Feeling The Heat

The purpose of our “Selfies” is to try and capture the feel of the day. These are from December… Great long shadows and it is cold and windy.

Now this is April…

Her mud is drying up.

These are my holiday snaps and I have been on holiday for a long time.

There may be trouble ahead….

I wouldn’t like to be that Rat when Fizz the Great War Dog gets a’hold of him.

She just needs to practice a bit, she is warming up.

Oh yes, I have bought the Goldfinches a nyger seed feeder.

They are loving it and empty it very quickly. I will do more about that in another post.

On the subject of birds. The Bullfinches have stopped using the feeders but they are still around. We have an Apple orchard at the bottom of the garden and I think that they are drawn to the buds there.

Disappointingly the Long -tailed Tits have gone. Like the finches I think that their comings and goings are related to the natural food supply but I don’t know what has drawn them away.

The little Robin never came back. There are still lots of Robins about and sometimes I look out of my door and shout, “Come on! One of you must be Christopher.” No, he has gone.

But all of that fades into absolute insignificance because when I opened my door yesterday I heard a song that filled my heart.

Now I know what they say, that “One Swallow does not a summer make,”  but that is rubbish, it is summertime now 🙂

There is something that I have got to do this year. Swallows pair up for life, each autumn when they leave they separate and then in the early summer when they return they reunite. It is something to witness and I have got to video it this year. They are so excited to be reunited, like little puppies and it doesn’t last for that long but for a little while there is a great video waiting to be made.

I am going to love hearing their song again.

The little Mud Eaters beat the Swallows back by several days.

I didn’t really do the House Martins justice last year, they don’t nest outside of my front door like the Swallows but I will try harder this time around. I love their little feathered feet.

I like a little heat.

Wildflowers then, there is so much going on that I don’t know where to start.

Walking along the country paths it just looks like a mess of green…

Unless you know it.

This little leaf is the Cow Parsley and in a few weeks it will be painting the most beautiful pictures.

That reminds me of another April challenge. The St. Mark’s Fly.

So called because the adult flies emerge around April the twenty fifth (St. Mark’s Day), these are the ones with long dangly legs that trail behind them when they fly.

The challenge is to photograph the female, I just could not find one last year. They only live for a couple of weeks and the window of opportunity is a small one.

But back to the present, this leaf is the Hogweed.

Forget any misconceptions that the name might suggest, this one is a very beautiful flower.

Also the large, saucer like, flower heads are an absolute magnet for insects. I am finding my first flowers now and it will be here until the very end of Autumn.

I have got to leave the wildflowers for a bit because I have got to take Fizz for a walk, I will come back to them. While we are out I am going to upload some wild animal videos for you to watch.

These are female Fallow Deer (Dama dama) They are just losing their winter coats and so they look a little bit tatty but they are healthy animals.

This week the trail camera returned 180 videos over two days and nights. 136 of those were of my little friend the Fox but I also got 44 clips of the deer in the daytime, a nice return.

This is the same spot that I videoed the Boar in last week and it is proving to be a good place to set the camera. As well as the Deer, Fox and Boar I have been getting clips of Badgers, nothing exceptional but it is good to know that they are there. I feel happier if I can say that I am putting the camera out to film Deer, they are hunted just the same as the Boar but there isn’t the same hysteria and people are much more likely to go into the forest to look for Deer.

This location is not in the Forest of Dean, it is woodland some way outside of the forest boundaries and the Boar here are the animals that the Forestry Commission have been kind enough to drive out of the forest as they attempt to disperse them across the whole county, or country even.

A few other things that are good about this location, apart from the fact that it is rich in wild life, It is an unmanaged Sweet Chestnut coppice, I wouldn’t normally like that because there is very little else that grows in such a coppice but it does give me quite good views of the animals. This is also a Bluebell wood and that will make a nice backdrop and nobody comes here. I have filmed a lot here and have never picked up Dog walkers or anybody at all, that makes me feel quite safe about leaving the camera out. I will continue to film here for a few more weeks.

Okay I am back and Poochy has been walked. It is quite blustery out there today.

Back to the wildflowers. I like them because they are beautiful…

(Ivy-leaved Speedwell)

Fizz likes them because they make a nice soft bed.

Get off the bed!

I am very pleased that I got pictures of the Town Hall Clock buds last week because this week there were no buds to be found.

Another flower that has just appeared…..

