Far Lands

Sorry, I meant what do they look like? Every morning at the moment we are greeted by either one, or hundreds of, cuckoo(s) and when I mentioned it to my brother, an ecologist, he told me he had taken his two children to a park at the weekend specifically to hear both cuckoos and curlews. 'Curlews?' I said. 'We have them too.' Apparently, living as we do, on the edge of an upland, we are ideally located for both cuckoos and curlews. And the cuckoo has become quite rare (joining the RSPB's red list in 2009). Which got me to thinking, what does a cuckoo actually look like? 'Normal brown job,' suggested Sarah. Actually it's more of a grey job . . .

. . . you know, one of those men (or women) on aircraft-carrier flight-decks who waves table-tennis bats around . . . Anyway, we need one because our greenhouse is v v hectic, with a tray of new plants arriving, ooh, at least every few minutes . . . The hot box (old cold water tank layered with horse manure and leaf mulch and then topped with 6 inches of top soil) is working really well - cut and come again lettuce mix and radishes as fast as we can eat it / them. Otherwise, the place is full of tomato plants, brasscias, sweetcorn, achocha. In fact there is even a queue; outside and on the far side I have planted a small grape cutting (a dessert grape). The plan is to have the roots outside but train the vine to enter through a window and grow it at one end and in the roof space. It's going to get busier. It's not just the plants that are queuing up; Sarah and I take it in turns to enter the fray.

Well, it felt like it. I am still digging my drainage system in the orchard; part drainage for the trees and part water source for the pond (old bath) and my plan for ducks. But digging the interceptor drain at the top of the orchard I hit an old land drain running at a different diagonal (top of the photo, running from the R to L but chopped in the middle). It felt like striking oil - there, surely, was my water flow for the pond. But when I broke into it last week, it felt as if it had been dry since 1934 (or thereabouts). However, I have connected it with a (very expensive) connection and incorporated it into my new land drain system. The pipe at the bottom of the photo runs straight down the middle of the orchard into the pond / bath at the bottom. The interceptor drain is almost there - just another 10cm (down) to go, and then I will add the new land drainage pipe (ie with holes in it) and the pea shingle (it will run from the bottom of the photo up the trench and about

Firstly, the bees. Last week I went to a bumblebee conference in Chesterfield. Fascinating facts and figures; for example, the main reason for their huge decline in numbers is not what you might think - pesticides - but habitat loss. There are 250 types of bumblebee world-wide and 24 are found in the UK. They do all look quite similar but I am determined to improve my identification skills and set up a transect to count numbers once a month. See Bee Watch  bumblebeeconservation.org/get-involved/surveys/beewatch/ Photo shows a white-tailed bumblebee (not to be confused with the similar buff-tailed bumblebee, the male of which has a white tail). Secondly, then, to the birds. Well, chickens. The question we've been grappling with this weekend is why our 2 chicks look so different (see photo). They have the same father - Flash - and their mother is one of 5 Light Sussex hens (so they have a 20% chance of being sisters, and an 80% chance of being half-sisters). Or maybe not?