Chiltern Birder

The advantage of using a tripod with the camera trap is that you have far more control over the position. With it set to full height I captured this nice clip of the badger at the ground feeder. After my previous post about choices made by the birds I noticed that his preference was for the raisins before clearing up the fat pellets.

So far winter hasn't brought anything exciting to the garden but, with the mild weather, it is clear which are the most favoured bird foods. The finches, of course, love the sunflower hearts. The blue and great tits are also showing a preference for sunflower seed and largely ignore the fat balls in the adjacent hanging feeder. I have even seen them waiting on the feeder arms for the finches to leave a free port rather than peck at the fat balls. I also hung a FlutterButter peanut butter feeder next to the seed feeder and that has been totally ignored. We were getting a small group of starlings who were making a big dent in the fat block and the front and the fat balls in the back garden but they have moved on and I am starting to become concerned that the remaining contents are going to become mouldy. At ground level I am feeding raisins, fat pellets and dried mealworms. The robin will take fat pellets and mealworms but can't clear the feeders on his own. A blackbird will t...

In most years I only see starlings in the garden in spring and early summer when they turn out mob handed and get through half a kilo of fat in a day. In the past week, however, I have had a part of three on the fat feeders in both the front and back gardens. Another usual visit today was by a pair of greenfinches who briefly came to the sunflower seed feeder. The feeders are all very busy now with seed being topped up daily. The dried mealworms in the ground feeder are proving popular with the blackbird and robin but the fat pellets only seem to be of interest to the magpies and wood pigeons. Despite the claims by the feed merchant the raisins are generally ignored by the birds but the badger cleans them up overnight. A group of long tailed tits made a suprise visit at dusk today. Judging by their behaviour I suspect that they were taling a last feed of the night before roosting in my neighbours leylandii. This seems rather more attractive to birds now that old man's beard has ...

The birds seem to be discovering the feeders in my back garden. We had several visits from a coal tit this morning which is the first that I have seen for a while. Another garden first for this autumn was a blackbird which foraged in the flower beds before sampling the dried mealworms in one of th ground feeders. It has taken experimentation over a couple of years to find the optimum placing for ground feeders where they can be seen from the windows while being attractive to the birds. The magpies and the wood pigeons are far more likely to feed away from cover so I put a second feeder in the centre of the lawn to reduce competition with the smaller birds.

Walking in the Crabtree Wood communuty woodland in Ley Hill today it was a pleasure to come across a spindle tree. I did come across a specimen in a hedgerow locally a few years ago but when I looked for it recently there was no trace so it is nice to have a replacement. The are also seems to be attracting long tailed tits which have yet to come to my garden this autumn. Staying in the area the golf course is a good place to see thrushes, I have seen them on the fairways whenever I have crossed that part of the common. At home the mild, damp weather meant the the sunflower seed feeder was starting to clog. I emptied it into the ground feeder tray, and cleaned and disinfected it. I should have set a camera trap as the pile of seeds was cleared overnight. At the moment we are getting regular visits from blue and great tits taking seeds but they don't seem very interested in the fat feeder. A couple of individuals went to it when I was cleaning the seed feeder but they return...

The fat pellets put out for the robins in the ground feeder trays seem to be attracting magpies. The pellets can vanish within 15 or 20 minutes of being put out and, as often as not, I don't even seev the culprits. Luckily the robins seem quite content with the dried mealworms which the magpies definitely regard as second best. The magapies are suprisingly nervy birds for their and will fly off at the slightest movement within the house, even just a twitch of an upstairs curtain. This time of year is usually very quiet when it comes to garden birds but we do have regular visits from blue and great tits that require keeping the sunflower seed feeder about half full althouhg they have mostly ignored the fat ball that I hung on the other feeder. Chaffinches and goldfinches also turn up occasionally but only singletons. A wren has put in an occasional appearance but had no interest in the ground feeders. Uneaten food usually vanishes before the next morning ass we often get a badger...

