How to eat peanuts with one chopstick.

It  has been so hot here that the bottom fell out of our peanut feeder. I am guessing that the wire expanded and our trustworthy feeder suddenly failed.

I had to modify it.

That seems to have done the trick.

Now the birds have to learn how to use chopsticks. It is not as easy as it looks. The young ones seem to be getting the hang of it though. It is just a question of balance.

These young Great Tits are one of my garden favourites at the moment, they look so cute.

Fred (The Barn Swallow)

I have had to modify my plans a bit for today. It is beautiful and sunny outside and I am stuck indoors.

There are amazing things going on in my kitchen cupboard.

Anyway I decided to take a break from pacing back and forth and I stood outside to feel the warmth of the sun and Fred lit down on the gate just feet in front of me. He waited while I  took his picture and then he sang a little song for me.

Good old Fred.

What is happening in my kitchen that is so exciting?

I will tell you later…. 🙂

Sitta europaea

Just a few pictures of the lovely and graceful “Upside Down Bird” to start the day 🙂 I have just been watching him having his breakfast.

The sun isn’t on the garden yet but there is hardly a breath of wind and the sky is clear blue. It is looking like a beautiful day 🙂

The Swallows are back!

Well I think that we have a second brood. They are too small to stick their heads out yet and I can not see inside the nest but I think that there are newly hatched chicks there.

Here is Mama sitting on the nest She is just being beautiful.

The rest of this post might seem a bit gross if you haven’t had your breakfast yet.

Here is a ten second video illustrating one of the responsibilities of raising a brood, namely removing the droppings from the nest. The young birds in this video are the first brood and at this point they haven’t fledged and are nest bound.

So that is what you have to do.

I set the camera up yesterday hoping to see the parent birds removing droppings from the nest, I didn’t expect to see any more than that. Instead I got this..The male bird appears to swallow something white.

I think that amounts to the same thing he is cleaning the nest and there are newly hatched chicks in there. 🙂

We  shall be watching them grow and then sadly we shall have to watch them fly off to Africa…

But not for a bit.

Coots at Cannop Ponds

 

A little bird in it’s natural habitat.

Cannop Ponds are two man made ponds just north of the Nagshead nature reserve. It is a great place to visit if you ever find yourself in The Forest of Dean.

I will do a post on Cannop Ponds soon and I will show you around.

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…..