The Pond..

Well digging has finished - we got bucket loads of broken glass, rubble and bricks out of the crater and after a lot of levelling and smoothing a layer of sand has gone in…

next went the old underlay from the old pond..

and then the new underlay..

and finally the liner - I think we may have been a little generous with our calculations!

and so to the water, a mixture of rain water, old pond water and tap water it has taken four hours to fill

but is beginning to take shape - landscaping starts tomorrow.

Creating a Garden Pond - progress so far

Well as you can see the new pond is progressing - hampered by old electricity cables and land drains we have managed to dig a new pond 6m x 8m roughly twice the size of the old pond so hopefully twice as much wildlife!  Amazingly only ten minutes ago I kid you not we had an Osprey fly straight over the new pond admittedly at height but what a fantastic garden tick and again minutes after the Osprey went through 2 Crossbills also flew over.

Normanby Nature at last!

Well after 2 years of blogging I have finally managed to put together a post which actually fits in with the blog summary above ie Normanby, Garden and Nature!  So here we go - the first two images was how part of my garden looked last week and the following images show the devastation of the weekend - we have decided the pond isn’t big enough so we have taken out the raised bed and existing pond to make way for the new pond but this has meant we have had to dig up some of the patio which is where the fun begins…..



 Wayne emptying the old pond
…under one of the patio slabs we found this mouse nest - the female shot off and left 8 tiny babies shivering so we collected the nest and babies up and put them into our Bumble Bee box and placed it close by in a border - 5 minutes later the female is back and one by one takes all the babies out of the box and back under the remaining patio, she then continues removing all of the nest out of the box and takes that also under the patio - so all’s well with the mice back to the pond!




For four months now our pond has been invaded and wrecked by two local Mallard ducks from Normanby Park - they have eaten virtually all the plants and probably all the pondlife or so we thought - as Wayne was draining the pond he found this adult Smooth Newt together with 3 Frogs, 1 Toad, 1 Giant Diving Beetle, 7 baby Newts and dozens of Water Snails - everything taken out of the pond has been saved ready to go into the new pond including most of the water, sludge and plants


The last image above was taken of the rescued Newt which is now in a tank - I shall post further images of the new pond as we progress - could be a long job!

Marsh Sandpiper at Alkborough Flats

Moulting adult Marsh Sandpiper at Alkborough Flats this evening gave everyone the run abouts -  flying to an area difficult to view and so had to be re-found from the hill side half a mile away!  Poor light with many feet shaking the hide equals naff photos.

Dales Landscapes

The final posting of the Dales - as usual I absolutely loved it and can’t wait to go back - you can never have enough of this wonderful landscape.

Limestone pavement with Pen-y-ghent in the background

Gayle

Muker in Swaledale

Malham Cove

Once again Peregrines have nested at the Cove and we saw plenty of the three fledglings and the adults flying around the top - no photos as far too distant.

Wild Thyme and Heath Bedstraw or is it! could be Limestone Bedstraw!

Malham Cove

Betony and Salad Burnet

Meadows from Malham to Janet’s Foss

 

Meadow Cranesbill

Crosswort

Forget-me-not sp

Hedge Woundwort

Greater Knapweed

Water Avens

Would love to know what this is - the only one in a large meadow