Remember the diminutive Harry Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)?

This is the girl of his dreams, Lady Smock and if you think, like Harry that she looks good enough to eat, well, she is.

Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis). The leaves and flowers are the best bits to eat, they  have a peppery flavour that adds a lot to a herb salad.

Both she and Harry are Cardamines and they can cross pollinate but  will she, wont she? That is what Harry would like to know.

A couple more “firsts” for the week, this little splash of pink is Herb Robert.

Last year I was able to find this one in flower throughout the winter but this year, this is my first.

I have also seen my first signs of the spathe of the Arum Lily.

There will be much more of these flowers in the weeks to come.

Well it has been a long post and you must be feeling pretty tired.

I have just got one more wildflower to do today and then we can play ball.

This is Hen-bit Dead-nettle. I found it growing on my steps when I got home.

I will try and find it in more picturesque surroundings.

Goodnight Fizz.

 

The End of Scruffbag

There is not an awful lot to report today.

We have had new visitors to the garden. This is a mixed pair of Bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrhula). Apologies for the quality of the pictures but the weather was awful, I offer these as a record of species.

(male)

(female)

It has been about a year since I saw a Bullfinch in the garden, then it was just one male and he didn’t stay. These have been around for about a week now and obviously I hope that they do stay. Bullfinches are very fond of buds, especially of fruit trees and we have an apple orchard at the bottom of the garden, so hey, what’s the problem? At the moment they are digging into the sunflower hearts and the seeds are sticking to their faces, I don’t know if it was just because it was raining when I took these pictures but they look like babies plastered with food. I hope that they nest here.

Now I am a famous Botanist, Entomologist and Big Game Hunter (Heck, I am probably even an Astronaut, I haven’t checked) but despite all of my qualifications, most people still come here to see Scruffbag. So here is Scruffbag in the weather.

It has been very up and down, that’s all I’m saying.

BTW. This post is called “The End of Scruffbag” because tomorrow my valued associate is going to the beauty parlour to get fixed, after today you won’t recognise her.

So Fizz is planning a post on FB saying that I only love animals that eat worms. That is not really true, there is plenty of room for one more animal in my life and soon there will be three of us writing this blog and that will be better than two.

We spent a lot of time playing “how close will you get?”  Then yesterday the bird started eating out of my hand but.. It is not perching on my hand yet. I have to put my hand on the floor. This is just awkward because it involves a lot of me being on the floor and it is uncomfortable but we are getting there.

Wildflowers next and after a very slow start things are picking up.

On Sunday I found my first Wood Avens, I would say, out of season, but I did find a few early flowers last year.

Monday brought White Dead-nettle and…

My first hazel flowers. (female)

Tuesday brought Red Dead-nettle and about time too, this one is two weeks late..

There are still no Primroses though but please don’t write in on this subject.

In the garden we have got yellow ones, red ones, we have even got a blue one and have had since the beginning of January. I am just not finding them in the wild.

My area is at a bit of altitude and a good two weeks behind sea level so you may well have wild primroses around you, plus they will come out in the open before they come out in the woods but I was photographing them here on February the third last year.

Okay, say goodbye to Scruffbag.

and for those who really can’t get enough of her, here is a video.

You are only going to want to watch this if like me you are a student of animal behaviour or if you like big eyes. She is keeping the ball from me but she doesn’t just run off with it, she walks a few paces and waits for me to catch up and as I bend down she takes another few steps out of reach and waits for me again.

If you think that is weird you should see her play the gate game. There is a gate on this track, she crawls under it and waits for me to climb over. As soon as I climb she crawls under the gate and sits on the other side watching me. She thinks this is so funny 😀

So I wrote about Hazel. In February I am having trouble keeping up with the wild flowers as they appear, White Dead-nettle isn’t on Easy Wildflowers yet. It is pretty obvious that I will fall behind in the summer. Oh well, I will just do my best.

I left a lot out of this post, there are no leaves or bark, I am not even sure that I mentioned that Hazel is a tree. It is one that I will come back to.

Corylus avellana, The Hazel Tree

Hazel catkins are an inflorescence of small flowers that form in the autumn and are with us all winter, they can begin to open in January if the weather is mild.

(Catkins in November)

(February)

Each catkin is a flower head, comprised of about 240 small flowers. Each flower is covered by a triangular downy bract, beneath the bract are four stamens and each stamen has two yellow anthers (the pollen producing male part of a flower).

