Creatures of the garden...

Here are some more pictures of interesting creatures that abide in our garden.

There are loads pics but most are not worth bothering to upload, because said creatures move before one gets enough time get the shot...

1 Bats

They fly about at dusk a lot, but you never see them up close, except when...

... discovered a tiny fluffy was flitting about in the shed. I initially thought it was a Lady Grey moth.

I think, it thought it had roosted there as I had left the door open. Then when it woke up, It couldn't work out how to get out and go eat insects. It eventually just stopped, seemingly a bit knackered and crouched on a piece of wood.

From the back. Furry!

It flew off eventually, so hopefully it was fine after its experience

2. Foxes

Betty Pug is the official household canine. This interloper is no pug, but they are very beautiful.

 Closer up...

A great brush there...

Just for clarity, this is the official dog of the house. This shot was taken in the 1950s during atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll. She forgot her glasses. Duh.

All that radioactivity grew her into a monstrous size

Caught drinking from the pond. She emerged minutes later with a green tache.

uh?

2 Fat wood pigeons 

These will eat anything they can get at. Notably the cherries if you are not quick. I have planted hawthorns, and we have quite a bit of ivy so they do have some sanctioned berry options.

This one is sticking its tongue out at me...

Corvids - 1 Magpies

Super smart magpies - every morning without fail they come down to nick the dog's food. It starts with flapping noises, clicky squawking between at least two of them and then there they are, perched and scroungy, eyeing up the chances. 

Mainly they just get scraps, as the pug likes its chow

Corvids 2 - Jays

These don't visit often and when they do, they don't hang about if they see you. They are very shy, unlike the cheeky magpies.

 

They hop about looking for stuff. 

But in this case, way too late after the event...

Maybe jays are not so smart. At least the magpies have worked out to eat the dogfood before the dog has already done so.

After an investigative peck on that pug-provided nugget though, it sensibly decided against carrying off the morsel. The expression says it all. It may have thought it was a caterpillar. Probably tasted better than some. 

Corvids 3 - Carrion crows

These do occasionally land, but mostly perch high up on a large radio aerial next door.

 

Invetebrates

There are loads of invetebrate creatures. Here are a few of the more notable recent ones

Dragonflies

This magnificent specimen was sunning itself long enough to capture. I believe it is a Migrant Hawker

They like our pond - here's a different type on one of the edging logs.

Not enough resolution to zoom in in detail, but it's a Common Darter

Elephant hawk noth caterpillar

About the size of my pinkie finger. What a beast..

Chomping away, as caterpillars must chomp...

In a sieve, being moved off the path so it didn't get trodden on...

Making a gate from (mostly) reclaimed wood

Our nice new gate...

Why a new gate?

Having started the long-overdue process of clearing the far side of the house, there was a need to close off the passageway, that was created by clearing our years of accumulated junk and overgrown trees and ivy.

Now, you can buy gates from DIY shops etc, but... 

a. they cost £150 or more
b. they are pretty flimsy 

So, I built one instead. Almost all the wood was reclaimed from skips etc. 

Build

In this shot, you can see the outer stiles, top and bottom rails are clean, planed timber and the central lock rail is from a plasterboard pallet rail (marked by the word "Gypsum")

I did buy some wood - this was a couple of 4" by 2" planed lengths for the two stiles (the longest vertical pieces at each side of the gate). 

I could have used reclaimed wood, but I hadn't been able to quickly scavange two decent straight pieces, that were true enough. I also just I wanted to crack on with it. 

The bought timber cost about £15 for the pair. There was enough extra length to cut the top and bottom rails from them after cutting the initial stiles.

Before joining up the outer frame, I also added some vertical mullions to connect the rails for added strength. Mullions are also uprights, like the stiles, but they are not full length. They are bracing connectors between the horizontal rails. These were cut from the same pallets as the centre rail. The mullions were pallet facing-planks. 

All the joints between stiles, railes mullions were tasty mortice and tenon joints. These are are super strong. 

I appear not to have any decent closeups of the mortices and tenons being cut, though - oops! 

This zoom-in will have to do. 

The mortices (holes) were cut by initially drilling out most of the waste wood with a spade bit, then trimming the rest with chisels. I , did final tidying with a file for a good fit.

