I’m using 3:1 sand to chalk but I’d need to look at the facture to tell you the grade of sand. I’ve seen some suggest 2.5:1 but this seems to work. It’s taken a few batches to get the moisture level and the mix duration right so some of it isn’t pretty but it’s the back wall so I’m not stressing about it.
2 Likes
Old builders trick If you want it more plyabe put a small squirt of washing up liquid into the mix.
2 Likes
This is my impressive spider picture. Quite an old picture and just outside the front door. It’s a female wasp spider.
6 Likes
Magnificent!
Beautiful head markings!
We appear to have a lodger! We’re assuming that it’s the first to fledge, and hasn’t just fallen out of the nest in the week, but we’re keeping an eye on it to be sure that the parents aren’t neglecting their parental duties.
10 Likes
Please keep us informed John.
A pair of Golden Eagles flew over the house yesterday. Seen them soaring for several days but too far away to properly identify but one flew over low enough to confirm. Didn’t get a piccy as the phone was inside, and don’t have a proper camera, plus I’m a cr** photographer anyway.
5 Likes
We used to very occasionally see them on the massif central. Quite magnificent!
Very big and definitely magnificent. Just digging out an old Panasonic camera and charging the battery. Not used in about 5 years so we’ll see if it still works. I knew there were a pair about 4 or 5 km away as I’d seen them a couple of times out walking but last year and this we seem to have had another pair quite close.
1 Like
It’s very warm chez moi this evening but I closed all windows toute suite as soon as a large flying ant started crawling across the screen of my computer monitor.
Not sure what species - I scooped it up and threw it out the window.
Hate ants when the females are looking for somewhere to start a nest indoors, a colony, assuming this was a female. A bit like one of these.
Or one of these.
1 Like
Conscious of not seeing any swifts or swallows recently, was gratified to see a ‘swarm’ of so many swifts a few days ago shooting about across the sky as I was driving along. I say swarm because there were so many, more than I’ve ever seen before in one place.
Must be lots of insects about still, assuming they were chasing insects.
2 Likes
perhaps it was The Day of the Flying Ants" ?? 
it’s around this time of year that they make their startling appearance just outside our house… and (like you) we dissuade 'em from coming indoors…
Over the years I’ve only had 2 colonies burst forth indoors and they were swarming all over the windows trying to get out. They are harmless and I left it to them to remove themselves through windows I opened for them to escape. But it’s the spectacle of having so many flying insects swarming around that I find unnerving. I shouldn’t but I do! Not being in proper control of my own house maybe.
2 Likes
Update: two are now out of the nest and quite happily bobbing about the garden and completely unfussed by us. I was out this morning and it looks like there are still 2 in the nest so more to come.
11 Likes
In recent years I’ve noticed a huge local decline in rock martins, who used to swoop above our house. Don’t know why the’re now so scarce, as our neighbourhood is rock, river and forest - so harder to simply blame farming
I’d left some windows open from midnight yesterday… and when I went to shut 'em… one of them had lots of flying ants on the outside of the mozzie mesh.
Hmm… worth its weight that mozzie mesh. I shut the window and left them to fly somewhere else… 
A few years ago, each summer we had a family or three of swallows - they would build their nest in our garden room/shed and we’d enjoy watching them flying in and out whilst sitting drinking our coffee in the mornings.
Sadly, we’ve not see them at all this year. We only have the wren who ‘lives’ in one of the outhouses, the chaffinches, redstarts, robins, gold finches and little owls. But we do miss the swallows.
And sometimes when going into town for shopping, Stuart parks on the top level of the local HyperU whilst I start the shopping. He would enjoy watching the swifts flying around the clock tower and local church but he said recently he hasn’t seen any of them. That’s very sad.
It is.
This is from the UK RSPB - “Swift populations are plummeting, they’re on the UK’s Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern. Although we don’t have the full picture about why, we think lack of nest sites may be partly the cause. The sad fact is that for every ten Swifts zooming across our roof tops in 1995, there were only about three by 2022”.
1 Like
There seemed to be plenty of martins in Cussy last month, but I don’t recall any swallows.