A single anther will produce around nine thousand grains of pollen and one catkin, nearly nine million. A Hazel tree produces a lot of pollen.

Hazel is wind-pollinated and not reliant on insects so most of the pollen produced is blown away and doesn’t find it’s target.

        The target for the pollen is the style of the female flower.

The Hazel tree is monoecious, meaning that each tree has both male and female flowers. The female flowers grow in clusters from small buds above the catkins. Only the red styles of the flowers protrude from the buds and the female inflorescence typically measures 2-4 mm across, It is a very small flower.

Despite anything that you may read to the contrary (or that I may have told you in the past) the location and timing of the female flowers has nothing to do with avoiding self pollination. Corylus avellana is self incompatible, it cannot self-fertilise.

Each female flower has two red styles (The pollen receiving female part of a flower). Each bud contains a cluster of between four and fourteen female flowers. Only the styles emerge from the bud.

        Once pollinated the female flowers produce the fruit.

Hazel nuts in July.

Unripened Hazel nuts are white and appear either singly or in small clusters. They are surrounded by a leafy, green sheath called an involucre.

        The fruit begins to ripen and turns brown in August.

Note that in this next picture, taken on the twentieth of August, next year’s catkins are already growing on the tree.

In December a few nuts remain.

Now the trees are characterised by the dried involucres that stay on the tree long after the nuts have gone.

There is a mass of misinformation on the internet. I used the following sources to verify the accuracy of my post.

Acta Agrobotanica Vol. 61 (1) 33-39 2008

Molecular Biology Reports April 2012 Vol. 39 Issue 4 pp 4997-5008

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Fagales

Family: Betulaceae

Genus: Corylus

Species: Corylus avellana

Wildflowers in winter 🙂

Like a Puppy on a string…

We do have quite a bit to report today. The Badger cam turned up an astonishing creature that I really didn’t expect to see, I will show you that in a little bit.

Fizz is on a bit of string for a reason and it’s not just because I lost her lead, I am keeping her out of trouble today.

But first, our first butterfly of 2015.

It has been hibernating in my flat. It was quite sunny yesterday and I guess the poor little thing thought that spring had arrived.

I had exactly the same thing last year with the same species waking up in February. I kept the curtains shut in my bedroom to keep the sun out and it went back to sleep. I let it go in March.

I have given this one a good book to read and sent it back to bed.

This is last year’s stowaway.

I was out searching for wildflowers this morning and I found this one.

I found two of them in flower. This is Common–field Speedwell. There is so much that isn’t in flower that should be but I wasn’t expecting this one until March.

So another nice surprise 🙂

They may not look like much at the moment but in the summer they will look like this.

The third nice surprise was that the Mallards are back.

Well the drake is, no sign of the female yet.

She will be here soon. They breed on our ponds but last year she didn’t nest here. That was a shame I would have loved ducklings on the pond.

For the next couple of months they will strut about the garden as if they own the place. It is nice to have them here.

So what has Fizz been up to?

Well yesterday I said that I would take her for a picnic.

She announced it on Facebook and all sorts of rabble turned up.

It’s all gone Pete Tong!

Next is a little video that I made yesterday. This little bird sings for me every day and I always want to remember this.

That brings us to the mystery animal, this is the last thing that I expected to see up there.

The mystery is not what it is but what is it doing up there?

The only water around is the stream that feeds the pond the ducks are on. That is only a couple of feet wide and nearly three quarters of a mile from Badger cam.

It is of course a European Otter, Lutra lutra. I am told it might be a dispersing juvenile but dispersing from where?

Could there be Otters breeding on our little stream out back of the farm? I doubt it. I don’t know anything about Otters, I really didn’t expect to see one here. It is an exciting mystery 🙂

The Big Garden Birdwatch

That is what we have been doing today.

Every winter in the UK (since 1979) the RSPB asks the British public to take part in a survey of the birds in their garden. About half a million people take part and it has become the worlds largest wildlife survey.

So for one hour over this weekend we were asked to record the birds that visit our garden. They don’t want you to count how many times Blue Tits visit your feeder because that would be the same birds over and over, instead they want you just to watch and record the largest number of each species that you can see at any one time.

So during my allotted hour there was one point that I had four Blackbirds on the grass together, four is the answer, not how many Blackbirds I saw in the entire hour, get it?

