nature notes

Does it sound vaguely like "little bit of bread and no cheese" that would be a Yellowhammer. That's going on your phonetic description. For Xeno Canto once you are on the site and have typed in the bird when the list comes up you need to click on the on the number on the right hand side, usually has a couple of letters in front of it

There has been an influx of Rosy Starling into the UK this spring, and look what we found on top of one of our hawthorns
 

Attachments

  • Rosy Starling - Copy.JPG
    Rosy Starling - Copy.JPG
    160.3 KB · Views: 1,380
We do have the occasional "little little little bit of bread and no cheeeese" yellohammer BYM, but this doesn't sound anything like that. It's much more strident.

On XenoCanto, the problem would be which bird to type in!!!

Thanks for the suggestion though.
 
Two kinds of shrike here last week. Red Backed Shrike and Woodchat Shrike. The latter caused a flurry of excitement among the cognoscenti.
Also two Red Necked Phalarope have taken up residence in the burn right next to my mates house. He even saw them on his garden pond. The RSPB have gone into overdrive!
Oh and hats off to him. The pond is about 8ft x 4ft but has no fish in it. It’s created solely for frogs to breed in. Hence a huge aquatic invertebrates population.
 
Fascinating - rare birds and birds I've never heard of - rosy starling is a new one on me but having done a quick search I am not likely to see one here. I have more respect for starlings than I used to, this version looks quite beautiful and I am impressed with the spotless one and its mimicry. This prompted me to look up shrikes, as I have spent most of my life thinking they are some sort of small game/water bird. I see I am very wrong! And I do have some chance of seeing a woodchat shrike. And, actually, I'm pretty certain I've seen a red backed shrike because I do see a bird fairly often at certain times of the year which reminds me of a chaffinch, but isn't. So, thank you both for my bit of bird education!

I love ponds with no fish, I've never had fish in mine, and the plethora of insect life as well as invertebrates is amazing. In my old garden I dug a pond about the same size as your neighbour's, (at one point I thought I had dug up some gold, but it turned out to be a melted brass handle!) and filled it with a hose pipe, and very soon all sorts of wildlife appeared in it despite the fact it was tap water. I would spend hours lying on the grass, peering in through the very long grasses around the pond, I felt as though I was spying on a new world. However, I have never had frogs breeding, only toads and newts.
 
There seems to have been a Woodchat Shrike influx this year, there was one at Rochford in Essex, not too far from us for about a week. Similarly a Red necked Phalarope turned up locally on it's way North, not quite the same as having a pair take up residence though. I my favourite Phalarope is the Wilson's Phalarope from America. One memorable summer I saw all 3 Phalaropes on the washes in Cambridgeshire on the same day, that will never be repeated.

Another one for you Mrs Biscuit, several Oriental and Collared Pratincoles have been in the UK, and a River Warbler which makes a noise like a Singer sewing machine which is quite something.

I like a wildlife pond to a pond stuffed full of fish, I can spend hours just looking into the depths. Lots of banded demoiselles around ours today
 
Great news! I managed to miss BYM's post but have now looked up pratincoles (so I know you aren't making these names up!). I haven't seen either, but I think I would recognise the collared variety at any rate, it seems distinctive. The photo I have seen also has very luxuriant eyelashes to go with the bib!

A few weeks ago at about 11pm Mrs Wild Boar trotted out of one olive grove and into the next, followed by half a dozen youngsters! The only other wildlife has been the virtual daily bringing in of lizards by the cat. He deposits them in the shower tray, and plays with them, but allows me to rescue them with no problems. I have repatriated about 6 so far to a small opening in a disused building. Several have lost their tails (a defence mechanism, but it must hurt as the stump is bloodied) and I am now immune to the tails moving about on their own. However, this morning, a particularly large specimen with a 6" tail bit me! Luckily I am on a programme of tetanus jabs (they are the norm here because of the wildlife) and in any case, I don't think there is much danger especially as I cleaned and dabbed with alcohol and iodine.
 
Yesterday at about 5pm I was sitting on the terrace at the back of the house, reading. Something rushed past, I slightly feared a snake, but it had legs. I realised it was small and brown, with 4 legs. A weasel! Then about 20 mins later it returned, and passed by me again, just a foot away. I haven't seen one so close, they are only 6-8 inches long.
 
Yes, it is a bit like that sometimes! Mostly I see insects, which I also find fascinating, but I don't post about them as I'm not sure what I am seeing, beyond 'small brown grasshopper'!
 
Yesterday at about 6-7pm and then again this afternoon at about 3pm I have seen a group of maybe 30 black birds flying about together. They are bigger than starlings but I can't tell which breed of corvid they are. Which ones are most likely to fly together please?
 
MrsBiscuit said:
Yesterday at about 6-7pm and then again this afternoon at about 3pm I have seen a group of maybe 30 black birds flying about together. They are bigger than starlings but I can't tell which breed of corvid they are. Which ones are most likely to fly together please?
Click to expand...
Perhaps rooks.
Big excitement here last week. For two days we had a Blackwinged Pratincole followed by an army of twitchers. Though it was right here in Houbie I didn’t go and look at it. However this pales into insignificance compared to the Fin Whale which cruised along side our little ferry. Apparently it dwarfed the ferry.
 
We saw a pod of Fin Whales off Shoeburyness, which was impressive. Sadly we then saw a dead one one the beach in Norfolk, they are enormous.
Saw that one Birdguides the Pratincole and thought of you

We saw one at Cliffe Pools in Kent earlier in the year.

Biggest excitement around here is the successful breeding of Spoonbill at Abberton Reservoir, 1st breeding in Essex for hundreds of years
 
There was some serious passion going on the other night just outside our chicken run... If someone can tell me how to get it to post the photo from my Samsung phone????? :-)19
 
Icemaiden said:
There was some serious passion going on the other night just outside our chicken run... If someone can tell me how to get it to post the photo from my Samsung phone????? :-)19
Click to expand...

What species was/were involved, do you suppose? It sounds like the local teenagers to me!

This thread will help you to post your pictures.
http://poultrykeeperforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11259
It’s quite easy once you’ve done it a time or two, but you may need to reduce the size of the photo, ie the number of pixels. From a phone, you may be offered a choice of Small, Medium, or Full size. Try Medium. Or else get a free image reduction app, which is what I use on my iPad to post Cheery Pictures. Run the photo through the app first, and then use the reduced version to post on here.
 
We saw this Great Green Bush cricket recently. I did take a photo with Ruth's finger next to it so we could get a measurement, and it was 7cm/ 3inch long, certainly impressive



8 Great Green Bush Cricket.jpg
 
Wow! Not so impressive, but walking down the road the other day I stopped to look over the bridge as is my wont and saw a grey heron standing in the river about 25 yards upstream.
 
What is the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper?

We went to see if we could see some Griffon Vultures this morning...but failed to spot a single one. However, we have spotted a small, stray cat loitering in the garden, desperate for food and very affectionate. We have given him/her some food and water and are mulling over the next step, which is putting up pictures and taking it to the vet to see if its chipped. It doesn't live around here, but it may have wandered off as there are 2 villages about 1km away. Or it may have been dumped.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top