I went into the garden this morning to work out what jobs need doing this week and heard something tht I didn't immediately recognise calling in the bushes. A few moments later it hopped out onto a branch and I could see that it must be a warbler. It then very conveniently posed on the fence and I had a good look at the markings. I don't have the minutiae of warbler identification consigned to memory so after a quick look in the field guide and listening to a couple of recordings on YouTube I was 100% sure that I had added a chiffchaff to my garden list. I have a small quantity of sunflower hearts in one of the feeders and I get one or two finches every day. This morning's was a singleton chaffinch but I have had pairs of goldfinches on previous days. They all seem very reluctant to use the lowest feeding ports and with the wet weather I suspect that I will have to empty out the feeder to remove any damp and clogged seed before the main winter activity despite giving it a...

 The badgers were active over the weekend with some significant damage to the lawn. As the bird feeders needed cleaning before the winter I emptied them into the ground feeder trays and set up a camera. The result was a badger spending at least half an hour in the garden taking both fat and sunflower hearts as well as rooting in the grass for bugs.   After rooting in the grass for a while he checks out the sunflower hearts then takes another fat ball. After rooting for bugs he finally decides to taste the sunflower hearts. He seems to be pushing the sunflower hearts into a heap.

 Autumn is clearly coming in with mushrooms and toadstools appearing in the fields and woods. This fine specimen was one of many on my walk today.       The walk took us along Green Lane to White End near Latimer. There was quite a sight with the sky around one of the houses in the hamlet full of house martins. They all suddenly settled on the roof, apparently basking in the sun for a second before all taking flight again. Suddenly they all flew off towards Latimer only to return a few seconds later and settled on the roof again. It was quite a spectacle and I wished I was able to linger all morning to watch it. The return along Bun's Lane was noteable for the birds invisible in the canopy as the trees met over the bridleway. I know that I disturbed at lease one jay and one green woodpecker judging buy the angry calls close above my head. In the garden I will have to dispose of the contents of the two fat feeders but the sunflower seeds are still being taken by occas...

 From past experience I don't expect to see a huge amount of activity in the garden until mid November at the earliest. The sunflower seeds in the back garden are still being taken and I see occasional blue or great tits and occasionally a goldfinch or bullfinch. There isn't much touching the fat and I expect that I will have to take those feeders down soon or the content s will go mouldy. Nothing seem to be taking the fat balls from the hanging feeder any more while the fat bar in the starling feeder just seems to get an occasional visit from a robin. In the front garden there is a massive crop of berries on the rowan tree. A pair of blackbirds seem to have settled in for the long haul and fly out of the tree with angry alarm calls when I go in or out of the house. Despite the rich harvest I suspect that they will still have the tree stripped before the winter migrants put in a show.

I glanced out of the window this morning and saw a bird on the feeder with plumage that I didn't recognise. It was clearly a finch but the angle meant that I couldn't see details. Watching for a couple of minutes the way it kept looking around seemed very familiar and a quick check in a field guide confirmed my suspicion that the semi-resident pair of bullfinches had raised a brood and at least one had survived.

In recent weeks the garden has been almost devoid of birds. The resident pair of wood pigeons have been munching their way through the fat bars on the starling feeder while a magpie makes occasional attacks on the fat balls on a hanging feeder. Hardly anything has been taking sunflower seeds, so much so that I had to clean out the existing seeds as they had become caked at the bottom. Yesterday, however, a pair of bullfinches appeared and spent some time there. It was striking how faded the cock bird had become, nothing like the vivid brick red of the spring. In the front garden the rowan tree is laden with berries, the branches so heave that I bumped my head on one bunch. It was very noticeable that it had only recently stopped raining! I am sure that the tree will be stripped bare soon enough but if previous years are anything to go by I am unlikely to to see a single bird feeding on it.

