Skip to main content

End of Summer

For the last three weekends the activity by swallows and martins has been very obvious. Last weekend at Fishers Green in the Lea Valley they were skimming over the Flood Relief Channel no doubt building up reserves for the long migration. This week I took a trip to the Forest of Dean and decided to check out a stream at Parkend which was recommended for seeing dippers. Naturally I didn't see one and ended up taking a trip on the steam train to Lydney and back before going over to the Nags Head reserve. There wasn't much to see here either but the wild boars had been active with almost every area of open grass grubbed up. The photos show damage outside the visitor cente and the view from the Lower Hide.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kites Spreading East

 I haven't been posting much due personal matters but still have my eyes open. One thing that has struck me is the eastward spread of birds of prey. I have seen buzzards over Havering-atte-Bower but the big suprise in the past month as been a red kite over the M25 near Stapleford Abbotts in Essex. The skys still look empty by Chiltern standards though. A nice little spot last week was a goldcrest during a visit to Kew Gardens.  I have downloaded the Merlin app which supposedly identifies birdsong. I have had little opportunity to try it out but a quck test in the garden showd that it correctly told me that I could hear jackdaws and a robin. I look forward to using it on the coast to see if it can distinguish the various waders for me. 
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

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