It was a cooler dull day with showers that saw in the start of this month and apart from a few warmer days it has pretty much been one of the coldest and wettest May months on record.
As is the case at this time of the year the grass cutting, strimming and hedge cutting is taking up a lot of our time each week.
With the slightly warmer weather towards the end of this month it was hard at times keeping up with the growth rate on the grass! A lot of the smaller birds are all busy now feeding their young in the various nest boxes about the place; and we are seeing a few more ducklings about now too, but there is still no sign of any cygnets yet from the island nest up at the fishery (they must be due to hatch out any day now). The Osprey has been spotted out over the river a few times
and there was our first sighting of the Swifts on the 25th. We also saw the red squirrel again which is always good to see.
I`m not sure if it`s been the cooler weather this year but it feels like a lot of the wild flowers are a bit later coming through this year!
There is no sign of the Marsh Orchids yet; but we are still seen more colour appearing along the river banks with the Wild Garlic, Campion, Leopard`s Bane, Summer Snowflake and the Bluebells all having good showings in some areas.
Late in the month saw some heavy rainfall and there was a quick rise in river levels again, the dirty water was not so good for the rod fishers but after a few days it was soon dropping back a bit.
The heron has busy working off some of the different stands up at the fishery taking any advantage it gets for a meal!
The weather was kinder to us on the last day of May and the river level was sitting just over two feet above summer level. Hopefully we will get some better weather next month.
Dago