I was walking through Latimer today and heard what sounded to me like a ring necked parakeet calling in Parkfield and another among confiers further up the road. This is certainly the closest that I have encountered them to Chesham although I have seen and heard them in Rickmansworth and once in Chemies. I seem to have seen so many roe deer recently that walking through the woods to Latimer without seeing any seemed quite unusual. What I did realise today is that I have seen more roe deer than muntjac durling lockdown, when driving at night in normal times it is the other way round. Out and about the bluebell season is long gone but plenty of opportunity to appreciate the delicate flowers of the grasses, at least until they are cut for silage, plus the occasional field poppy. The garden has gone very quiet, the blue tits seem to have followed the starlings and I can go several days without topping up the feeders.

The starlings are no longer turning up mob handed although we are still seeing singleton juveniles in the garden. Naturally I had just stocked up with fat bars on the assumption that we would be seeing half a litre or more consumed every day. The new bars are from Gardman which don't crumble when pecked in the way that the ones from the previous supplier did. This morning we had a great spotted woodpecker on the feeder tapping away at the side of the bar as if he was drumming. He really didn't seem to take much. Great and blue tits are the most frequent visitors and we have been privilaged to see blue tit chicks being fed. In the front garden a magpie has discovered the fat blocks and has a novel system for feeding. He will perch on the branch that the feeder hangs from and stab with his beak sending a piece of fat to the ground. The then drops down to eat the morsel then flies back to the branch to repeat the process. Out and about I have been walking early on the mornings o...

The annual invasion by juvenile starlings started about 4 days ago and well over a kilo of fat has been consumed already.They are fun to watch but they are expensive visitors and the 3p that my blogs and photo site have earned since lockdown started won't go far. Naturally when they swamp the feeders the other birds move away except for the great spotted woodpecker that was on the feeder this morning who could definitely hold his own agains a mob of starlings. I took advantage of a trip to Chesham to pick up a prescription  to walk along the river bank from Pednormead End to Lords Mill. Despite the current drown water levels still look excellent, due no doubt to ground water from last winter's heavy rain. What is striking though is a lack of any obvious fauna in the water. When I first moved here it was normal to be able to watch fish in the Chess at Water Lane. When that happens again I will know that the river is in proper health.

I was walking on Ley Hill Common today and had just stopped to admire the bluebells when I saw a deer walk onto the path ahead of me.   The photo doesn't really show the scale, it wasn't fully grown and for a second I had thought it a large muntjac. It stayed still without any interest in me for a long enough to allow me to get out the phone and take the picture. Still unaware of my presence in then walked into the woods across the path and I approached much closer but without the opportunity of a photo. Finally it realised that I was there and bounded away with some wonderfully balletic leaps. With the Covid-19 lockdown I have been taking some longer walks. On a byway between Latimer and Flaunden I was lucky enough to see a yellowhammer on the hedgerow. While I have often seen these birds perched on the hedges while driving down the local lanes this was the first occasion when there hasn't been a sheet of glass in the way. The number of birds singing on that walk...

I had already seen tweets from people who had seen swallows and heard cuckoos but it was only this morning that I saw a swallow. It was skimming over pasture in Ley Hill where the farmer had been keeping a herd of charolais cattle. Cuckoos, sadly, are still silent here despite the lack of traffic noise. I couple of nights ago I tawney owl in a neighbour's tree was making an absolutely defening racket which I could hear indoors. I went outside and could hear his mate in the same, or an adjacent, tree and another male some distance away responding to the call. I was pleased, yesterday, to see a pair of bullfinches on the feeder, the first since the storms in early march. Chaffinches and goldfinches are also feeding regularly as well as the usual blue and great tits. There haven't been any badgers at their feeding station recently and after finding evidence of rats visiting I have stopped putting food out for the moment.

