Yew View Floods and Tawnies

I have not been to Yew View for a few weeks, with my trip to Aigas and then issues with flooding on the surrounding roads last week. I headed to site today and the drive towards Worcester, from the M5, was shocking. The whole area was under water. I have seen it flooded before… but not this bad.

This year’s flooding on the Severn has been exceptional and this was confirmed when I arrived on site and walked out onto the patio..

The river would normally be beyond the trees and hedgerow in the background. For the first time ever, the wildlife pond has been breached..

It is just incredible how much water there must be to raise the river this kind of height for the distance it has. It is difficult to comprehend what impact this has on wildlife.

The swans seemed to approve though!

It was time to look through the camera footage… there was not a lot I could achieve on site… unless I had a canoe!

The badgers have not been in the sett much this winter. It has actually remained dry and one individual did bring some bedding materials in last week…

May be they will return to spend more time in here later in the year, when this year’s cubs start getting larger. Fingers crossed.

The most exciting news from YewView is regarding our Tawny owls. The visits to the box had been increasing, with mating on the platform and regular internal inspections. This will be the fourth year they have nested in this location.

The new Hikvision camera inside is giving superb images as well….

Usually I am able to connect to this camera via my iCatcher app, but I have been unable to for some reason. When DJ texted me to say she had been up to the office and seen two eggs in the box, I was thrilled! Looking back through the footage, I could see that the first egg was laid on the early on the 23rd Feb and the second, late on the 25th. This is about 11 days earlier than the last two years, where they have laid on the 5th March.

Unfortunately, the cameras at this location have not been connecting to the recording system and I have not had consistent recordings. The technology is incredible, but when it fails at such a critical time, it is very frustrating. I spent most of the day trouble-shooting and trying to locate where the issue was. Despite my best efforts the issues are beyond my technological capabilities and I have the experts from iCode coming next week to take a look. We have a series of wireless connections to get the signal from the nest box, back to the house and it is the hardware here that seems to be failing. I had to settle for a few screen shots for this week. The female seems to be incubating already, which suggests we are only having two eggs this year. Last year she laid 4, hatched 3 and 2 owlets survived to leave the box.

She will incubate now for 30 days, with the male bringing food to her and her only leaving the box briefly at night. Hopefully we will see our 2020 owlets around the end of March .

The Feeding platform I built a few weeks ago has been hugely popular and it has been really busy on there. I built this platform out of recycled materials that I have collected  and hoarded! I rarely throw away any bits of wood etc that are around and store them all, in case of a new project such as this!

I set up a camera opposite it and this video shows a few clips combined, from throughout the week…

This week, despite the platform being at one of the higher points in the garden, that has never flooded, it was like an island and impossible to reach! I had to get creative to get some seed on there…. a bucket on a stick and me up to the top of my wellies in the water!

The river levels are expected to stay high for at least the next ten days. I can’t wait for them to recede so we can access the garden again and look forward to our Spring projects! My thoughts go to those who have had waters like this rise through their homes and properties. At least the house at Yew View is high enough to ensure that they never reach the property and only the garden suffers.

 

 



from www.wildlifekate.co.uk https://wildlifekate.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/yew-view-floods-and-tawnies/

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