Tuesday 29 July 2008

After a period of heavy overnight rain, I thought there may be a chance of a migrant or two at migrant alley this morning. I left a bit earlier for work and gave the fields and maize crop a good scan, but no migrants were found. I did here a SONGTHRUSH, and a YELLOWHAMMER singing loudly, as I walked along Ashes Lane though, and 14 GREY LAG GEESE flew south as I was looking over the Maize.
This afternoon I took a walk through the tree nursery, where a stack of canes had been left for me to mark any nests I may find, thus saving them from over zealous strimming. I think they will be more use next spring, but it is a step in the right direction. A few Meadow Brown butterflies and Gatekeepers were on the wing here, but the strengthening wind wasn't helping. I didn't find a single bird in the nursery, well, apart from two GREEN WOODPECKERS. On to Migrant alley for a second search, but I fared no better here, just ROOKS, PIED WAGTAILS and a couple of LINNETS. I sat on my skywatching seat and watched for over an hour, but all I saw were HERRING GULLS.

Last night I watched from my window across the fields to migrant alley, but the only thing of note were two LITTLE OWLS on the fence posts.

An update on sundays ringing session - We caught a BLACKCAP, which we had originally caught on the 10th Aug. 2005, It was also caught on the 2nd July 2006 ! Just think of the miles this bird has put in two and from the continent.
We also re-trapped a DUNNOCK that we originally ringed on 18 of June 2006, it was also caught on the 31st July 2007. Nice to see it surviving!!

I got home and did some garden watching, plenty of BLUE and GREAT TITS. Also this cheeky Squirrel eating my expensive Sunflower hearts!
A Juv. GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER was preferring to take Cob Nuts from the cob tree, it flew up into the large leylandii, wedged the nut in a tree fork and hammered it open. All that, there's plenty of peanuts in the feeder!

Elderberries are starting to ripen, more food for migrant warblers. Elder trees are a good place to find birds when the tree is heavy with fruit.


Birds were hard enough to find this afternoon, and I could have done without this thing flying in to the local pub, obviously not his local or he could have walked !! Bloody noisey!



6 comments:

Greenie said...

Warren ,
You were doing so well until the last paragraph , when the pills suddenly wore off , and the 'Grumpy Old Man Syndrome' returned . Perhaps upping the dose might help .

Warren Baker said...

oooops! sorry greenie. However, I don't want to give the impression my patch is some sort of paradise where birds just saunter in to visit me. There are numerous wildlife disturbances and I give a balanced view of what goes on around my patch, bleat, bleat, whinge, - quick where's me pills!!!!!!!!!

Travis said...

Warren,
To use the graphic you can save it as an image and upload it just as you would your photos. To do this depends on your computer.

If a PC, right click and click "save as"...locate it where you saved it and upload it as needed.

If a MAC, you can just click it and drag it to your desktop. From there you can access it to upload it as you would a normal picture.

Hope that helps.

Travis

Steve said...

great post warren....is that a male or female chopper?

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Warren: I must say that last capture is the biggest bird you've shown lately. That squirrel of yours is quite the acrobat.

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.