We had our first serious frost of the season last night. I went out today and it was glorious with the later autumn colours and a light that an artist would die for. Naturally the phone had been left on charge so I oouldn't take any pictures.
The frost was burning off at the start of the walk and the sun catching the moisture on an autumn sown crop revealed what looked like the trail of a giant slug across the field. Despite having watched the Horror Channel yesterday I looked for a more prosaic explanation and the disturbance at the edge of the field gave it away as a wandering badger. Throughout the walk there were plenty of signs of badger activity and they haven['t found it necessary to make any serious incursions into the gardens yet.
Walking in some of our local green lanes the sun coming through the branches meant that many birds were only in silhouette. The rather exotic small black bird turned out to be nothing more exciting than a great tit when I shifted my viewpoint. I was lucky though to see a wren sized shape but the tail wasn't cocked so again I changed the viewpoint to get a quick glimpse of a goldcrest.
In the garden a blackbird has been added to the species count, a cock bird that lurks in the shrubs by the bottom fence and has ignored the food out out so far. There are still plenty of leaves on the plants down there and I have had some tantilizing glimpses of small brown birds that may have been house sparrows but I haven't had a clear view for an id.
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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