Skip to main content

Yellowhammers, Telephone Wires and Juveniles

Not all at the same time. The starlings seem to be moving on but I have had a baby blue tit being fed by the ground feeders for the last couple of days and a juvenile robin turned up investigating my mix of sunflower hearts and oatmeal in the hopper. As I had to go to work I didn't see if he returned for the fat and special robin mixture that I put on the tray.

With fewer birds visible among the greenary I tend to notice those on telephone wires much more. There seem to be a couple of perches that are so well used that one could believe that somebody had put model birds there permenantly. Just coming into Ley Hill from Latimer one wire is a regular for swallows while in Ley Hill itself a pair of wood pigeons seem to have taken up residence on another. One at least must be real as there was only one there tonight.

I was lucky this evening to have a yellowhammer pose in the road in front of the car, double lucky that nobody was following. Also on another wire was an unidentified bird with a beak full of insects.

With the warm weather the larger birds of prey seem to have moved out of the district. I have not seen a kite or a buzzard around Chesham for some time now. Certainly not since the heat wave beagan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not as Quiet as I Thought

 The garden has seemed very quiet with hardly any birds seen but I hadn't been explicitly looking. I have just started putting a little food out in the front and in 24 hours have seen Robin, Great and Blue Tits and Magpies landing in my tiny front garden. Yesterday I heard a song that was unusual to me which the Merlin app identified as a Blackcap. Unfortunately for me the bird was ensconsed in the middle of my Forsythia which is still in full leaf and I couldn't get a sighting. This afternoon I saw Robins in the garden and corvids overhead. I set Merlin running while I swept fallen leaves from the front path. The app identified Robin, Rook, Wren, Jackdaw, Greenfinch and Blackbird. I also heard Parakeets but not while the app was running. 
Post a Comment
Read more

A Little More Normal

 After a couple of days of frost the garden looks more like a typical winter's day with birds visiting throughout the day. Blue tits are the main visitor plus one or two marsh (or possibly willow) tits and the occasional great tit. A flock of long tailed tits paid a fairly brief visit. Robins in the back garden have paired, seemingly a little later than the ones in the front.  Due to ill health the ivy on my back fence hasn't been trimmed and has developed a good crop of berries. The only bird that I have seen showing interest has been a wood pigeon which spent some time yesterday feasting on them. In the front I put out a fat block yesterday afternoon which, so far, has attracted a grey squirrel. The pair of robins and the occasional blackbird are active on the hanging table.
Post a Comment
Read more

Forest of Dean

I had a day in the Forest yesterday, walking and then a ride on the preserved railway. The trouble with woodland is that you don't get the rapid views of multiple species that you get in wetlands. However, after parking at the Nags Head reserve I walked down to the Lower Hide. The ponds were pretty well down to muddy pools and I was treated to the unusual site of what must have been a family of nuthatches bathing. I had lost the sense of scale through the bins and I wasn't sure what I was looking at until a robin hopped into view to give me a relative size. The real treat was a nuthatch working its way up an oak tree. I then walked through the forest to Bix Slade and down the line of the old tramway to the wharf on the old railway by Cannop Ponds. No manarin ducks this time but I did see tufties, moorhen, and both pied and grey wagtails. I followed the railway back to the road, crossed back over the Cannop Brook and planned to follow a forestry track back to the reserve. Howe...
Post a Comment
Read more