In the still of the night at La Pasera

In the still of the night when we are asleep, the garden continues to host an array of wildlife we rarely see or think about... What happens in your garden at night?

As dusk falls, the birds call out the end of the day before roosting in bushes, trees and crevices. The bats take flight and feast on the abundant mist of midges, flies and moths and the owls fly low from perch to perch in search of mice, voles and frogs. The frogs begin their chatter and the toads sing out loud announcing their presence to passing mates. Meanwhile the snails and slugs exit their daytime refuge and take advantage of the cooler air and dew that settles on the grasses and plants, easing their journey to feast on luscious greens and petals.

Excitement grows for Wentworth and Gawber as they tune in to the music of the night. A rustle here, a flutter there, a call in the distance, both Wentworth and Gawber finely tune their senses to ensure their safety and maintain their territory. A large male stag beetle signals its presence with a loud whirring noise as it navigates the garden only to be chased by two curios and playful cats.

Every so often we sit in the darkness on the terrace and experience the sounds and sights of the night. It is amazing to think that within a few meters, creatures great and small are feeding, travelling to and fro and, on constant alert for friend or foe. It is clear that we only ever experience a fraction of the abundance of life that uses our garden.

Here is a short compilation of night-time infrared videos filmed in the wildest parts of our plot. It features, badgers, deer, fox, pine marten, hedgehog, wild boar, a raton and of course, cats. When we view the films we can often see the reflections of curious cats eyes watching from a distance. The final scene is a lovely reminder that our domesticated cats bridge the life in the garden we know and the life we rarely catch a glimpse of...

December days and nights

The Picos de Europa mountains are capped with snow and looking good. The garden is too wet to work and although many plants and bushes want chopping, hazels need coppicing and vegetable beds need turning, it will all have to wait for the warmer, sunny days we normally experience in December.

Until the ground dries out a little we are taking the opportunity to walk with friends, take photographs, make plans for 2014, complete mosaic projects and continue writing; exciting times ahead.

As we don't have television it is always good to have things to do during autumn and winter as the evenings and nights are long. Having recently transferred to DVD some old recordings from bands I was in when much younger, the memories and long evenings prompted me to take up the keyboards and midi sequencers again which after 30 years is great fun. I might even upload some compositions to Soundcloud, not sure about re-visting the look though....

Luis is away helping his sister and family helping with the Matanza. There is always lots of work to do once the pigs are slaughtered. Chorizos, black pudding and salami to make, joints of meat to prepare, hams to salt and crackling to make in bulk. We have written about it before and this is the link (click here) if you want to find out more.

The wildlife in the garden never ceases to fascinate and entertain us. Since installing the Bushnell Trail cam we have seen: deer, fox, pine marten, field mice, hedgehogs, cats, stoat, badgers and many birds. Our You Tube channel has many of the videos from the trail cam. Apart from birds, daytime sightings are few and far between. Yesterday morning I did however, come face to face with a stag which duly roared and ran. My heart was pounding, it was just a pity there was no camera to hand.

This magnificent buzzard was perching on the telegraph pole near to our garden, it took flight and I just managed to get a shot but alas not the sharpest photograph. I just love the power of these birds.

Badgers visiting the garden for fallen cherries

We live on the edge of the village which is great as we are surrounded by fields and woodlands. There are a few natural caves dotted around and many untended plots which have reverted to scrub-land that are slowly becoming naturalised with native trees once again.

We see a lot of wildlife in and around La Pasera such as wild boar, deer, pine marten, voles, field mice and red squirrel in addition to the numerous insects, birds and reptiles. We have often seen dead badgers on the main road and knew that they were around but never thought they would be visiting our garden.

At the bottom of the garden we have always left an area as natural as possible. The area is dominated by an old cherry tree, with equally ancient oak, walnut and hazelnut trees. We recently set up our wildlife camera to capture any nocturnal adventures and we were delighted to see a group of badgers foraging on the fallen cherries.

We initially filmed three at once but over the past few night only two have been visiting. We were surprised to see what we think is one of our cats Gawber spying on a foraging badger. It is one of his favourite hang outs and with the weather being so warm at the moment the cats spend most of the night outdoors. You'll spot Gawber's eyes at the top right hand side of the video clip.

We have added a You Tube video page to our blog where you can access short clips we have filmed here in Asturias - check them out sometime via the link at the top of the page. We'll be adding more in the near future so subscribe for updates.