This is my view of the garden from my kitchen window that will do. Most of the birds will be around the feeder, I have put plenty of food out on the grass to try and bring them into my field of vision and if I get three or four of one species on the feeders at the same time then I am scanning around to try and see more.

My results were not very spectacular. Some birds that I could almost guarantee to show up, didn’t. So for Collared Doves the answer was none, there are a pair that live here and I see them every day but during my hour they didn’t show. I hope they don’t get the idea that Collared Doves are extinct in Gloucestershire.

It is quite a fun thing to do. It requires a lot of attention. We had ten species visit during our hour and it could have been quite a few more. They all visit at the same time so I am trying to keep track of three House Sparrows over there and two Blue Tits on one feeder and two Robins squabbling amongst the bushes and so on.

I couldn’t take pictures while I was counting, I was too busy and then I couldn’t take pictures afterwards because it was just so murky but I did my best to try and show you what it was like.

The results that I returned were..

6 House Sparrows
6 Blue Tits
4 Goldfinches
3 Great Tits
2 Robins
4 Blackbirds
3 Chaffinches
2 Dunnocks
4 Bumbarrels
1 Wren

My favourite was the Wren, I hardly ever see them in that part of the garden and didn’t expect it.

It doesn’t look like a lot of birds but there were quite a lot of birds, they just didn’t all appear together and I was just following the rules. Quite a few local species would appear to be extinct if they just looked at my results but I expect that other people will report seeing them and an hour isn’t very long.

I could easily have missed the Bumbarrels too (Long-tailed Tits). They are not regular visitors but they have been here for a few days and just at the right time for the survey.

So that is the Big Garden Birdwatch. The RSPB will collate all of the results and tell us which species are in decline and which are doing well and they will use that information to focus their conservation efforts on the birds that need the most help.

Yeah, You And Whose Army?

Fizz has been having a few problems with the livestock today, I’ll tell you about that in a minute. The day starts with feeding the animals.

It’s probably best not to mention what Fizz had for breakfast, that might have been what started her off.

Even before Fizz gets fed and before it gets light, the early bird gets the worm.

The Robin tried to land on my arm last night but it was getting dark and I didn’t see her coming, so suddenly there was a lot of fluttering as she tried to perch on my arm and taken by surprise, I moved my head quickly and I think that I said, “Hello” and I scared her off. This morning we were friends again.

There have been a couple of notable birds on the feeder this week. Long-tailed Tits have been here for the last few days. They don’t visit very often so it is nice to see them.

They arrive in small flocks and feed together. I have counted eight of them on the peanut feeder at the same time and you can hardly see the feeder for feathers. A very beautiful little bird.

There was also a Woodpecker on the feeder today. I haven’t seen a woodpecker since the little ones fledged last summer so I am hoping that she will start visiting regularly again.

Goldfinches are back in their charms. They disappeared late in the summer when the thistle seed appeared but they will stay here now.

Then it was time to feed the Sheep. They have really taken to this idea of being fed and when they see me they come running, it doesn’t matter if I have got food or not, I might just be taking the Dog for a walk.

This is a rubbish, short video but you will get the picture.

I cut the video so short because the camera was shaking, I wasn’t scared, just common sense really.

They are eating pellets, well it says “Sheep Food” on the sack that I get them from.

They are all enjoying their food except for that white one at the front, that one is always focused on me. I think that this must be the Bull Sheep (if there is such a thing). It is the one that I observed in my last post and it is always in front and always the first to approach me.

As Fizz would say, “Remember this face.”

It says she is number 00127 on the green tag but I just call her “The Bull.”

So I went back and fed the birds some more and played with Fizz in the garden. Then I was cold so I went and got some breakfast and coffee.

Then it was time to walk the Dog.

Remember that I said it doesn’t matter if I have got food or not, they come running when they see me.

Oh! That army. Col! They’ve got an army.

You can stop that.

The Bull is interested in my Dog as well as me.

Well, I rescued Fizz from the Sheep and we had a nice walk and a game of ball, on the way to the woods to check the trail camera.

Now I would like to have some kind of reference to nature in my blog posts. There is not going to be a wildflower bit at the end of this post because I have been having major problems with my new operating system. It is fixed now but it took me all day yesterday and I am behind.

One little nature observation though…

Wild Arum, Arum maculatum is coming into leaf everywhere. We won’t see the spathe until April, it spends a long time as a leaf but it is still nice to see another little sign of spring.

