Autumn is Watched at Trelowarren too!

At home and on The Lizard this is a bird-watching paradise in October.

As we are quiet, out of the way, off the beaten track and protected from the weather, Trelowarren is the home of beautiful and varied birdlife. Firecrests outside the office, nuthatches in the walled garden, golden plovers and goldfinches, woodpeckers and of course the owls. And on the river the egrets and the curlews and the waders and the dabblers In fact in October the owls are so noisy at night that they wake us up.

So you wont be amazed to hear that we have quite a few happy twitchers here on holiday at the moment.

And this is what is around:

• Red Shrike,
• Golden Plover,
• Firecrest,
• Paddyfield Warbler,
• Olive Backed Pipit,
• Yellow Browed Warbler
• and more types of owl than you can shake a mouse at.

Happy Honey Bees update

The bees at Trelowarren have had a tough year.  Bad weather in early spring led to the bees being unable to collect pollen, and this resulted in us having to supplement the hives with sugar water to feed the bees and also very little pollination of our fruit trees, which is why we have no soft fruit this year.

We did however manage to collect several wild swarms from in and around the estate, and Olly and Matt collected the most enormous swarm hanging from a rose outside Skewye’s front door.  This swarm has been very active ever since and we did manage to collect honey later in the year from the hive.

We have both heather honey this year – the bees must be flying all the way out to Goonhilly Downs to the heather, which is terrific – and bramble honey, which many of you will realise we have in abundance at Trelowarren.  Because the bees were short of food in the first half of the year they did try to swarm out of their hives many times and we have had to catch them and put them back in the hives, this has kept Olly on his toes.  I am happy to report that we have currently moved to 15 very vibrant hives and hope that next year you will see honey for sale in reception, the shop and the restaurant.

If any of you would like to find out more about our project, which aims to have 25 working hives by 2014, please get in touch with Olly via the Estate Office and he will be happy to show you around.

Forestry

Another forty acres of trees (mostly sitka) have been felled in the Long Valley. This has opened up the views and the light and air in a most gratifying and spectacular way. It the bottom of the valley we can now see the old water meadows which have for a long time been covered by the planting that the Forestry Commission did in the fifties. More about the logging at Trelowarren.

People made much tighter use of their resources in the past. Water meadows were flooded in the spring to bring on the early grass for stock that needed a good early boost and even the drives had gates along them so that the sheep could be allowed to graze down the verges.