Here is a joint after gluing and cramping

 

Here are the chisels used. The large paring chisel is a tasty 50cm wide. The smaller chisel I bought in a flea market in Tokyo. But my favourite tool here is the carver's mallet. I made this from hawthorn wood that I discovered by the roadside a few years ago. A surprisingly lovely wood.

After the frame was glued and had set, I added beading inside the openings between the frame parts. The beading would allow me to set in panels, to fill in the gate.

The beading after setting

The panels were offcuts from plywood crates used to transport fireplaces. They are fairly rough 5 ply sheets. by gluing and screwing these in, the overall frame is even further strengthened by the cross-bracing they provide. 

The final gate. The panelling was added to both sides of the gate. With its jointed frame and double-thickness panelled bracing, the gate is really solid and heavy. 

More interesting natury things

Some carnage in the flora...

I like hover flies. They are cute and pollinate flowers. However, this can be hazardous...

This is maybe a Dasysyrphus (or Epostrophe) Somethingorothery. 

Whatever it is, it didn't see  Misumena Vatia coming...

Nice rose though.

And for some light relief after that traumatic scene, here are some pretty insects also on flowers, but not dying.

Some unknown flower beetle...

The daisy is pretty too...

And another hover fly. This one was on one of our clematis flowers.

Talking of predators though, look at this beauty - the first Devil's Coach Horse I've seen close-up in decades (or at least that I can recall!). When I was a child, we would show one of these a stalk of grass and it would attack it, impressively. Only about 35mm long, but totally bossing it here...

Another epic beetle. Not quite as scary as the above, but also not to be messed with. A female stag...

Stag beetles are pretty ponderous on land. This fat 18" carp is even more languorous in the algae-clogged end of the lake...

This toad was also taking it easy when I was digging up woodchippings with a pick ake. It somehow evaded a very sticky end, by just walking out of the mess and then ambling off under some leaves...

 

Finally, something I haven't seen before - a bumblebee partaking of aphid honeydew. This is honeydew from whitefly aphids on the leaves of our damson trees. The bee wouldn't keep still so the shot is rather blurry, but you can see its proboscis lapping it up, literally.

Here are the producing aphids. I spliced two pics together to show them and their excreta.

Bin shelter door

This one is about gate-building

But first, here is a new extension of the fence I made

Very neat. However it's not a fence. It's a place for popping the wheelie bins, so they don't have to sit on the lawn looking ugly and getting in the way of the car etc 

Here it is from the front...

 

The outer fence is actually a door

Within which the bins are all cosied up.

I had to build the door from scratch as it needed to be an unusual shape. Here it is before cladding.

It has a door closer, so it stays shut and doesn't bang about when it is windy. 

I enjoyed making this - it is a proper jointed door frame.

I made it all made from 4" x 2" rough timber scrounged from skips

It has some hefty mortices...

And tenons...

These were cut with a mixture of:

• power saws and hand saws (tenons)
• auger bits in a power drill and chisels (mortices)
• filing sander (cleaning joints up)

Construction

I've missed out most of the useful stuff about cutting the tenons etc (oops), but suffice to say, you need to mark them consistently with the square and the marking gauge. When using the marking gauge the two pins should be applied from the same edge on the face of both mortice and tenon that will eventually face together when joined.   

Once all cut, it is worth testing them by a dry-run on construction.

You need to do this to test the joints fit and then trim if needed...

And to see if all bars fan out in a flat plane as intended...

The joints should be quite snug when dry fitted. E.g. here, I had to use a mallet to get them totally closed. The frame should be pretty stable without glue.

Nice...

For wood joinery, you should always apply glue to both pieces being joined, so both pieces are in full contact with glue, which then closes any gaps between the snug pieces forming a fully solid joint. This includes the shoulders

Your mortice should be good and sloppy...

And your tenon slathered...

With the glue, they should ease together more easily than when dry fitting.

Halfway through connecting the crossbars to one rail...

Putting the second rail in place....

After fitting, I used sash clamps to pull the joints firmly together and keep them there while the glue set.

The corners were pleasingly square without needing any tweaking.

When in the garden fitting the gate, it is best to have a guard dog on hand.