I decided to set out on my daily exercise walk earlier than usual so that there might be a greater chance of seeing some wild life. There were certainly fewer dog walkers about and no families walking at breakfast time. Wild flowers were showing well in the hedgerows and birdsong drowned out most residual traffic noise. I was heading for Codmore Wood which involved skirting the former Meadhams Farm brickworks site. A goldcrest teased me by calling from the trees above my head, skipping from branch to branch without coming into sight. A few minutes later I had a short glimpse of a small animal vanishing into the long grass at the side of the path. I think that it was most likely a bank vole but still with less than 50% certainty. There were also canada geese on nearby pasture, this is the second time in recent days that I have seen them on the dry upland fields around here. I had Codmore Wood to myself. Having seen deer before at times like this I was being as quiet as I could. Pas...

There seem to be a few pairs of finches nesting within range of my feeders. We seem to have at least one pair of chaffinches and two of goldfinches visiting regularly at the moment. No doubt the starlings will turn up later in the season. At the moment I only have a couple of fat bars in the house and am not sure if I should be ordering more under the present circumstances. In the woods the bluebells have come out in the last day or two. Great spotted woodpeckers are drumming and I have heard the occasional "yaffle" of a green woodpecker as well. With so little traffic noise birdsong is far clearer and the fact that we are lucky enough to have a good population of skylarks is obvious.

With all other sources of exercise forbidden I was starting to feel that my usual half hour round the local fields wasn't quyite enough. Today I turned left into the lane instead of right and went into Cowcroft Wood. A green woodpecker was very audible but didn't come within sight. Just as I entered the wood, however, I did see a treecreeper working its way up one of the trees. Naturally it didn't stay still long enough for a photo. Some of the old brick clay diggings are very impressive, filled now with so much regrowth that they could be mistaken for natural features. Without any sense of scale from people the photo doesn't do the view justice. I took a zig zag route through the wood comingout by the trig point, which must have been among far less undergrowth when it was used for surveying. Walking past Ladies' Wood I heard a buzzard scream, which makes a change from the kites, a few seconds later it circled overhead before vanishing behind the trees. On ...

I set up the camera trap last night and got a lovely shot of a badger feeding in the early evening. A separate clip showed two individuals entering the garden so we are definitely getting at least two, possibly three, visitors. About three quarters of an hour after the first visit one badger came through and ran past the camera trap, followed about 30 seconds later by a second who sampled what was left in the feeding tray. Sadly in the early hours of the morning something knocked down the makeshift stand for the camera and it no longer seems to be recording properly.

During the recent storms my sunflower seed feeder vanished, possibly stolen by a squirrel. With the old feeder I observed that chaffinces didn't seem able to perch and use it although goldfinches and bullfinces were fine. A day or two ago I saw a pair of chaffinches perched quite happily and feeding on the new feeder. I think that the perches are ticker and a little longer than the old ones which presumably makes a difference for the finches. Mostly though it has been blue and great tits on the feeders with robins, blackbirds, dunnocks and wood pigeons taking food on the ground.. The badger seems to visit on most nights as any uneaten raisins are cleaned up, and the feeding tray pushed around and turned over, My next door neighbour as a broken slat on their kitchen ventilator and a pair of robins appear to be nesting inside. I hasten to add that these are static ventilators built into the brickwork not fans. Other than that the lesser celandines are in bloom under the front hedge...

Took a trip to the Forest today. Parking at Great Berry Quarry I took a look at the beaver enclosure. There were several obstructions on the Greathough Brook that I would have liked to think were work in progress by the beavers but were more likely just debris from the recent storms. There was extensive evidence of wild boar activity along the fence, I hadn't seem any evidence of boar in this area on previous visits. Facing the actual stone quarry are what appear to bt overgrown colliary spoil tips although I can't identify a mine at that precise location. These were striking because of the harts tongue ferns growning. These were only on the spoil and nowhere else in the area in which I walked. Moving on the the Nags Head reserve I was lucky enough to get a redwing posing for me. I had just seen a flock of brownish birds two big for sparrows and too small for thrushes fly across but this individual stayed on a branch giving me an excellent view without using the glasses. I...

