One man went to mow...

...went to mow a meadow! At the moment in my case, it is one man and his cat to follow on.

We have around two hectares to mow....
that's around five acres in English money...
and the grass needs to be removed...
to lower the fertility and allow the weaker species to grow more successfully...
and hamper the efforts of  les orties* [nettles].

To mow we have "Betsy"...
our big two-wheel tractor with its 53" cutter bar.
To rake we have me and a Bulldog wooden rake...
so at the moment we slowly get a field full of humps and rows that become humps....
and humps that become bigger humps....
and so on....
and on!

Driving Betsy... the grimace is obligatory (as is the hat!)

When Betsy arrived she wasn't heavy enough at the cutter bar, so a cut of around three inches...
[or fifteen centimetres... I am of old measure]...
became a one foot high trim whenever the wheel hit a molehill.
It was very tiring to use and left me aching...
then the suppliers, Trackmaster, sent me two weights to attach to the bar and all changed...
she still bucks at humps but it is easier to get the front down again and she is, overall, more controllable...
which is vital when working near the willows!!
And I have since added a pair of large, wide skids... as those that are supplied as standard, just cut deep two-inch furrows!!

It is a big meadow.... this is the smaller bit....

The other reason for being able to mow large areas quickly and easily is that the meadow has Creeping Thistle [Cirsium arvense] Chardon des champs...
which needs to be kept cut before it flowers and the wind dispersed seed blows everywhere.
This is what the Wildlife Trusts have to say on the subject.
So you can see that it would not be beneficial to the birds to eradicate it completely...
not that I think I could!!
And, in 2016, thanks to the Barn Owl Trust and Mammal Society....
and Pauline's research....
the mowing regime has changed yet again... but that will be another post!

The selected areas of nettles [*les orties] that I am mowing are to reduce their competition with the grass.
I have no intention of trying to win the that battle either as...
[1] we want the butterflies that use nettle as a foodplant for the young... and
[2] we use the nettles as fertilizer and occasionally as food.
Well, that's my excuse, anyhows!!

Still mowing.... here at least you can see one of the paths along the edge of the bief (millstream).

Betsy is manufactured in Italy by part of the Ferrari works and moves at walking pace...
so I'm driving one of the slowest Ferraris on the planet....
but there is a big advantage with that...
we are working the land for the wildlife it contains and being able to stop instantly and walk forward to inspect for nests when birds fly up is a great help...
also, by cutting the grass and not chopping it with a flail or a whirling blade, allows the grass to fall aside and allows small beasts to fly, walk, run away.

Occasionally I get flying voles...
these rocket out of the grass and run along on the top, before diving back into the sward...
when they run ahead, this is usually repeated a few seconds later.

One of the first 'humps' is visible to my right in this picture.... it grew as the year wore on....
and had finished at around this height when I mowed through it last week.
We will be able to harvest compost from the bigger of these piles.

Betsy has another attachment...
a big wood-chipper that can handle up to three inch trunks....
but that's yet another posting.

/|________________________________________________|\

* Les Orties = The Nettles

(Thank you Susan for the correction.  

[The Nettles is a Celtic band - J.Nettles is an actor])

Why somethings take longer.............. to do!!

July fifth, twenty twelve.
There I was, sitting in a chair on the bridge with a glass of Munster* in hand, listening to Deep Purple's "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" and watching the sun go down.
No... one better, I was grabbing the warmth of the last rays whilst watching mayflies dancing in July, when.... suddenly... the view through the "macronoculars" was momentarily obliterated by a huge dark object.
Focus....
You might think that the ant-eating cat had blocked my view.... but you'd've been wrong. A male Blackcap [Sylvia artricapilla] Fauvette à tête noire had snatched a tasty morsel to feed a young-un.
Re-focus...
The next ten minutes were spent watching the Blackcap feeding a chick. Flit, feed, flit, feed.... on and on!

Also, there were a couple of Moorhen [Gallinula chloropus] Poule d'eau chicks chugging around below me... feeding themselves now... there was an adult around, up by the walnut. Probably a last feed before retiring to their "veranda" for the night.
Re-focus....
The "city-boys"... Grand Pressigny's House Martins came through, feeding low.... a sure sign of bad weather. The sun was behind Grandmont now anyway and it was getting quite chilly.... so I decided to head indoors... the Munster was finished anyway!!

As I turned round I saw a 'short' rainbow over the Bois du Favier.

Just a shower... just that cloud!

The day had started badly.... the intention was to carry on with the maintenance of the meadow and potager after returning from the market. [ie... mowing!]

We never made it to the market... it started raining and nothing on the list was too important to hasten for [but we always feel sorry for the traders when it is miserable]... and it put a kybosh on the mowing too... grass, now wet, won't cut properly! Find something 'indoors' to do...

I started to write out a long intended, bird species list.... finished it too! There are about 120 species we could/should see here... we've seen about eighty. There are some.... Tree Sparrow and Coal Tit being a couple... that we should see but haven't. And yet others... Wood Sandpiper in Summer, Cattle Egret and Great Egret in mid-winter... that we shouldn't have.

Then, later, the weather turned for the better, so..... all intended up the spout.... I took a stroll round the meadow to see if there were any major patches of Creeping Thistle [Cirsium arvense]chardon des champs that I'd missed the previous day. I have no intention of trying to eradicate the Creeping Thistle.... it is too important a food plant for the wildlife around here.... I just want to control it enough to stop huge clouds of seed blowing over the neigbouring fields!!

The sun came out and brought with it a host of insects that had been sheltering in the nooks and crannies of tree bark, or under leaves.... dashed back in for the camera.... and managed to grab a few shots before it clouded over again.

One of the first in the frame was this Map butterfly [Araschinia levana] la Carte géographique which obliged by posing with its wings open.... I've got enough shots of the underwing to publish my own atlas.

The 'Summer' wings

And the underwing!

These are the summer brood.... spring [overwintered] specimens are so different on the upper wing as to appear a different species.


Susan of "Days on the Claise" blogged about them here and there seem to be an awful lot more around here than last year.

Also around were Red Admiral, Peacock, Marbled White, Silver-Washed Fritillary, Meadow Brown and a White Admiral.

However, around in even greater numbers were the Damselflies. Plenty of male Banded Demoiselles and some brilliant emerald green females...

The strange 'nostril' is the wing of a rapidly vanishing fly!

... and a few Beautiful Demoiselle males up near the wier.


One damsel that caught my eye was this male Blue Featherleg [Platycnemis penepipes] l'Agrion à larges pattes which was posing nicely at the edge of one of the new "Paths"#, but there were also Bluets and Bluetails around, males definitely, females probably, but I need to go out deliberately to photograph as many as possible and then sit down in fron of this screen with the "bible" - Dijkstra & Lewington, to identify what we do have. I wonder how long before I acheive that?

The 'feathering' on the hind leg is very clear in this picture.

Also around were Gomphidae, possibly a Western Clubtail as Susan has seen them here, but when it got close enough to see more clearly, the tail seemed to be very markedly "clubbed" and it could have been a Pincertail [Also seen here by Susan and mentioned in the "Days on the Claise" entry.]

So, no mowing.... but a provisional Bird List under the belt... after about six years of deliberating!!


*The Alsace beer... not the cheese!
# One advantage of cutting through beds of chest-high nettle is that it falls cleanly, leaving a high, sharp-cut edge that all sorts of insects like to perch upon!!