Things are not going well up in the woods. The camera has been out for four nights and all we have seen are Foxes.

This is a very nice Fox but I have watched 150 videos of Foxes and I wouldn’t mind seeing something else.

That was just one video that I more or less picked at random. It has a nice atmospheric sound track.

As we walked back to the farm we could see them all waiting for us.

It was time to run the gauntlet once again.

There were familiar faces in the crowd.

I think that I better lock the door tonight when I go to bed 🙂

Waiting and Watching

Okay we are waiting for the Sparrowhawk.

On Saturday morning I saw a Sparrowhawk make a kill in the back garden, I am pretty sure that it was a successful kill. I have seen this hawk here twice before and so far he has visited the garden got his dinner and then disappeared for a couple of months, he has not been a problem or made any impact on the bird population. I have come to look forward to his visits.

This is the bird on an earlier visit (previously unpublished photographs)

The pictures may seem cruel but predators exist in the world as part of the balance of nature and they have to eat. Predators kill and eat other animals. Starvation is the main cause of death for these birds.

A lot of people don’t have much sympathy for the Sparrowhawk because it is cruel. A small bird like this will die quickly as the hawk’s talons pierce it’s body but the hawk will eat larger prey alive. So do a lot of our birds, Blackbirds don’t strangle worms before they eat them but it is a lot easier to feel sorry for a bird than it is a worm. The hawk isn’t being cruel, this is just how it is.

This is a juvenile bird and I believe that it is most probably a male. The bird that  I saw on Saturday was a male in it’s adult plumage, possibly the same bird. An adult male is a beautiful and striking bird, It’s back and wings are steel blue and it has orange cheeks, that orange colour sometimes extends down it’s breast. I really wanted to photograph it.

The other thing is…

My bird feeders have remained almost untouched now for five days and I want to know if the hawk that I saw on Saturday has anything to do with that.

At this time of year it is normal for bird feeders to be quiet in the UK, there is an abundance of natural food about but the last time I filled these feeders they were emptied in three days and the change has been sudden.

I decided to watch for the hawk’s return. He can come and go in the space of a minute so to know if he is staying here I have to watch constantly, if I take a half hour break I will learn nothing.

He ate on Saturday morning and so I decided to watch from Saturday afternoon until the same time on Sunday. Twenty four hours in a hawks life.

It was a no show. when he didn’t show up again on Saturday I felt certain that he would be hungry in the morning but… no Sparrowhawk, so we don’t have a problem. That’s a pity…or is it.

Instead of a post about a beautiful bird here is a post about me getting annoyed and getting a bad back.

Play with me.

I can’t. I’m busy.

You don’t look very busy.

This is the garden layout. Take note of the Honeysuckle bush beside the feeder, that is a problem.

I think that the open aspect of the garden has saved us from having any real problems with Sparrowhawks. They are a woodland bird and they like tight spaces where the prey bird will find it’s exit blocked. They also like small town gardens with high fences and lots  of shrubbery for the same reason. They are also an ambush predator.

Whine, whine whine.

The first time that I saw the hawk it hid in the bush beside the feeder and it sat there for about twenty minutes before giving up. Every bird in the garden saw it go in and knew it was there. It didn’t get a kill on that visit but next time it changed it’s tactics.

Excuse me there is something outside of my back door.

I don’t know what that is and I am not opening the door to find out.

The next time that the hawk visited it flew openly into the garden, all of the little birds dashed into the honeysuckle bush and the bird perched on top of the feeder.

The honeysuckle isn’t offering the birds any protection at all.

If an old fellow with misty bifocals can see them from his kitchen then the hawk can see them from half a mile away. It plucked a Sparrow from the bush as easily as you or I would take an apple from a tree (a small tree that we could reach).

The second kill that I saw followed exactly the same pattern. It is so easy for this Hawk that I do not really understand why it has not taken up residence here but it hasn’t.

Don’t scratch my door! Excuse me, I have got to deal with this.

What?

Can I come in?

No!

Sometimes when I am sitting motionless and staring out of a window I am actually being very busy.

Can’t you do nothing and throw a ball at the same time, or is that what men call multitasking?

Luckily for her I have a soft spot for little animals. 🙂

This is gonna be so good.

So that is that. No photographs of a beautiful bird of prey, just happy Sparrows…

and a stupidly happy dog.

What a waste of a Sunday…… or was it?