I looked out into the garden at 9pm and found that the ground tray for the badgers was already empty. On looking at the films there were two separate visits about 45 minutes apart but I can't tell if they were different individuals. He seemed keen to find any spillage too. And later I just hope that they haven't dug up any more of my primroses

I took a trip to Bedford today to visit the Bawden and Burges collections at The Higgins. I didn't want to faff about looking for parking in a strange town so I took advantage of free parking at Milton Keynes Coachway and used my pass on the X5. The view from the coach wasn't inspiring. Mostly of soggy arable fields with hedges trimmed to a uniform low height, presumably so that little Jocasta can safely follow the hunt on her pony. Even less inspiring is the area around Bedford Bus Station, redeveloped in the new town brutalist school. I had almost lost the will to live when I emerged from the Harpur Centre into Harpur Square. It was only when I turned round that I realised that the shopping mall had been built behind the grade 2 listed former Bedford Modern School. As well as being an excellent gallery The Higgins also has an excellent cafe / restaurant. Coming back another belt of bad weather was moving in creating some fascinating cloudscapes. These didn...

We got off very lightly from the storms with one fence developing a bit of a wobble and the squirrel baffle on the bird feeder twisted until the mounting snapped. Our visiting badger seems to have made up for this though after deciding that there was something tasty lurking under my alpine bed. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had just been the weeds that I was going to take out in the next few days anyway but I do begrudge him the primroses. Since the storms there have been very few finches coming to the feeders and the great tits and the nuthatch seem to have moved away too. The blue and long tailed tits are still around in numbers as well as the resident robins and blackbirds. I was getting a bit fed up with uneaten bird food on the ground so I tried moving the feeding point by about three feet. Now the blackbird comes and hoovers up the mealworms and fat pellets. The robin on the other hand has no truck with feeding off the ground and tries to imitate the blu...

I was away from home during the storm so spent Sunday worrying about my garden fence. Coming home on Monday the train was crawling up to the junction after Moor Park when I realised that a parakeet was flying along with us. The weather had turned clear and bright and with the very low relative velocity I could see the bright green plumage clearly. This was definitely the best view that I have yet had of a parakeet, normally I see little more than a silluette, and the first that I have actually seen, rather than just heard, outside of the build up area of London. When I got home the fence was intact although with a disturbing amount of play in one of the posts. The big surprise was that the sunflower heart feeder was missing. I thought that it had just blown off but it was nowhere to be found and I suspect that it had been stolen by a squirrel. I have observed one carrying off a feeder before.

A little trip to the coast today, lovely clear sky, the tide on the way out. Parking at Two Tree Island there were teal roosting on the edge of Leigh Creek. Walking down to the old town there were plenty of redshank as well as the usual collection of gulls and corvids. The tide was receeeding across the flats with a lot of waders following it. Redshank obviously as well as grey plover and turnstone. I only had the lightweight spotting scope so I couldn't see the tideline in detail but it is a good guess that the little black dots were dunlin. Brent geese numbers weren't high but there were plenty to be seen and heard. There was also a curlew somewhere out on the flats, audible but I didn't get a view, I can't get use to seeing egrets at Leigh but there were several around. Little egrets I think but I will have to read up on their id, all of my field guides were published when they were still very rare vagrants.

I was glad to see three bullfinches in the garden today, two males and one female. They all came to the sunflower seed feeder but seemed to spend time foraging in the bushes as well. the goldfinches are also turning out in greater numbers, there were five in the garden at one time today. I don't normally watch the birds from the bedroom window but doing so yesterday solved the missung dunnock mystery. They are active under the bushes at the end of the garden but simply aren't coming nearer the house. I have had to cut back on ground feeding as the softbill food and meal worms simply aren't all been taken. I couldn't put out food on the ground fast enough last year but the difference seems to be that we no longer have a pair of wood pigeons in permanent residence. It was curious to see a robin today ignoring all the food at ground level and taking sunflower seeds instead. At one point we even had two robins in the same bush without a fight. Among the other birds th...