Chiltern Birder

The ring necked parakeets are working their way up the Chess valley. I was at the Van Hage garden centre at Chenies today when one flew overhead. Previously I have seen and, more often, heard them at Rickmansworth on a few occasions. I am not sure of they can establish in the Chilterns. Certainly where I live at 500 feet above sea level the difference in winter weather from the lower ground is noticeable before considering the London heat island. During the bank holiday I was in Bampton in Oxfordshire. The house martins were active in what appeared to be good numbers. I also heard swifts, I can't compare with previous years but it didn't seem as noisy.

We don't see swifts locally but I heard my first of the year a week ago at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. The following Monday a trip to Haddenham in Oxfordshire revealed some more. That village still seems to have a good population of house sparrows as well. A bee identification chart in a free paper last weekend had me looking at our buzzing friends visiting the flowers. The garden is getting a fine selection and I could count three species just standing still and looking at one point in a flower bed for a few seconds. I found one immediate identification issue, in real life the bees mostly have the abdomen curved making it quite difficult to count the bands. I have picked out both garden and tree bumblebees though. After the bank holiday I noticed that the grass was growing over both regular badger tracks so I reset the camera trap which showed that nothing had been past during the hours of darkness. Something had been at the bottom of the garden, out of range of the camera, ...

  I visited College Lake again on Tuesday. There was little difference in the birds from my previous visit although the wild flowers made some nice displays. My new phone proved its worth for taking photos. I still haven't heard a cuckoo this year but, annoyingly, one had been both heard and seen at the lake just before I arrived.  I did see a party of swifts which were my first of the year. At home the juvenile starlings made their first appearance. I large party were working over the front lawns and I was able to see them finding insects. Another party made a serious dent in the fat bar in the back garden. The wrens are still in residence in the bat box and I hope that they will manage to raise a brood.

Red kites don't normally warrant a mention in my part of the Chilterns any more but today I travelled over to Thame by bus. Going through Studley Green near High Wycombe on the A40 there were a huge number circling in a small area. I kept trying to count and found that there were at least seven in my line of sight at any moment with at least as many again circling just out of my vision. I have never seen so many in one place and can only imagine that somebody in the village is putting food out for them. Feeding carnivores always brings the risk that once habituated they will take things that they shouldn't including pets. In Thame there was yet another sign of summer as swifts were making a lot of noise. I saw some decent sized parties chasing each other above the shops.

The starling chicks have been demolishing the fat bars, unfortunately their appetites are starting to run beyond my budget now that I have retired. A new visitor today was a nuthatch who kept returning for sunflower hearts which were taken away by the beakfull. Conveniently it stayed put admiring the view while I unpacked the camera. On the other hand the long tailed tits have long since moved on and I haven't seen a coal tit in the garden for quite a while. I have also noticed a lack of yellowhammers when driving locally. On a plus side I have heard swifts over Chesham and Aylesbury in recent weeks.

As we often do on the Spring Bank Holiday we visited Bampton in Oxfordshire. The lack of swifts over the village was noticeable during the day. On one occasion a grand total of three flew overhead. Then just before five the sky seemed to explode with them although numbers still seemed low when I tried to count, not an easy process as they insist on moving all the time. In previous years I have regarded this as very much on the edge of the range of the Chiltern red kites but this time there were several individuals over the village for most of the time. I was also lucky today to see one perched on a lamp post on Gore Hill in Amersham. You seldom have an opportunity to see the bird in a context that gives you a true guide to its size. On the same journey a kestrel was, sadly, an unusual sight for me hovering over the roundabout by the Beaconsfield motorway services.

I had quite a suprise last night driving home. Between Latimer and Ley Hill I saw a polecat at the edge of the road. It was facing me and the "bandit mask" was very clear in the headlights. A little way down the road and the elation rapidly vanished when we saw a recently killed young badger. Locally cuckoos have been very vocal and in Chalfont St Peter I heard a swift calling overhead. This was nice as the wet start to the spring meant that they had a severe food shortage. In the hot weather a garden pond was being visited by breeding damselflies, I am not an expert on odontae but one pair seemed to be common blues and the other possibly small red.

On Bank Holiday Monday, driving between Ducklington and Aston in Oxfordshire I had my most westerly sighting of a red kite so far. I have seen buzzards often enough west of Oxford but never a kite. There was a deer carcass beside the road about a mile further on. I don't know if it was intentionally heading for it but it was flying steadily in one direction not circling as they usually do. I had a better look at the carcass driving back that evening and it had been well picked over with the ribs showing. A few miles down the road in Bampton the swifts were very noisy but it seemed to be the same small party of about eight chasing each others tails around the village.