's been used for a hell of a long time. So I'm going to leave that one. Right I think we're going to go with that big tree up there, that way. Is my pond really really open? The bats feed there all the time. Wind's coming from the west, it's going to be sheltered. We've got quite a good covering of trees there so it's going to be shaded as well. So that's where this one's going. Now these boxes are put up at all sorts of different heights on different trees in varying amounts of sun and shade but generally the hole is pointing east. Wind here generally comes from the west so that's very well sheltered from the wind. And all the boxes I've put up are facing that same way, because that seems to be the way that the birds favour. And just next to my pond is a box I put up a long time ago. And you can see by all of the worn away timber around that hole, there's been something using that. There's actually birds using that now. You can see all the mucky marks around here, that's off their bellies and off their wings as they go in. Just dropping bits of muck on there. And this one's actually been used by tree sparrows, which are pretty rare in the UK. We've got two or three boxes with tree sparrows in. A little terrapin there. That shows that spring is well and truly underway. Now a few days ago, I had a company called Bradshaws from the UK contact me. And I was well aware of Bradshaws after being in the pond trade myself for about 20 plus years. Bradshaws are one of the UK's premier suppliers of pond gear. And they have been for decades. Somebody from there contacted me and they said, would you like to take a look at some nets? I don't really use nets on my pond very often, and when I do, they tend to let me down. So he insisted that these ones would not let me down, so I'm actually going to unbox them and let you know what I think as soon as I've unboxed them. I don't know what they're like. I know they do have a supposedly very, very good fixing system, but I've never seen that in person, so I don't know what it's like. You're going to see them as I see them, and I'm going to let you know my honest opinion of them. So first of all whether these are good or bad I'd like to give thanks to Bradshaw's for sending them out for me to take a look at. Obviously they knew that I knew my pond gear and was a reasonably reliable person to take a look at these so I thank you for that. This one is obviously the handle. I think there's five or six nets in this particular shipment and one handle and I And I can see it already, that is one meaty strong handle. Telescopic as well. Yeah, that's not just round either, it's kind of fluted, so it doesn't twist, very solid, with a lot of the round ones, when you're getting something out of the pond, they tend to twist and the net will drop off at a different angle, and this seems to stop that from happening, so straight away, this looks good. Lovely chunky handle, I mean that must be about inch and three quarters, really chunky, I can barely get my hand round it. I'll just give you a close up on that handle, that's like a hard foam, almost like a neoprene. That's about 18 inches apart. That's good. And at the very end, I've got a little spring-loaded pin. Presumably, the net slots down over that, the pin comes through a little hole and locks it in position. But we'll see. I've got a catalogue and a list of things that have arrived, but I don't want to look at the list because I want it to be a total surprise. Well, that's unusual. Very unexpected and very welcome. On this net, the fine mesh doesn't just loop around the metal. It does, but it's actually got a shroud around it of material, and there's a piece of rigid plastic along here. So when you scrape it on in the bottom of your pond, you're not just wearing through the net. That is a really, really nice touch. I used to actually cut hose pipe with a slit down the middle and cable tie it to the end of my nets, just to stop them getting damaged when I'm scraping them along the bottom of the pond. Now there's no need. And that actually feels very, very tough. It's not like a normal fabric. It's more like a, I don't know, it's like a rubber. It's a very strange material. Seems very tough. Yeah. There's the head. There's the hole where our little pin comes through. That is a nice, robust head. Yes, that locks in very, very nicely. And that's quite a deep net. That's the first one out of the box, and already I'm impressed. It's very, very good. So that one is approximately 16 inches square, maybe 20, 21 inches diagonally across. That's a good strong net. That one's exactly the same. Oh no, it's not. That one's different. It looks exactly the same, but it isn't. It's exactly the same, except the mesh on this other one is a lot wider. So there's two nets that are almost exactly the same, but subtly different. Just looking at the bottom of these nets, Where the bottom piece of mesh is fixed to the sides. One, two, three. It's actually triple stitched. And the stitching goes cross over as well. That's really, really solid. Yeah, I think they've made a mistake with this one. These are meant to be different nets. And we've got one, two, three, four, five, six. We've actually got six nets the same. These ones are huge koi nets. I'm not going to open them all up because I think I'll send, well, I will send these ones back. They've obviously arrived by mistake. That's a lovely big net. Same sort of protection all the way around. And this one has a traditional mesh, extremely soft. And that's a nice one just for lifting the koi out. That's a mega long net, look at that. Unless you've got a pond the size of me, you're easily gonna be able to reach it in the middle of your pond with this fella. Now there is another net that's come. I've just noticed that, that fell out the first box. It's different to the six large koi nets that arrived as well. Now the label doesn't say what this is but this is actually a koi sock. So you would get your fish into a large container, put it head first into here, your hand over the end of here, carry it to wherever you wanted it to go, release this hand and if you notice that's got an open bottom to it. So if you were just using this as a net obviously the fish would just drop straight out the bottom. But as long as you have your hand over the end, you get your fish in here, you can carry it very safely using this very soft mesh. So that's what proper koi keepers would be using to carry their fish around. Seems good quality as well. This one is by a company called Pond H2O. And the previous nets that I've shown you