Skip to main content

Rickmansworth

When I spotted that the forecast had changed and this afternoon would stay dry I decided to sample the lakes at Rickmansworth Aquadrome. Water levels were very high and some paths flooded. Bury Lake produced little of special interest with mute swans, tufted duck, mallard, coot. black headed gulls and a heron. The latter was close to the path keeping totally still and totally unfazed by passers by. He kept so still while I took a couple of pictures with my phone that I was beginning to think that it was a model but then he finally turned his head slightly.

I wasn't wearing boots which made, the potentially more interesting, Stockers Lake mostly inaccessible but from the tarmac path on one side I did see a pair of shoveller and a pochard. The low sun made it difficult to identify most of the birds from that angle.

I don't know if I was just unlucky or if they don't like the area but I didn't see any red kites. I had been wondering how far towards London they were spreading as they seem to have been following the M25.



At  home food is now being taken although I think the sunflower seeds are mostly going to the squirrels. Long tailed tits visit the fat feeders regularly but the main visitors are robins and blackbirds with very occasional blue or great tits.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Usual Suspects

With some cold dry weather there has been a lot of activity on the feeders this weekend. With three different robins visiting the garden there have been fewer fights than I would have expected. The sight of the weekend has been a robin regularly visiting the starling feeder with a pair of beady eyes peeping over the top of the fat bar. As I had run out of sunflower hearts I topped up the ground hopper with pinhead oatmeal which seems to have been very popular. I even had a song thrush inside the cage which is a first. Althogther the weekend has included goldfinches, chaffinches, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, marsh/willow tit (I must learn how to distinguish those), blackbird, song thrush, robin, dunnock and wood pigeon. Unusually for this area a heron also flew across the garden during the day. I haven't seen any long tailed tits or greenfinches around here for a while and there wasn't a single house sparrow around during the weekend.
Post a Comment
Read more

More Starlings

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Easter

As well as the usual suspects the last couple of days have given us visits by long tailed tits and coal tits. The real treat, however, was a house sparrow in the tree at the bottom of the garden. They come to that tree very occasionally but I never see them on the feeders. I had to make a trip to Bristol today. Being behind the wheel of a car isn't the best location for birding but on a long journey there are a few that can be recognised. Kites were in evidence between Great Missenden and Oxford as usual and I also saw swallows on a phone wire. I know that they have been around for a while but somehow I seldom get to see them until later in the season. In the Cotswolds I saw two buzzards, curiously both were being attacked by a single crow. On the return a lapwing flew across the road between Oxford and Thame, and a few minutes later a grey hawk like bird which I would put down as a possible cuckoo.
Post a Comment
Read more