This week we learned the meaning of a long standing Scottish name.

It is not that we hadn’t heard the name before, but it had never really meant anything to us. I once watched an England cricket player with this name and used to watch a comedy programme where the host had this name. I’m also rather partial to some Scottish meat with this name, but none of these things are particularly important.

But we will remember the name Angus now.

As the rains fell and the winds blew, the stream at the bottom of our garden started to rise. Up and up it came until the garden next door was a sea of water. At this point we started to worry. Our house is a metre above the surrounding land.

Having been out all day battling the weather on the motorways, I arrived home to a set of pictures taken earlier by my wife that showed the scene of concern and peered out into the dark to try to see if the water was coming to meet us. This was the highest level that we had seen water rise in next doors' garden.

It was quiet, but I could see no water. The coast was clear!

Previously when this has happened, the flood alert people have phoned us to warn us that catastrophe could be on its way. Usually a few hours in advance. One summer morning, I was awoken at 3am while I was staying in Suffolk to be warned that my house was going to flood in the next few hours. Being over 200 miles away from home when it is about to flood is not the best feeling I can tell you. Fortunately having rushed home at break neck speed nothing happened.

Our house is an island, standing out above the neighbouring fields. But the thought of standing there helpless while the water laps around your ankles and ruins your home is not one to linger on either.

Thankfully, we remain unscathed but Angus will be remembered. Spare a thought for the poor people who were impacted by it and let’s hope that it is the worst storm of this winter.

The Met Office decided a few years ago to follow our American allies and name all our storms after people. Apparently, we have 21 names already lined up for this winter alone. The next few being Barbara, Conor and Doris. I am not sure that it would sound quite right being flooded out of our house by Storm Doris, but I suppose we will have to wait and see.

Tales of the river bank

One consequence of high water levels is the flooding of the river banks. I hope that the local water voles and other bank dwellers are intelligent enough to see what is coming and make for the hills.

Last weekend we visited Ham Wall RSPB reserve. This is a maze of channels and peat bogs that are flooded at this time of year. We usually see all different kinds of birds but this time we saw something different.

The pictures above are not great quality but capture the playful presence of a mink. I had never seen a mink before and our first reaction was “oh look there’s an otter!”, but on closer inspection it was actually a mink.

The mink we have in the UK are not native and are the larger American variety. They were originally brought over for fur farms and inevitably some escaped.

The height of the mink farming industry was the 1950s when 400+ fur farms existed. From then until 1974 mink colonised the whole of the UK unfettered. In 1975 fur farming was prohibited. However, this was too late and the invasion of mink into the wild was complete. There is still no strategic policy to manage mink although apparently some studies have been made in regional centres, (whatever that means).

Interestingly, they all use something called a mink raft to study numbers. This is a floating platform that has mud in it that will track footprints. In the age of mobile devices, it does seem amazingly low tech. to use mud to catch footprints rather than digital photos, but who am I to comment.

What’s lurking in the grass?

Our neighbours have eight acres of farm land surrounding them. This is a constant challenge for them to keep under control. In the summer the grass grows long and the wild flowers are many. At the end of the summer rather than cut it down, they have an arrangement with a local farmer to let sheep feed on the fields and remove the excess grass naturally. The sound of sheep grazing in the fields is quite comforting. However, the sheep bring a new challenge - ticks.

Ticks are nasty little creatures. They lurk in the foliage and they attach themselves to whatever passes by; sheep, people, animals and more relevantly cats. Sheep ticks are particularly tough. They are designed to suck the blood of the host and they attach themselves steadfastly burrowing into the skin.

My wife and I have to perform regular tick inspection on our cats. They don’t pick-up lots of ticks but they do pick-up some. Apart from the occasional wasp that they try to eat which gets its own back, ticks are the one garden foe that they cannot fight against.

If ticks weren’t so nasty, we would probably find them amazing. They can’t run, jump or fly and so they have to climb to the highest point of the nearest foliage.  When they sense a passing meal, they have to fling themselves off hoping they land on something before they hit the earth.

They also have the ability to hibernate if they can’t find food, so they can wait until their chances are greater and they can try again.

Ticks can carry Lyme Disease which is on the increase in the UK. It is still relatively unusual but on the rise. 

Last week’s advert was not quite so original

Last week I featured the latest John Lewis advert which is wildlife related. Afterwards I thought I would look back at previous year's to see what they were all about.

Surprisingly, one actually had a similar cavorting animal, though watch carefully. So the current theme is not quite so original after all, but still excellent.

The link for it is below, see what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSU34BwObCQ

New reason for a train to be delayed

Finally, paying a visit to London on Thursday I heard a new excuse for the train being delayed. Normally it is flooding, the wrong kind of snow or persistent leaves that delay my trains. This week for the first time the driver said, “Ladies and Gentlemen I am sorry to report that we are currently delayed due to a swan on the line. We have someone trying to persuade it to move in the Southall area”. This gave me the image of a poor railway worker cosying up to a large swan and offering it a new house in Southall if only it would leave its current abode. It is good to see that GWR are so careful with their wildlife, especially as swans are a protected species.

Picture Round

This week the picture round features a village with a nautical interest. The birdlife in the village is fantastic. It is a bit of a hidden gem being only a few miles from a large city and yet still has the feel of a tiny backwater. See if you can guess where it is.

Have a great weekend!

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