and that long handle was from a company called Pond Craft. Bradshaw sell all of this stuff. I've never heard of Pond H2O before, but I have heard of Pond Craft. Because they make a hell of a lot of pumps and filters and all sorts of lights and everything for your pond. They have done for years. The quality seems pretty good. Okay, I'm pretty sure that I've seen a picture of one of these nets with a brick in it, with a handle at full extent, and the brick is being lifted out of a pond. I'm going to try and replicate that, just to check the strength. If it'll lift the brick, it'll lift the fish. And I apologise in advance if I'm going to break the net by using this. But I thought I might as well give it a decent test. I'm not going to be able to support this from the far side, so this is a bit of a stupid test. But that's holding. The handle's holding as well, although it is bending a little bit. So I'm going to take that huge rock out of there. But that gives you some idea of how strong this net is. That's putting all the pressure on the joint here. That's pretty much straightened it up. 8.2 kilos. That's pretty heavy. Yeah, I'm very impressed with the construction of these. Industry has been crying out for somebody to make decent nets at a good price and these seem to fit the bill. So I can definitely recommend them. I'll put the link to Bradshaw's in the video description if you want to check them out. I've had an idea. What I'm going to do, I'm going to order an extra handle and I'm going to give most of these nets away to one viewer. So basically you're going to get this really good telescopic handle, the fine multi-purpose net, the large koi net. and also the koi sock as well. Now I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do this giveaway so I'll have a think about it whilst I'm filming the rest of this video but if you want to win this gear and you're in the UK please watch till the end because I'll give you details of how you can win then. Now the trout are getting a lot bigger in the pond and with the weather warming up the water's warming up and the fish are feeding a lot more than they were in the winter so I've stepped up the size of the food. Check this out. I like dog biscuits these and the fish are big enough to eat those. I don't quite know how big they are yet though but I think in this next week or two I'm going to be fishing, catching another couple and just checking on the size and general overall condition. But in the meantime I'm just feeding them three or four times a day and they absolutely love that food. It's exactly the same as the smaller food that I was feeding just it's made bigger for bigger fish. I'm really looking forward to catching a couple of those because when they're coming up, when I'm looking down on them from where my cabin is, they look very, very big. They certainly look bigger than when they went in. They were approximately two pounds in weight, which is about a kilo when they went in, which was the middle of last year. If you were watching one of my previous videos, you'll have seen me installing that thing there. That's a willow duck nesting box. And I set a camera up looking onto it. I checked the footage and the ducks have just been swimming backwards and forwards past it. Not once did they go in, so I think that might actually come in useful next year. They do reckon that if you put a nesting basket on the side of your pond it can take them a year to start using it, which is crazy. You would think they would see it and use it straight away. But obviously not. So that is one for next year. And that's a really nice patch of skunk cabbage. And they flower pretty early. First flowers on that start coming up mid-March. We're in the northeast of England, so we're probably two or three weeks behind where you are down south. But that's a beautiful plant. Those big waxy leaves get about three foot tall in the summer. And here we've got one of the sedge grasses flowering very early as well. This is a species called Carex nigra, which is black sedge. That's a native one but it gets lovely little flower heads on and they turn jet black. You see the new ones there with all the little wispy bits on and there's the old one. They go really jet black and look like little jet black pokers. Some more skunk cabbage there, that's a really big patch. And at the back end of last year we planted some gunnera and as far as I can tell all of the gunnera is coming back, it all survived. As you can see it was pretty well covered up with all sorts of leaves and muck. Some of them I even put grass clippings over. Daffodils, we've planted loads of those. Even the bankside's got daffodils on. Leaves on the acers are starting to come out. So before long, this bankside is going to be absolutely beautiful. Check that out for a bit of spring colour. That's something called a pieris. Pieris forest flame. And the new growths go a really brilliant pink colour. Here we've got all the iris growing. All sorts of iris around the pond, and they've really shot away. Got some meadow sweet here. I think the Latin name for that is filipendula ulmaria, that's a nice plant. I've got some bistort here, that gets nice pink poker shaped flowers that actually smell of rotten meat because it's pollinated by flies. This is my biggest gunnera, that's going to be a beast this year, see all the compost and everything on top of it to feed it. I can't for the life of me remember what the name of this plant is but it's got lovely flowers on, somebody can probably tell me. In this really shady area. On the opposite side of the pond to the cabin we've got some shuttlecock ferns coming up. They're absolutely beautiful, they're one of my favourite plants. You can see why they're called shuttlecock ferns, they just look like the feathers coming out the back of the shuttlecock. Here's an example of a really nice plant, Latin name Aponogeton distachyos, water hawthorn. That flowers all year. When the water's cold it actually looks better than when the water's warm, tends to die off a little bit in the summer. Some nice patches of that growing around the pond And a lot of people are probably going to be saying, How come the pond is mucky again? It was almost crystal clear on one of your last updates. Well that's because up here somewhere, I can't see on the viewfinder, but somewhere up here there's a digger and that's the farmer's digger and his workers have been driving on in the field to improve the drainage. The drainage will ultimately all go into my pond which is great It's great for the water flow. But