Summer Birds

We are having a storm here but it is quite a nice storm with strong warm winds. Warm makes all the difference.  It has been blowing all night and so I found myself sitting outside at four o’clock this morning enjoying the wind buffeting the trees.

I am kicking off with birds today and perhaps the weather will brighten up in a bit. I have seen some beautiful birds this year.

Unlike the butterflies I don’t have to say goodbye to the birds. A couple of lightweights have gone south, fair enough but winter is a wonderful time for watching birds.

Here are a few birds that have featured here this summer.

The Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Sizewise it is about as “great” as a starling. Quite a small bird but it has wonderful presence. The female turned up about a month before the male and made herself at home.

She was on the feeder every time that I looked out of the window.

Eventually the male started visiting us too.

Great Spotted Woodpeckers don’t really eat peanuts. As a species they are totally dependant on dead wood habitat and the insects that live therein.

The juveniles visited us for a few weeks but their arrival signalled the end of the visits. They have been missing from the garden for the last couple of months.

Meanwhile… out on the waters edge…

Mandarin ducks nest high in trees often in old woodpecker holes. Once hatched the chicks have to leap out of the nest and plummet thirty or forty feet to the ground because they are ducks not woodpeckers. They are very light and survive the fall. It is a spectacle that I would really like to video.

Meanwhile out on the farm….

This is a Red Legged Partridge, an introduced species. Introduced for the shooting they are quite common here. My bedroom overlooks fields and I can actually lie in bed and watch these birds through my window but I still have to get out of bed to get decent pictures. No situation is perfect 🙂

Goldfinches played a major role in our summer. My new landlord’s favourite bird, he had never had them in the garden. They love sunflower hearts and I filled the garden with them.

This is a juvenile Goldfinch.

Goldfinches were not the only birds breeding here. The one that got the most blog space was the Barn Swallow. There are lots of swallow nestling videos on this blog but for me the best bit was when they first arrived.

They are supposed to mate for life. Some of the birds are just finding their mate. Some of them are  reuniting. They fuss over each other so much. It is lovely to watch.

It would do no good telling me that birds are not capable of emotions. They greet each other with all the excitement of a puppy meeting it’s owner. I have also seen them mourn when they have lost a brood. These are very emotional birds.

Throughout the summer we had all manner of new arrivals, too many to show them all here.

Blackbirds raised a brood in a tractor.

Despite a very wet start to the year the Blue Tits were also very successful.

Blue Tits have a large brood and all of that feeding can leave mum feeling a little bit frazzled.

(This bird is actually just moulting, perfectly healthy and happy, or it might be a Zombie Blue Tit, they do happen, I think 🙂 )

The bird that had the greatest success was the House Sparrow. They can have several broods in a year and our birds had a constant supply of food this summer, they made the most of it.

There are dozens of them and they have been moving around the farm in small flocks. So much so that I was beginning to worry that I was upsetting the balance of nature… Until today that is…

I filled the feeders up three days ago and they haven’t been touched, something is wrong.

This Sparrowhawk has visited the garden a couple of times this year. He hasn’t stayed very long and hasn’t caused any big problems. It is nice to see him.

I saw him or another just like him this morning. Now he is in his full adult plumage and looks quite beautiful. (no photos yet)

To have had any impact on my Sparrow hordes he must have taken up residence or more likely his presence is just keeping the birds away from the feeders. Today I am on Sparrowhawk watch.

and looking forward to a great winter of wonderful birds.

Escapism

Buddy escaped from the farm.

By the time he caught up with us I had come too far to want to take him home.

I was here to set a Badger camera up.

I think that they have moved into fields East of the farm but they should still forage here. I have found a nice tree on the East side and tied a camera to it and hope to have some results soon.

My Badgers have escaped the cull. It is not happening here. They started killing animals last Tuesday. They killed 921 Badgers last year and they have gone back to kill some more this year. The people who live there will probably never see another Badger. If I lived there then I think that I would just move. Nature has been destroyed.

The Dogs messed about while I did all the hard work setting the camera  up.

This is another escapee. This one has escaped from a garden.

It is a Cotoneaster but I have no idea what species. It isn’t native to the UK but several moths use Cotoneaster as a larval food plant and birds eat the berries. It is also a good source of nectar when it flowers.

