Wildlife spotting

[sick as a pike]

Yes I've got a pond outside the kitchen window by which a pair of mallards spend early spring contentedly sitting. Then inevitably a few weeks later there's a massive quacky kerfuffle as five or so other males turn up with the apparent agenda "let's drown her then fuck her!"  I also run out to try to break it up, but they are extraordinarily determined.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Fox update!

Came home from the big shop on Saturday night to find the mother fox standing in the middle of the road just across from our drive. She ran out of the way across the road, but as I turned in, the cubs were all running out, panicked that their mum had run away.

I took avoiding action and now have a big scrape up the corner of the car where I hit the gate post. Luckily, no foxes were injured.

So, the car is now a casualty of these fox bastards, but the good news is that they are venturing out beyond the garden, so hopefully it won't be too long until they fuck right off and find their own homes.

[Buelligan]

Interesting fox-tale, I hope very much to hear the happy ending.

To continue, briefly, with the mallards, I'm not a racist but here, our mallards pair up and potter about nicely, nesting in their usual spots.  There's a tiny rocky little island in the river for one pair and a bit of a cavelet, under an overhang, on a deep pool for the others.  They are perfectly heterosexual in their ways and keep to themselves.  Your filthy British mallards disgust me.

[bgmnts]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/15/rspb-flooded-with-reports-of-birds-of-prey-being-killed

Another lovely story which makes me happy to be a member of the human race.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Wouldn't it be terrible if those responsible were to be abducted in the dead of night, pegged out naked on an exposed mountain top until nature took its course, culminating in a karmic Tibetan "sky burial"?

[paruses]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/15/rspb-flooded-with-reports-of-birds-of-prey-being-killed

Another lovely story which makes me happy to be a member of the human race.

Wouldn't really surprise me if this isn't an increase in incidents just an increase in the number of people available to report incidents.

[BlodwynPig]

ABSOLUTE CUNT FUCKERS

I've seen more raptors in the last 2 weeks than I've seen in a lifetime in the UK...

[Dex Sawash]

adolescent bunny in yard

[Cerys]

Nah, that's a pinecone, mate.

[Brian Freeze]

I can see 4 pine cones. What do I win?

We seem to have a pair of pond skaters taken up residence. Big news.

[Brian Freeze]

Also - shit yard mate. No concrete.

[Twit 2]

Found this heartwarming:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/16/dara-mcanulty-nature-writing-diary-of-a-young-naturalist

Good luck, mate.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Walked through a cloud of huge black flies that appeared to have some sort of long stinger dangling out of them. Google tells me they're St. Mark's flies and the "long stinger" is actually their back legs hanging down. They're quite harmless and will all be dead soon after a massive fuckfest to make more St. Mark's flies.

Buzzed the back lawn two evenings ago and immediately a robin came to peck through the newly mown grass. I've spotted a thrush and a pair (male and female) of blackbirds.

[Gurke and Hare]

There was a jay in the garden yesterday, hooray! But it was probably hunting for nestlings, the bastard.

[king_tubby]

Yesterday: two normal herons, an egret, grey lag and Canada geese, a solitary swan, mallards with their ducklings and a shit ton of gulls.

[spaghetamine]

Been seeing foxes and bats pretty much every evening which is always nice, love me some shifty night creatures I do

[Twit 2]

I have abandoned the dream kitchens for a low fire
and a prescriptive literature of the spirit;
a storm snores on the desolate sea.
The nearest shop is four miles away –
when I walk there through the shambles
of the morning for tea and firelighters
the mountain paces me in a snow-lit silence.
My days are spent in conversation
with deer and blackbirds;
at night fox and badger gather at my door.
I have stood for hours
watching a salmon doze in the tea-gold dark,
for months listening to the sob story
of a stone in the road, the best,
most monotonous sob story I have ever heard.

I am an expert on frost crystals
and the silence of crickets, a confidant
of the stinking shore, the stars in the mud –
there is an immanence in these things
which drives me, despite my scepticism,
almost to the point of speech,
like the sunlight cleaving the lake mist at morning
or when tepid water
runs cold at last from the tap.

I have been working for years
on a four-line poem
about the life of a leaf;
I think it might come out right this winter.

[sick as a pike]

Wow.  I was going to guess Seamus Heaney, but I see it's not.  Bloody Hell, though.

[Twit 2]

Weirdly, of those three chums, Mahon is the least known to the general public. Longley somewhere in the middle and Heaney eclipsing. They're all amazing in their own way, but I like Mahon best. I remember being utterly blown away when I first read his complete poems. He's an absolute master, the poet's poet. Heaney and Longley were/are the first to say they're not worthy:

In September 1963 Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley visited the County Down grave of the great Northern Irish poet Louis MacNeice, who had died a short time before. Longley, writing recently in the introduction to a selection of MacNeice's poems, recalled that as they "dawdled between the graves" all three then-unpublished poets were silently "contemplating an elegy". When they next met, Mahon read them "In Carrowdore Churchyard": "Your ashes will not stir, even on this high ground / However the wind tugs, the headstones shake". Seamus Heaney started to read his poem but "then crumpled it up". Longley says he decided not even to attempt the task. "Mahon had produced the definitive elegy."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

[popcorn]

Set up a DIY camera with a Raspberry Pi kit. First night's results:

[Dex Sawash]

Have got chipmunks around back but the cagey bastards refuse to be photographed. They are fucking cunts to Donald too so fuck em.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Went out in to the garden this morning to find a right kerfuffle going on, all manner of birds going nuts down from the big sycamore tree at the bottom into the grass in next doors garden. Peered over the fence to see a jay with a blue tit dangling limply from its mouth, getting major bombardments from a cloud of mixed pissed-off avians, great tits, blue tits, song thrushes. Then it flew up with its prize back into the tree and proceeded to pluck the shit out of the little hapless bugger holding it against the branch with its talons looking for all the world like a proper well-hard raptor. Presume it was a fledgling to let itself go out like a sucker like that. Quite a nice spectacular bit of nature drama to have with your coffee. Quite interesting how all the different species got together to cause a fuss. I guess it's an 'if you tolerate this then your fledgling will be next' kind of deal.

[BlodwynPig]

I've never seen a UK Jay - so many reports in this thread (are you UK based Zozya?)

[ZoyzaSorris]

Yeah sadly, London. We seem to have a resident pair in the vicinity so I do see them a lot. Especially recently. They are normally very flighty and elusive and it is easy to overlook them but I swear that since the lockdown they seem to be completely changed, bold as brass, more like crows or magpies.

[Pink Gregory]

Saw a crow having a go at a heron over a graveyard the other day.

Balls of the man, I swear.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Another majestic buzzard fucked off by a screeching gull yesterday. I love watching buzzards lazily circling, climbing in the thermals and wish these gulls would just piss off. I mean, they're SEA gulls for fuck's sake! What are they doing in Wolverhampton anyway?*


*(Yes, I know. What is anybody?)

[Gurke and Hare]

Important garden squirrel update.

[BlodwynPig]

bread can't be good for them?

[Dex Sawash]

think he's humping it, not eating

[Buelligan]

This is unquestionably beautiful.  It's about my brother, I'm sure of it.  Thank you.