Skip to main content

Juveniles, yellowhammers and bluebells

Well one yellowhammer! Driving between Ley Hill and Latimer yesterday I spotted a single yellowhammer perched on the roadside hedge. As my passenger had never seen one we kept a special lookout on the way back and, of course there wasn't one to be seen. I used to reckon on seeing several when driving this way in the spring. We did see a muntjac that ambled our of the hedgerow in front of the car without any concern for its own safety.

The day was good for bluebells. They were probably at their best a few days ago but the display in the woods was still magnificent. When we managed to get downwind of a drift the smell was wonderful.


Bluebell wood 

In the garden we are starting to see juveniles being fed. Today a blue tit was taking fat from a peanut butter feeder for a young one perched conveniently, for me, on the fence just by the window.

We seem to have a pair of goldfinches around but we aren't seeing anything remotely unusual. I am starting to wonder if we will see any juvenile starlings this year. I haven't seen any adults so far and it is just coming up to the time of year when the young ones are expected to strip the fat feeder. If they don't turn up I am going to have a box of fat bars slowly going rancid.

I have ad a couple of tries with the camera trap recently buy the badgers are failing to pose in shot. The last one had several seconds of a stripy shout clearing out uneaten raisins from the ground feeder. What I have confirmed is that it isn't rats finishing off uneaten birdfood. I know they must be around but the camera has never picked one up. Plenty of field mice but never, so far, a rat.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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