There is only one Cotoneaster species native to the UK and this isn’t it. Called Cotoneaster cambricus, Wild Cotoneaster is restricted to a very small area of Wales and there are only six plants left. There is a species action plan and people are keeping a close eye on these last few plants which don’t seem able to naturally regenerate.

More red berries and these are Rose Hips.

Rosa, Rosa, Rosa.

She has gone and taken her family. She left on Wednesday only days after Chicklet took his first flight. She has escaped our winter for African sun. Other bird song is filling the evening air now.

They will be back to do their courting all over again. I will look forward to their return. They are great characters.

Someone else who  escaped this week, the House Martins have also gone.

I was reading about House Martin migration just recently and amazingly nobody knows where they go in the winter. We know that they go to Africa but not where in Africa, they just get lost. The BTO are fitting birds with little devices that measure the amount of daylight, they can determine where they have been from this and hope to solve the mystery.

Anyway Roses.

That smooth beardless hip above is from a Dog Rose, this next one is something different.

Roses are very difficult if not impossible to identify in the field. There are twenty different species of Wild Rose in the UK and they hybridise easily, so you can’t tell what sort of a Rose it is any more.

Well that is what I am told. It all depends on how accurate you want to be. Ten of those twenty Roses are sub species of the Dog Rose and you can’t easily tell them apart.

Okay but as far as I am concerned this is a Dog Rose and that is  good enough.

This is a Field Rose.

Most of the others are rare and I am not going to worry about them unless I am lucky enough to find one.

There is a common white rose called the Burnet Rose but that grows by the coast and I am not expecting to find it here, it has black hips.

There is one other very common Rose that I should find here and  that is the Sweet Briar Rose. It has a pink flower with a pale white centre and it  has bristly hips. I am hoping this is it.

It is in the same field as the other two species but on the opposite side. I didn’t notice any Roses over there in the summer or maybe just didn’t look closely enough but this is one to have a proper look at next year.

I am going to finish up now with some more red berries. Just before we got back home I found this Hawthorn festooned with Old Man’s Beard and I had to photograph it.

That’s enough escaping for one night.

Chicklet is

Winter is coming. Some of the Swallows have left already….

Some of them. Rosa and her family are still here.

I am not exactly sure when the others went or even if they have all gone. If I stand around outside my front door I get dive bombed by seven Swallows  (Rosa’s family) but yesterday when I was filming Chicklet I became aware that there was no activity in places where I knew other Swallows were nesting and when Rosa took her family off there were no other Swallows in the air. Some of them have left.

(I have just been out for a walk to look at other nests and there are still quite a few birds about they just seem to have thinned out a lot)

This could be the difficult time. I knew that Rosa wouldn’t leave without Chicklet. Now the question is how soon before he is  ready to go? He only fledged yesterday.

Of course Fledging isn’t just about a single flight. The parents are still feeding him and they keep bringing him back to the nest.

Two Swallows came here from Africa, when Rosa and Fred leave they will be taking five new ones away with them. Swallow numbers don’t double or treble every year, if they did we wouldn’t be able to see the sky by now, their numbers stay pretty static. Some of the seven Swallows that leave here won’t be coming back. I don’t know which ones but it is a very long and hard flight to Africa and many perish on the way from exhaustion and starvation and some are taken by storms.

That is how it has to be or the sky would be blacked out. Nature has a balance.

Chicklet made Rosa very happy and today he is making her happy, that is all that anyone can ask for.

He is beautiful.

He needs a few weeks yet to build up a bit of strength and get used to his wings. That shouldn’t be a problem, it is very early for the Swallows to be leaving and the weather here is getting better.

I am pleased that Rosa and her family will be staying around for a while yet because I will sorely miss them when they are gone. 🙂

Until next year.

Rosa’s Chicklet

This is just a brief update on Rosa.

I haven’t been watching her closely. I can hear her singing away outside of my window so I have known that everything was okay with her new brood I thought that I would give them a few days to grow.

This morning I put the camera out to watch them and I got a bit of a surprise. There is only one.

That is very good news. Less work for Rosa and the chick will get more food and stand a better chance.

I still don’t think that the chick has much hope. It won’t be fledged until a week into September and the birds usually leave in September. We could do with a heat wave to keep them here for a couple of extra weeks but it is freezing cold today.

I woke up this morning and put a T shirt on because it is August and pretty soon I had to put a shirt over that and now I have got  a body warmer over that Brrrr. Maybe I am coming down with something.

Good news though and it is a cute one. 🙂

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..