May has been an interesting month what with the lockdown predominate over all else. Here at The
Stables, it has been work as usual as we are pretty much self-isolated by design. With our next-door neighbors being the closest to us and then the next nearest is the other side of the Schoolhouse on one side, and the other side of the church the opposite way, so no real problem on that score.
Having 2.5 acres to work on also lends itself to being on your own as most of the jobs being done at present take one person, so either Loraine or Paul is out somewhere performing some chore or project on their own.
That said, what has been occurring with the local wildlife? Well, May has seen two new bird species with two Greenfinches making an appearance collecting nesting material. Although we have a pair of Goldfinches who like our offering of niger seeds in one of the feeders, and we have a solitary Chaffinch who uses the other feeders every day, we have not seen the Green Finches before which was exciting.
And just recently we had a wonderful surprise by the appearance of a Red Kite flying directly over our house about 100-150 feet high. What a magnificent bird that is and it is the first one we have seen since being in Cornwall. It circled overhead for a while and then just took off, hopefully, we shall see it again soon, we shall be keeping an eye out for it and maybe get a photo of it.
Red Kite on the wing.
The other very exciting event happened just over a week ago and came out of the blue. As Paul was bringing some equipment up to the fields he spotted something moving in the long grass by the path. On further inspection, he saw it was a snake. Well over a meter in length and quite wide too, 2-3 inch circumference.
Calling to Loraine working in the vegetable plot in the field she came down and inspected Paul’s find which had at this point coiled up into a ball in a slight indent in the cemetery wall. Although we did not disturb the snake we were trying to identify it without scaring it too much.
After some deliberation, we agreed it was a Grass Snake, Natrix Natrix.
We left it to its own devices so it could carry on with its journey and went back to our tasks at hand. It certainly was the biggest snake we had seen in the UK and it is a good sign that the wildlife balance is pretty good around here.
Grass Snake with tan to brown upper body and creamy underbelly.
Our swallows which nested in the stable block last year have made a couple of appearances flying about the area, especially the block where they nested, but have yet not committed themselves to nesting there. So it is a wait-and-see situation on that.
That’s all for now on the wildlife but we shall be alert and hopefully we will have a camera on us next time to grab a few shots.