Winning against the docks!

As the wildflower meadow is due to be cut early next week (several days of good weather are forecast for haymaking) I have been going round and cutting the seed heads off from all of the docks that survived my Roundup Gel earlier in the year. There are so many fewer this year, so a job that in the past has taken two days only took me an hour.

It is very satisfying to see how many dock seeds I am preventing from hitting the ground - I often think that one dock head is like a packet of seeds! As I have been doing this for nearly 10 years just think of the number of seeds that are now not in the meadow.

The early summer flowering plants have now set seed so it is really time for the hay to be cut.

This year I am going to 'top off' the meadow a couple of times during the late summer and autumn to try and reduce some of the coarser grass which is taking over in part of the field.

Is the Little Owl in residence?

Coming home at twilight a little owl fledgling was sitting in the road about 20 meters away from a tree where I have put up a little owl box. The bird sat in the road then flapped up into a nearby tree. When I put the box up 5 years ago it looked like a good place - a big horizontal branch for the chicks to site out on and tucked away in the ivy near the main trunk of an oak. I thought that it was empty, but I will be keeping a close eye out for 'branching' chicks from now on - and I will make an expedition today to look for pellets under the box.

The little owl box has a 'turn' in it as they like to be hidden away without a direct visual line to the box entrance. The pictures below are of another little owl box which I had a camera in - unfortunately the whole branch that this one was on fell down and I haven't put this second little owl box back up yet - another job for the autumn.