Chiltern Birder

With the hot weather at the weekend a walk among the bluebells was thought a good idea. With a perfectly still warm day the scent of the flowers hung in the air and in the Chilterns the flowers were still at their best. The following day we went to College Lake near Tring. I hadn't been to this reserve for the best part of two decades. When I first visited it was just a hole in the chalk full of water with a few coot swimming around. Now it is landscaped and well populated although the layout makes the whole thing feel staged at times. In the hot weather on Sunday light and heat was reflecting off the chalk and made walking in some parts quite uncomfortable. In the shady parts there were some nice displays of dog violets. Islands created in the lake had attracted a lot of breeding water birds. Terns were very much in evidence, a marked contrast to Fishers Green where the black headed gulls seemed to be monopolising the tern rafts. We also saw oystercatcher, redshank and lapwing...

I was driving up the A40 today and saw my westernmost kite so far in England over the Northleach bypass. The previous record was a few miles to the east over Burford . There were quite a few pheasants visible in the fields and with game in season a muntjac seemed rather over eager to get turned into venison as I came back up the Chiltern escarpment at Cadsden. At home the tits are taking fat from the block in the front garden but very slowly. I don't plan to bring any more feeders into use for a few more weeks. In the back robins and dunnocks are returning. One of the vegetable beds had been mulched with spent hops and a dunnock was throwing these up in little fountains as he searched underneth them.

The autumn colours are changing rapidly now, there are far more gold and copper colours visible. A trip to Thame today by bus was suprising in that the only kites seen were over Thame itself. The watermeadows outside the town were partially flooded which is more than I have seen for a while and gulls were present in greater numbers than is normal around here. On Saturday, driving back from Haddenham late at night I saw a small deer beside the road at Cadsden. I had a better view than is usual at night and realised from its elegant look that it was a roe as opposed to the rather pig like appearance of a muntjac. I now wonder how many times in the past I have dismissed brief glimpses of roe deer as muntjac. In the garden I haven't seen any activity on the fat bar but there are a few beak marks so something is taking it when I am not looking.