Blogs
Keep up to date with the latest Blogs at Cherry Hinton Hall.
What a Load of Balls!
Written by Judy Webb Wednesday, 06 October 2010 19:17
This a photo of Jess and her collection of balls, most of them found in the park. She is a champion ball finder and usually finds one wherever we happen to be, Naturaly the tennis court is a good place to look, she doesn’t care what kind of condition they are in after all a ball is a ball! Unfortunately she is very posessive and woe betide any dog who tries to remove one.
Joggers using the park did so at their own risk when Jess was about I don’t know what it was about them but she took great exception to them jogging passed. One man in particular came in for a lot of barking and posturing but it was all noise not much consolation when you’re trying to have a quiet jog first thing in the morning.
One morning we thought we were the only ones in the park when suddenly someone clapped quite close by, we hadn’t heard him come up and the noise took us by surprise. Jess was furious and never forgot him she seemed to know when he was in the park and although I tried to keep her away she always seemed to know he was there and rush up to him barking furiously. She is a small dog but even so she could be quite intimidating.
Sometime went by and I realised I hadn’t seen him for a while and then I heard from another dog walker that he had changed his route!!!! OOOPS!
Wildlife fringes
Written by Bob Hall Sunday, 03 October 2010 14:58
How? The wildlife that lives in the grounds sometimes comes out to your garden! I have been reminded of this several times recently.
Last week we heard the pair of Tawny owls for the first time in a few weeks early in the evening. Then later that night, while out having a smoke my other half came in rather alarmed. She had just been 5 feet away from one of them which had perched on our garden fence.
Both Jane and the Owl were very surprised, but it got me thinking. I was actually feeding more birds than was initially obvious by just putting out bird seed.
The normal small birds like sparrows, robins, blue tits, etc get the seed you put out. But yeah they are messy and drop loads of stuff on the floor. This attracts the snails and slugs, which then attracts other birds like blackbirds and robins, to eat the little critters.
Also at night the Toads and Frogs come to the dinner table and gorge on the slimeys. We even had a common lizard outside the back door on Friday. Hedgehogs then have their fill of everything. We suspect we have mice under the shed too as the cats must sit staring at the bottom of the shed for some reason that is in their interest! Night time, and the Owls are about, presumably looking for the mice and frogs etc. Bats are eating the flying insects. We saw 4 types of bats in the Hall a few weeks ago.
During the day all this activity attracts the local predators like the SparrowHawk. The local female came and sat on an a neighbour's TV aerial for a good ten minutes yesterday overlooking our garden, while we saw the male flying about also. Presumably the hawk was was try to look like a dove on the aerial waiting for the local birds to come past when it could pounce. We have seen the Sparrowhawk kill in our garden before, and we will see it again.
A couple of weeks ago we saw an altercation between a local ginger tom cat and the local vixen fox. Normally I would have backed the fox. But no the cat was taking no prisoners! Hackles up charging at the fox to get her out of his territory. It worked a treat, the fox was seriously not up for a fight and trotted off quite quickly. Quite an amazing site I can say and made our evening! But normally I would guess the fox would happily be cleaning up the mess we create and maybe munching the frogs and toads too. I was telling a neighbour about the fox and she told me that a Muntjack deer had been seen in St Thomas's Square the other day too.
Autumn fishing
Written by Bob Hall Sunday, 26 September 2010 18:09
Autumn is taking over fast, the light is fading, the leaves are turning colour and falling, the rains are coming and it is getting colder. The warm summer days seem so far away now. But a short walk over the Hall keeps the spirits high when ever you see the Kingfishers about. I spent a pleasant 45 mins on the bench by the pond watching the male dipping in and out of the water fishing merrily away near the back of the pond. The Female was also about though being a little more elusive right at the back and kept disappearing.
If you are trying to work out which is the Male/Female, then the female has orange on the lower part of her beak - if you get a good view of them that is!
Although he was quite a way back near the Forest Road gardens (How good would it be to live there? :-)) I still managed to get a couple of photos, one even of him flying back to he perch with fish in beak. Not great photos by my own standard as I was too far away and it was a bit gloomy. That's why I'd love to live backing on to the pond - to get better photos. Once back to the perch He promptly scoffed that fish and started looking for the next.
He did manage to get at least three fish while I was watching and then disappeared out the back, maybe to catch up with the female, or maybe to just hide out. Anyway, he made the gloomy start of Autumn seem that much brighter for me on a Sunday stroll.
Remember, if you are feeding the ducks or walking the dog, look out for a flash of blue/orange, and keep an eye on the branches for our special residents...