Dawn Chorus and Some Waffle....

First thing in the morning at my place. This is my alarm clock. Just the place is just totally filled with bird song. It's absolutely awesome. It's like living in the middle of a jungle or something you know. Now unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what all of these bird songs are. Not many people would be. There's a hell of a variety and when we first moved in here I actually kept a list of all the birds that I saw. In the wood and within 100 yards of our property and there was something like 53 different species which is just unbelievable. And since then the wood has become a little bit overgrown, the environment for birds isn't quite as good as it was 20 years ago when we first moved in. Lately I've been trying to improve the environment for not only birds but also insects, invertebrates, Basically just all sorts of wildlife and I've been getting Colin my friend here and he's been clearing bits of the wood taking some of the smaller trees out letting a bit more light in trying to increase the diversity of plant life there which should in turn increase the diversity of wildlife as well so although there is a nation of wildlife here I would still like more. Here just off to the left of the cabin that is halfway cleared and hopefully that should be a nice It's a nice sunny bank side. Our slow worms that used to be very overgrown and very dark as well and you can see that that area there still is very dark that's a big holly tree and that's actually coming out as well to let a bit more light and let a bit more air in. Now there is one or two rabbit sets up here but they've been really overgrown by the brambles I mean you can see that there that's a bit that we haven't cleared yet look at the state of that this whole bank side was like that. So when it's cleared off we should be able to see a lot more rabbits using these old holes in here. Now this area behind me here has been partially cleared. There's the big holly tree that's yet to be chopped down but when it is chopped down everything's going to be laying out along here and then that's going to be attacked with a pole saw which is basically a small chainsaw on the end of a long pole to reduce that in size. We don't really want to just burn everything. Because when this is like a real tangled mess of foliage it'll be good for small birds to nest in. So the idea is to make this new habitat all the way along the bottom of the wood. When we clear the wood drag everything down over the top of that and make make this a real environment for all sorts of insects which in turn should draw in all sorts of other wildlife as well. If you've seen previous videos of mine You realize that there's a little bit more water coming into my pond than there normally is and that's because up here there's loads of springs come out all the way along here making the fields wet. I don't know whether you can just see all the rushes and everything down here. The farmer's been on with a digger just in amongst all these bushes here and he's been piping the water down into the feed that comes into my pond which is all the way down here and that's given me a lot more water running through the pond. But unfortunately it's turned the pond mucky again, it's all stirred up with all that work that's been going on up there in the fields and the soil there having a lot of clay in it and they've been on with those drains. All that dirty water has come back down into the pond which means that when I cleared it using that clay about two months ago and So, and it stayed clear. All of that work was for nothing. It's now cloudy. The thing is it'll probably stay cloudy for months because when you've been doing work in a field and there's water flowing through it, if you've disturbed all the clay, the water carries that clay for months. Now the paths all the way around the pond have been getting covered by sawdust. My father and brother have been cutting a lot of firewood and they've been sweeping up the sawdust and they've been spreading it all the way around my pond and that serves three different purposes. The first of which helps to keep the weeds down, second of which it makes it really, really quiet for me walking around the pond. If I want to be observing wildlife, you know, in and around the garden, the quieter I can travel, the better. And the third reason all this sawdust is going down is for a creature called a slow worm. I'll put a picture of one up now. Now that looks very much like a snake but it's actually a legless lizard and they're quite common in the UK. All the way from the bottom right up at the top into the Scottish islands you find these legless lizards. Now we used to have loads of them around here and gradually been decreasing in their population. Having cats hasn't helped because the cats do catch them which is a bit unfortunate but by opening up the wood a little bit letting a bit more sunlight in Adding these paths where they love to bask, I'm hoping that that'll help to increase the population. And also in the tangles of vegetation around the bottom end of the wood, that'll be an excellent feeding place for the slow worms. Now one huge change you may or may not have noticed is that we've tarmacked the whole drive. Along here there's a big retaining wall gone in. And just up here, which I don't think has appeared in any previous videos, is a big concrete base. And that's actually for a new cabin, because my business is going absolutely mad and needs a lot more space. So that is going to be where I work. This is going to be the soundtrack to my working day. Now viewers of my very old videos will probably remember a polytunnel, and that was there. That got taken down, the ground got built up with blocks. And then a big pad went in. That's where the cabin's going to be. So that's where I'm going to be working from now. As you can see, the wall, the retainer, looks a little bit industrial. So that's going to get rendered or clad with something to really country-fy it. Just check the edging out that we had put in. You know, that's industrial strength. There's no point messing about with it. That is never, ever going to go anywhere. Same with the tarmac. Really good quality tarmac. We didn't get the gypsies in this time. So there you go, that's just a little update of what's happening around my place. Bit of the dawn chorus, me in a dressing gown. What an awful thought. Thanks very much for watching, I'll see you next time.