It’s time to start a new garden bird list. I had to say goodbye to the last garden and its list which reached 36. What a good one that was!
Over the next few months look out for updates on what is happening in the garden. As it’s January (time I started writing this) it will be exciting to see what comes up in the garden as the year progresses. Already it is clear what some of the plants are.
We have a large horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) which from a guess due to its size, is at least 50 years old if not more. To get a more accurate age I took a piece of string and wrapped it round the tree. When I went to measure the tree I discovered that it split into two large trunks about a 2′ from the ground. Ideally you are supposed to measure around 4.5′ off the ground but as this one splits lower than that it had to be done below where they branch. When laying out the piece of string to measure it, it blew my mind how long it was! I measured the circumference of the trunk to be 255cm (8’5″).
Now comes my dilemma. I would like to write about when the tree was planted. Could it have been from a seed or as a sapling? In the UK we like to call the horse chestnut seed a conker. When I was growing up many playground battles were fought with conkers. No, we didn’t throw them at one another – although tempting at times! We would in the autumn gather them and bore a hole in them and hang them on string and aim the conker at an opponents conker, using a hold and swing method. The aim was to see whose conker lasted the longest even if a small piece still hung on the string. Depending where you lived in the country rules did vary. Some even soaked there conker in vinegar to make it last longer. (Here’s a fun video on the game).
As I wasn’t around when the tree began its life there is going to be some guess work. The dilemma is this when I did my calculation the result was a far greater number than seemed reasonable. It would be nice to think that my tree is 6,405 years old! I have to defer to an article I found about trees which have this kind of circumference. (See below)
This is the sum which gave me this old age result:
circumference of tree divide by pi = diameter
Diameter x growth factor = age
In the case of the horse chestnut it has a high growth factor which means it grows more slowly. Higher the growth factor the slower the grower. The tree has a growth factor of 8. I have even tried to find out the age of the house to see whether it is of a similar age. I think the house was either built in the late 1930s or in the 1940s (due to World War 2, house construction ceased for obvious reasons). This makes the house around 90 years old. Now this seems to fit better with my original estimate and a useful paper I found (see page 2). Judging by the table on page 2 it would appear to be from 89-100 years old. If it’s older than the house this means the house was built around it. Otherwise it would be nice to think that the first person who bought the house or even the builder planted it at the same time!
So far the birds I have seen in the garden are:
- Magpie (Pica pica)
- Blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus)
- Great tit (Parus major)
- Blackbird (Turdus merula)
- Long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus)
Some other birds have flown over the garden but I don’t count those in the list as they didn’t land. These include Herring and Blackheaded gull, respectively (Larus argentatus, Croicocephalus ridibundus), Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) and Red kite (Milvus milvus)
The garden is smaller than our last one but a reasonable size for a town house – incidentally the house is called Maisville. The house can fit in the back garden around 2.5 times. Along the right hand side of the garden we have a herbaceous border with shrubs in. So far what I can see are (and I haven’t had a thorough examination as yet – and that was from the window):
- Euonymus sp
- Spirea sp
- Geranium sp (more than one)
- Possible Crocosmia sp
- A 15 foot (approximately) Prunus avium – judging by the bark and buds
- Rosa sp
Past the bed on the left are a couple of (probably) wild damson (Prunus domestica). There is another bed which needs some work that comes out into the lawn which you can just about see in the picture above. It looks like it has what I knew as Epilobium angustifolium when I was studying, now Chamerion angustifolium – I think what the Americans call fireweed, we call it Rosebay willowherb. Good for using the wispy seeds as tinder for starting fires.
The other plants we have are obviously grass – the lawn! And the front and side hedges which are Privet (also a small piece of Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) on the right hand side of the garden). There appears to be a trained rose or possible fruiting shrub by the shed. It could be a blackberry but it’s not easy to tell at present. Of course I forgot to mention the ivy (Hedera helix) hanging over the fence at the beginning of the herbaceous border but I think that’s the neighbour’s plant.
So that’s it for January and probably February won’t be much different although we might get some bulbs coming up – we’ve yet to see any sign of them.