Chiltern Birder

 Autumn is clearly coming in with mushrooms and toadstools appearing in the fields and woods. This fine specimen was one of many on my walk today.       The walk took us along Green Lane to White End near Latimer. There was quite a sight with the sky around one of the houses in the hamlet full of house martins. They all suddenly settled on the roof, apparently basking in the sun for a second before all taking flight again. Suddenly they all flew off towards Latimer only to return a few seconds later and settled on the roof again. It was quite a spectacle and I wished I was able to linger all morning to watch it. The return along Bun's Lane was noteable for the birds invisible in the canopy as the trees met over the bridleway. I know that I disturbed at lease one jay and one green woodpecker judging buy the angry calls close above my head. In the garden I will have to dispose of the contents of the two fat feeders but the sunflower seeds are still being taken by occas...

There seem to be a few pairs of finches nesting within range of my feeders. We seem to have at least one pair of chaffinches and two of goldfinches visiting regularly at the moment. No doubt the starlings will turn up later in the season. At the moment I only have a couple of fat bars in the house and am not sure if I should be ordering more under the present circumstances. In the woods the bluebells have come out in the last day or two. Great spotted woodpeckers are drumming and I have heard the occasional "yaffle" of a green woodpecker as well. With so little traffic noise birdsong is far clearer and the fact that we are lucky enough to have a good population of skylarks is obvious.

With a forecast of good weather I decided see how the autumn colours were coming on. With a stop at Thame to visit the farmers' market I drove to Oxford University's Harcourt Arboretum. On the birding side the arboretum is home to a flock of feral pea fowl. I saw this fellow just as I came in. Despite the notices I am sure that enough visitors feed them to encourage them to lurk near the car park. There were too many leaves to see much in the way of small birds. Red Kites are now common enough for the one circling overhead to be unremarkable. I did disturb a green woodpecker and among recent planting I also started a solitary roe deer. It was a little early for much in the way of colour although the young trees in an area of new planting were all turning and the acers were well on the way to looking spectacular although the mature native trees were still largely green.

The winter has been so mild that the fields near the house which were ploughed at the end of summer are now totally green. Out walking between Christmas and New Year skylarks were singing and there were a host of small brown birds on the fields that kept just too far away to identify. In the garden things are getting a little more interesting with goldfinches and long tailed tits regularly visiting the feeders. Some other birds were managing some interesting contortions including a robin taking sunflower seeds and a blackbird on the fat feeder. On the ground the wood pigeons are taking most of the dried meal worms which at least keeps them off the fat feeders (I did read somewhere that they were vegetarian!). This morning a magpie tried to chase one off the ground feeder but when the pigeon stood its ground and the magpie gave up. Yesterday we had a green woodpecker on the back lawn. This is the first time that I have seen one come into the very enclosed back garden although I do o...

Around here it's the transition from winter to spring that tends to bring some of the more interesting visitors back to the garden. This morning I stopped preparing breakfast to watch a male great spotted woodpecker on the fat feeder in the front garden. I could almost imagine that it was drumming with the way that the beak was driving into the fat block with as much flying off to fall to the ground as was being taken. Those pieces will probably be found by the dunnocks soon enough. The green woodpeckers have been calling regularly for the last few weeks but I have yet to see one this year.

Heard my first cuckoo of the year today at about ten to nine. It seemed to be calling from somewhere in the Tylers Hill area. On the feeders was a great spotted woodpecker at breakfast time and I heard a green calling when I went out. The various birds are wolfing down the feed now and the starlings seem to prefer the hanging feeder to the specialist starling feeder despite the acrobatics involved.

Taking a walk yesterday it was striking how we seem to have gone from an extended autumn to spring without any proper winter in between. Living on a hill top the ground around here mostly dries out very quickly so a lot of my walk through Cowcroft yesterday was on hard ground. Even where the thick mud remains it has turned from liquid to the consistency of modelling clay. As I wrote those two sentences the room darkened and it started raining again! The jackdaws were making a lot of noise in the woods and I saw one trying to fish something out of a hollow tree. Clinging to the side of the trunk with the sun behind it my first reaction was that it was a woodpecker but changing the angle slightly revealed the truth. I did wonder if there were eggs in the hole. I didn't see any woodpeckers but, as so often happens, I could hear the rather mocking call of a green. While walking along the bridleway at the edge of the wood I saw a pair of muntjac among the trees. One looked at me a...

A walk this morning took in Cowcroft Wood again. Bluebells are now out but not in any great numbers, there are wide areas where they are just in leaf. I must read up on wild flowers, I recognise the celendine and primroses, both giving fine shows but ther are others that I can't identify. On the birding front the walk was mostly the usual suspects, tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons and assorted corvids. I heard skylarks and pheasants, it was very striking how far the pheasant's call will carry. The high spots were a green woodpecker in the wood and house sparrows in Ley Hill. The sparrows seem to concentrate at one end of the village where there are a lot of privet hedges. Red Kites are no longer unusual although always special but the number circling over Great Missenden on Easter Day were striking. I didn't make an exact count but it was the sort of sight that I used to associate only with the villages along the escarpment from Chinnor down towards Benso...

According to the radio this morning the bluebells are already out in some parts of the country. A long walk in Cowcroft Wood showed that this was not the case here, in the way of flowers the celendines are just starting to bloom but not the bluebells although parts of the wood will probably be magnificent once they are out. By way of birds there were just the usual tits, blackbirds and robins plus some woodpeckers. A green was very vocal but we only had a very brief glimpse as it flew away. A great spotted posed at a little distance. Curiously we ran into a friend from London in the middle of the wood, as Pratchett says, "million to one chances happen all the time".

Suddenly, in the last few days, the leaves have turned red or gold. It had seemed that autumn was heading for a season of sludge colours until then. Locally I haven't seen much. Goldfinches briefly visited the garden and a flock of long tailed tits were working along a hedgerow nearby. Although I have never seen another pheasant in the garden one has been calling close to the boundary. Over at Hemel yesterday I saw a trio of cormorants flying close to the line of the canal above Boxmoor, heading up the valley. That isn't an area where they are common. Today a last minute decision was made to go to Fishers Green in the Lee Valley Country Park which meant that I was without a pair of bins. I never got around to putting a spare pair in the glove box after I changed the car earlier this year. There was a fairly standard selection of birds on the water including mute swans, black headed gulls, pochard, tufted duck, gadwall, great crested grebe, lapwing, dabchick and coot. On the fe...