unfortunately, they're doing the work a day here, a day here, a couple of hours here, then a week off, then a couple of hours here. There's loads of open excavations up here, clay soil, and all of that is coming down into the pond. If they would just get on and get it finished, yes, the pond would be mucky for a while, but after that, it would be nothing but clean water coming through the pond. I could chuck some more of that Montmorillonite clay in, clear it, and it would stay clear. So I'm just waiting for them to finish with the digger before I waste money on more clay. Because the last clay I put in was about two days, no, about a week before they started digging up there. It started to clear and then all of this clay rich water came in, clouded it up again. So I wasted my money on 25 kilos of clay. Now in the video that I shot when the dawn chorus was singing, I mentioned about this bankside that had been cleared off. You can see just how clear that is now. My friend Colin's had another go at it. All of the stuff, all of the brambles, all the little knackered trees and everything that was clogging up that bank side has been taken out. It's all been put down here and then a lot of the leaves and detritus has been dragged down over the top of here. And already there's birds nesting under this lot. So that's what the garden looks like in early April. See all those acers and field maples and everything starting to come out. Already we've got a little bit of colour. Grass is looking pretty tragic. I haven't put any treatments on there yet and there's numerous places that have subsided that need leveling up but it's looking okay and if you're wondering what that noise is down there there's actually a building just at the other end of my property. I can't really see it. I'll go up a bit further. There you go it's like a big industrial building quite near to my house and that's going to be taken down and there's a couple of dormer bungalows really flash houses being built on there so that'll be pretty good. Looking forward to that because the value of our place will probably go through the roof if there's houses next to it instead of an industrial building and I reckon with all that firewood plus that firewood we've probably got enough for next winter. Hello duckies I was wondering where you were. There's the local mallards. You must have heard the fish starting to rise when I chucked that food in and now they're absolutely devouring it. This behind me just illustrates how tragic my life is at the moment with work. I shot the first part of this video well over a week ago and already you can see the difference. In the leaves and in the coloration of the grass. I put a treatment on the lawn just after I shot the first part of the video. And already it's totally green. All those leaves have come out. There's a load more color. Every day it's looking better. That's about the end of this video. There's not really much else to it. I am going to try and get out and film more outdoor videos. Metal detecting videos are a real struggle at the minute. The work is just so crazy, we've got so much going on around our house, that I just haven't got the time to go out detecting. And generally when I do go out detecting, I don't find anything, or I don't find much, so it can take a hell of a long time to film a good detecting video, you know? That said, I'm hoping to get out and do some outdoor videos, some bushcraft related videos. There's still a hell of a lot of subjects that I need to cover there. So I'm really gonna have to try and push the boat out to make some time for them. I will be going out fishing. I've got a little bit of footage already from a couple of trips that were not entirely disastrous but not entirely successful either. And with regard to what I was saying before about the competition to win those nets and that handle, if you're in the UK, if you want to be in with a chance of winning those, all you need to do is guess how many bird boxes I've got up. In the wood. And that includes all of the small bird boxes. I've got an owl box and all of the bat boxes as well. I haven't filmed it all. It's purely just a guess. So if you want to win all those nets in the handle, pluck a figure out of mid-air. I will give you a clue. It's somewhere between 25 and 50. So nobody needs to guess at like 300 or something because that would just be crazy. Like every tree would have one on, you know. Whoever guesses it or whoever is the nearest, by the time this video hits. 2000 views. I'll pick the winner and I'll inform them. Give me your address. I'll send it out to you. You don't need to pay anything towards the postage. Purely my gift to you for watching the video. If you've liked this video, hit the thumbs up. Leave a comment if you want. Certainly enter the competition to win those nets if you want. Share the video wherever you want. Post it on Facebook or whatever. I'm not into any of that nonsense. I am however on, what's the thing called? Instagram. I set up an Instagram account a couple of weeks ago, I haven't really told anybody about it, but what I'm doing, I'm just putting the occasional picture on there from when I'm out filming different videos and so on, just various pictures that I've taken with my phone, I can't really... See the huge fascination with Instagram, but it's just a little bit of fun, you know, so If you want to follow me on there or check out some of the pictures that I've taken I'll put a link in the video description. So check that out. Thanks very much for watching I shall see you next time. Okay, if anybody's still watching after these credits This is just an advanced warning that at 80,000 subs, which isn't too far away I'll be doing a series of giveaways and those giveaways will be very special. I've been collecting gear, mostly outdoor gear, for close to 18 months now purely for giveaways and when it hits 80,000 that's when I'm going to be doing the giveaways. Now I'm not looking to promote the channel by doing these giveaways, I'm purely looking to reward people who genuinely watch the videos and stay there till the end, so if you're watching this, you are going to be in with a very good chance of winning. So look out, as soon as it hits 80,000, this channel, there will be some secret giveaways, and I'm really looking forward to them, because there's some cracking gear. So please tell, no in fact, don't tell people. If you're seeing this, don't tell anybody else about it because the more people you tell, the less chance you'll have of winning. Keep it to yourself and I'll see you next time.