Winter Snack Bar for Birds Open at Honeydale

1/25/2017 12:03:00 pm 0 Comments

The weather has certainly turned colder and Honeydale's bird enthusiast, Elliot, has been continuing with the supplementary winter bird feeding at a rate of 10kg a day, which seems to be very welcome amongst our feathered visitors.

Elliot spent an hour watching the plots on Tuesday but didn’t observe any flocks feeding directly on the broadcast seed, although he did witness a solitary Roe deer which seemed very grateful for the fresh feed and feasted on it for a good half an hour until it was disturbed and scuttled off! Flocks of yellowhammer and finches were descending on the plot but they were feeding on the existing seed mix that we had planted and not on the broadcast seed.


However, the situation had changed dramatically by the weekend, as the temperature dropped, when our bird expert, Dr Richard K Broughton, Ecologist & GIS Specialist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, came to conduct his regular monthly survey. He sighted around 150 finches and bunting, and pleasingly one hundred and thirty of those were concentrated at the feeder/feeding strip. There were 60 yellowhammer, 50 chaffinch, 15 goldfinch, 5 linnet counted here. By contrast, the other sown birdfood/bumblebird plots were virtually empty, and all of the standing seed is now exhausted. So it’s fairly evident that now all the standing seed has been eaten, the birds have switched to the feeding area. This is very interesting, since the purpose of the supplementary winter bird feeding project is to determine the best way to provide food to support farmland birds during the winter hungry gap. We’re comparing the effectiveness of growing wild bird plant mixtures, compared to regularly distributing extra supplementary bird food.

So far it seems that it is beneficial to birds to distribute supplementary bird food when all the standing seeds have gone, but the study is continuing until late spring so we will keep watching and waiting to see what happens.

Elsewhere, Richard reported sighting a lot of thrushes on the fields (hundreds of mostly redwings, but also quite a few song thrushes and some fieldfares), and a flock of about 25 skylark. Interestingly some of the birds are being quite selective over which type of plots/strips they're using (e.g. skylarks are favouring the cereal stubble and song thrushes are showing a preference for sainfoin).

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Bee-Ware in Winter!

1/17/2017 04:49:00 pm 0 Comments

After closing down the hives for winter in November we've been back to see how the bees are doing. Both hives have survived well so far, having been left with almost an entire super of honey per hive at the end of Autumn. These supers still have a good amount of honey left so we currently have no need to feed the bees with any sugar fondant this winter. This may change if the weather takes a turn for the worst and the bees require more to keep warm. Chris' hives are also still doing well, but due to their late introduction to the farm in 2016 they are being fed with sugar fondant.



We have a new addition to our apiary in the form of a 'National' hive containing a colony of bees. The bees and hive have been donated by a local supporter who no longer had time to look after them as regularly as she would like. After testing to ensure there was no EFB present (European Foul Brood - a common colony disease) we have taken them on and relocated them to Honeydale Farm a few weeks ago. They weren't very happy about being transported however. It turns out that spending half an hour being rattled around on Cotswold B roads in the back of a truck isn't the way to a bee's heart! Despite careful driving they were quite angry on arrival at Honeydale. One managed to escape when we were moving the hive and it made a beeline for Paul’s hand, delivering a rather painful sting. Apparently it is thought that bee stings can be much more painful during the winter months which he can personally vouch for! Having been stung numerous times on the hand in the past he had never experienced a bee sting like this one! We are hoping that we can nurse the colony through the winter successfully and we have added sugar fondant to the hive to give them the best chance possible. Come the spring we plan to transfer the bees to a clean brood box and a new set of brood frames. If the bees are still aggressive in the Spring then we may have to re-queen the colony to help improve it's temperament.


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Hungry Birds

1/10/2017 04:49:00 pm 0 Comments

Mid-winter and with a cold spell forecast, Elliot is about to start daily feeding at a rate of 10kg per day from next week, to make sure the farm birds at Honeydale have plenty of food to see them through.



Elliot has noted that finches (Gold, Chaf and Green), Wood Pigeons, Blackbirds and Dunnocks have been using the patch for forage and the usual suspects (Tits, House Sparrows, Robins, Yellowhammers) are also visiting the feeders hung in the trees. He’s also spotted two pairs of Bullfinches and two pairs of Siskins in the hedgerow between the bees and the orchard.

Due to the time that Elliot feeds them - 9am when the seed left the previous day has all but been consumed - it’s proving difficult to spot more diverse species so Elliot’s plan is to create a viewing vista around the feeding area from which he can observe the species feeding at dusk.

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