Owl and "Puffies" and ...

19 April

Don’t worry - this Great Horned Owl was on its nest on this date, but a couple of years ago. I am always careful about revealing where owls are to be seen when posting photographs … nevertheless they are on the nest now if you can find one.

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Male Purple Finch.

Female Purple Finch

I keep a daily list of morning garden birds seen between 7am and 8am. I know, all very sad - eyes may be rolled. Anyway, as migration slowly starts to creak into action, this morning I noted some 17 species here in suburbia Five FOY species marked in bold.

• Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) 2

• Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 2

• Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) 2

• Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 2

• Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) 1

• Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa) 1

• European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) 2

• Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus) 5

• American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) 7

• Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) 1

• Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca) 1

• Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) 6

• White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) 1

• Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) 1

• Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) 2

• Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) 1

• Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) 1

COMPOST

This newsletter is not just about wildlife and plants - we also enjoy wildlife gardening. Gardening, as well as a know, involves soil and that soil is better if augmented by compost. Here’s an interesting read:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n07/fraser-macdonald/on-compost

Dowding devotes most of his attention to the method that, after 25 years of experimenting, I, too, have found to be the simplest and the best: the compost pile or heap. It couldn’t be easier. Put the dead things in a pile. That’s it. It helps to have a heap that’s a little bigger than, say, a dalek bin. Dowding bounds his with old pallets to form a kind of cube that holds a sufficient volume to retain heat and moisture. After that, the considerations are familiar to us as humans: does it have enough water, and a balanced diet of proteins (nitrogen-rich green things) and carbohydrates (carbon-rich brown things), perhaps with a bit of roughage thrown in to create air pockets? The process is faster if you keep an eye on the ratio of green to brown: three parts green waste to one part brown is a more useful rule of thumb than the technically ideal ratio of thirty parts carbon to one part nitrogen (lots of green waste is already carbonaceous and the exact C:N ratio of ingredients is obscure).