Honeybee Housekeeping

Yesterday we found about 20 honeybees dead in the snow near some hives in Durham City, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that some new catastrophe was befalling these useful insects. But a bit of Googling around beekeepers' web sites suggests that it ain't neccessarily so.

Apparently dead bees are quite common around hives in winter but when they are scattered in the grass and withered leaves they usually pass unnoticed. Opinion seems to be that they are there for two common reasons for this winter mortality. One is that on sunny days, even in the depths of winter, members of the hive remove the corpses of dead bees and dump them some way away, as part of their winter housekeeping. The other possibility is that bees' metabolism ticks over during winter and waste material accumulates in their hind gut, so they occasionally leave the hive on bright days just to defaecate; some don't make it back before the cold gets to them. Given that all of these dead bees were in a few metres of one another, I'd go for the former explanation in this instance.

A Stoat's Christmas Dinner

On Christmas morning, while our dinner was cooking in the oven, we walked out over the local farmland and spotted this stoat, about 100 metres away, racing across the snowy pastures. It soon became clear that ...

.. it was out hunting its Christmas dinner - as the rabbit that it had spotted broke cover. The panic-stricken prey raced towards us, with a head-start of about 30 metres on the the stoat ... 

... but stoats are light, fast movers over snow, bounding across the frozen surface in a series of leaps ... and they are relentless in the chase.

 

As the rabbit approached us its lead was reduced to just a couple of metres and the stoat was almost close enough to pounce.

If you have a sensitive disposition, you may want to surf the web elsewhere at this point.....

The heavy rabbit's fate was sealed when it plunged into the deeper snow drift that had piled up in the lee of the hedge......

 

... allowing the stoat to get close enough to make the fatal leap.

 

After a short struggle the stoat stood over the apparently lifeless body of its victim ...

... and its first thought was to have a good look around, to make sure that nothing was going to take its dinner away.

Then it spotted us....

 

... and instead of running away it wriggled through the snow towards us.....

.... right up to the fence, where it paused to have a good look at us. It's hard to believe that such a cute face belongs to such a deadly hunter.

What happened next was an even bigger surprise, because it hadn't killed the rabbit .... which began to crawl away...

 

... but, quick as a flash, the stoat turned, raced after it and leapt onto its prey again.

 

There was a short struggle and this time there was no mistake....

 

Yellow Holly Berries

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes for 2011 to all readers of this blog

 

These berries, belonging to the yellow cultivar of holly Ilex europaeus 'bacciflava', are the only berries left in my garden after weeks of freezing weather. All the scarlet holly berries disappeared within a week of the first snowfall, along with all the other red berries, but the birds have completely ignored these yellow fruits. As far as I can tell, they haven't eaten a single berry.

Birds' vision is much more sensitive to the red end of the spectrum (bird-pollinated flowers are almost always red) and it's tempting to speculate that these yellow fruits simply aren't visible to the blackbirds and thrushes that stripped all the other berries. But I'm sceptical about so simple an explanation. They quickly find and eat the blueberries that I try to grow in autumn, which reflect light at the short-wave blue end of the spectrum, and yellow berries are much closer to the red end of the spectrum. So maybe there's something else that makes yellow holly berries unappealing to birds, even when they are on the verge of starvation in a winter such as this.......... 

Urban Farm

If you're visiting Newcastle and cross the Ouseburn (a tributory ot the River Tyne) using this little humpback bridge and then walk under Byker Bridge, you reach ....

.. Ouseburn Farm, which is the subject of today's Guardian Country Diary.

Behind these beautifully designed steel entrance gates lies...

.. a neat little greenhouse made from discarded plastic drinks bottles, a polythene tunnel, raised beds for vegetable growing and on the left here, a fine environmental education centre.

This is a view of the farm from across the Ouseburn, which is in the foreground. These days the water level in the Ouseburn is controlled by a lock gate at its confluence with the Tyne but on the day that this photo was taken the lock was open to let snow meltwater flow into the river at low tide. There are some more photos of the Ouseburn and its wildlife here. The buildings in the background are (on the left) Victorian warehouses that now house artists' studios and Seven Stories (the National Centre for Children's Books) and (on the right) The Cluny, an excellent pub and one of the most popular live music venues in Newcastle. From the mid 19th. century until the mid 1960s this was one of the most heavily industrialised parts of the city. The farm sits on the location of an old white lead works and a flax mill that, along with other industries, discharged into the Ouseburn. After decades of clean-up operations, it now hosts the occasional kingfisher and, on the day that this photo was taken, redshanks that had ventured inland from the coast. 

 

The environmental education centre is a favourite destination for school parties and caters in particular for those with learning difficulties and disabilities. The farm has a flock of sheep (that were away being tupped when we visited) and visiting animals like these alpaca.

Next to the pig pens are these two stone mountings for the beam engine that once powered the flax mill, where linen sails were woven for sailing ships on the Tyne, the remained standing on the lead works site. 

The visiting alpaca are a long way from their Andean peaks in Peru but seem at home under Byker Bridge and approach visitors with cautious curiosity....

... sporting fetching haircuts.....

... and very thick fur that's perfect insulation for the kind of bitterly cold weather we've been having lately.

All the farm animals, including chickens...

... goats...

... and these ginger Tamworth pigs are accustomed to frequent visitors and the farm has created an educational resource and agricultural oasis in what was once a site of intensive industry. While we watched a sparrowhawk came hunting over the farm and just a few yards further along the Ouseburn, in an overhanging bush weighed down by the snow, we found..

... the remains of this goldfinch nest, exquisitely woven from sheep wool that can only have come from the Ouseburn Farm flock..... another landmark in the environmental regeneration of the Ousburn.