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.
At least one brood of starlings have been regular visitors to the feeder and today the fledglings got the hang of taking the food for themselves. Other broods must be less developed as adults were still taking away quantities of fat. The tits aren't so common at the moment, I don't know if this is because they have dispersed, if wild food is available or if pressure from the starlings has driven them off. Single blue tits are dropping in fairly regularly and a coal tit took fat away as well. The woodpecker seems to have become a regular visitor and still has a brood to feed. He definitely comes before the starlings in the pecking order and keeps them off the feeder until he has finished. The new feeder with perching rings is popular with the chaffinches and the goldfinches, the latter suddenly seem to prefer the high energy mix to the nyjer seed. With all this demand for feeding young ones the fat is going down very rapidly and I am putting larger quantities out on the ground t...
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