Wildlife spotting

[Thomas]

There's a nest of blue tits across from our house. Very high up in an old wall. A pair (I presume the same) nested there last year. It's nice to watch them come and go, and to hear the unseen chicks cheeping whenever they return.

Howwwwever, I was upset this morning to spot one of the local cats with a blue tit in its mouth. We have a cat, too, but he's not allowed outside on account of a blood poorliness. The culprit is a lovely cat, but it's such a shame.

I went out and found the surviving parent in the branches above, staring the cat down and chirping its urgent warning call. Once I cleared the cat off, the bird turned its chirps on me. Poor desperate thing. I contacted our local wildlife volunteer lads to ask their opinion on the nest's chance of survival with just one parent. There could be seven or eight chicks, perhaps only days from fledling. A sad shame if they all come to nothing.

[BlodwynPig]

Not very good with lighting but here's some swans and their little brood of cutesy cygnets inspecting their upper vertebrae, near Cambridge at the weekend.

There is a pair on a hidden lake near me (on Lord Ridley's land) but no cygnets. The weird man said they might be a young pair new to the lake. I did see what looked like a nesting site with loads of feathers and assumed a fox had been and decimated it. They are on the other side now on a partial island that looks a bit like your picture without the grass behind. I would have thought they would pick less exposed places to nest, like the island in the middle of the lake. (its a small lake, smaller now with all this good weather).

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Saw four bunny rabbits all together in a nearby housing estate earlier this week. Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.

[holyzombiejesus]

Unseen so far but hear a cuckoo outside at about 8pm each night. Seems to come from near my neighbour's patio doors. Chirrups away a few times then goes silent for about an hour. Feel so privileged to hear it.

[bgmnts]

Yeah will say the dynamic birdsong being chirped, squawked and warbled into the air is breathtaking at the moment.

[phosphoresce]

More lovely European Goldfinches in the garden today, singing away. Here's a (surprisingly lyrical!) description from Wikipedia:

The song is a pleasant silvery twittering. The call is a melodic tickeLIT, and the song is a pleasant tinkling medley of trills and twitters, but always including the tri-syllabic call phrase or a teLLIT-teLLIT-teLLIT.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Saw a big bee and a small bee.

[Cerys]

Are you sure the small bee wasn't just further away?

[BlodwynPig]

Ringed plover and heron at Big Waters

[Attila]

We've hit the jackpot with spikey fruit -- we had some suspicion that we might have a hedgehog or two finally coming back to the party palace*, but we needed to fix the wildlife camera. Got it fixed, trained it on the garden, and got the usual 12,000 photos of two of the neighbours' cats visiting and doing their rounds, a lot of pigeons, and finally, Thursday night, a hedgehog bimbling around in the lilies.

Set the camera up last night to train it specifically on the party palace, and got dozens of snaps of the fat little fruit, nosing around, chowing down on kitten food, lounging by the pool/water dish.

I'll pull some of the photos off the camera a bit later today; they're all in nightvision mode, so everyone's eyes look like laser beams.



*We had regular visitors for a while last year, then a bastard badger showed up. We set humane traps, and a hedgehog spent the night in one by mistake. Mr Attila put him in the hedgehog house we've got at the end of the garden with some water and kibble, and he seemed to be all right -- but then the next morning the entire section of tiles near the party palace was wall-to-wall spikes and blood, with a lot of badger-shaped footprints. Nothing after that for the rest of the summer -- so we're quite happy this fat little dude has shown up.

[Cerys]

Maybe the poor hedgehog was the badger's last meal.  Happened in Brock the Badger, from what I remember.

[gib]

Some kind of damsel flies. Been red ones for weeks now the green ones have showed up. Don't know the proper names, paging Flouncer.

[Flouncer]

Ah great! There are two species of red damselfly, the large and the small - I think that's a male large red (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) because it has black legs. The other one is a female banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens), I reckon. Lovely stuff gib. :-)

[gib]

much obliged!

[Ferris]

A couple of turtles in the park not observing social distancing and putting the wind up the local ducks



There's a whole family of them apparently...

[Attila]

Happy to report that the Hedgehog Party Palace is in full swing. Over the past two days, we've caught on camera a mating pair of hedgehogs (not in the sexy time act, although we did get snaps of one of them taking an enormous shit), a black cat I've never seen before, a squirrel, a few birds (robin, crow, little brown bird), and last night a big ol' fox.

Diversity reigns at the Party Palace.

[bgmnts]

Hedgehog scat porn mmm

[Jittlebags]

Trialling some new footpaths within 5 miles of home, and saw something brown in some scrub. Turned out to be a fox. We had a good mutual stare for about 5 minutes. Rubbish phone photo, but here he/she is:

[Huxleys Babkins]

Foxes!

Or, more specifically, a lack of foxes. We haven't seen nor heard them at all since last Thursday. We're presuming they've moved on, which is what we wanted, but also a bit sad because we'd become so used to having them about. It was like having four free puppies and a dog that you didn't have to bother looking after.

We're not going to dismantle or fill in the den just yet in case they come back (apparently foxes can have multiple dens so there's a chance they're hiding out somewhere and may return), but we've been going through "their" stuff. It seems the mother has been stealing random odd shoes from peoples' gardens for them to play with, including a very nice, brand new Adidas from a pair that goes for about 90 quid. Whoopsie. We also found a child's teddy bear with most of it's neck ripped open which they probably used to play hunt with. "They forgot their bear!" I exclaimed and choked up a little bit. I knew this day would come, but I thought we'd get another month out of them.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

[BlodwynPig]

I had tears at the teddy part

[Twonty Gostelow]

As of last month, a new live webcam on Skomer Island showing the puffin colony, currently at their most active. Infrared cam during darkness too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1f5OMrvMY

I've been there once in the summer and they're just magical to watch, walking around tamely right in front of you.

[ZoyzaSorris]

The damselflies have started appearing at the pond, making the beast with two backs and laying eggs on the pond plants...

Got both red and blue at the mo which is nice, don't know if they have recently emerged from my pond or are visitors from elsewhere.

I think they are likely the only two resident odonata as its a very small pond but last year had stopovers from demoiselle damselfly, common hawker, common darter and broad-bellied chaser. Love these guys. 

[paruses]

Had a walk up to a lake in the hills the other day and there were loads of the little blue and red damselflies. Also several common hawkers I think but not sure - took a photo and will try to identify later or just post it for Flouncer when I have given up.

Can hear loads of blackcaps and garden warblers at moment and saw first sedge warbler of the year the other day. Lots of wheatear knocking about too on the salt marshes. Also seen quite a few male pied flycatchers which is lovely.

Have seen a lot more greater spotted woodpeckers than usual as well. Thoroughly enjoying LOCKDOWN to be honest.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Feeding time for juvenile tits (wildlife sub-forum name?) and sparrows on the back lawn an hour ago.
A couple of video stills:




Photos - all shot through the window, so not crystal clear.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Another one of adult and youngster. Always notice at this time of year (with robins as well) just how utterly shagged out the adults look.

[paruses]

Lovely pictures. The adults do look so knackered and scruffy but they'll have that lovely post-breeding moult soon and be all shiny and new.

I love how yellow the blue tits are when they are juvs.

Saw a juvenile robin on my walk today  - all speckled and green but still robin shaped. So weird.

[Gurke and Hare]

Young robins are great. Apart from anything else, I love how grumpy they look.

[paruses]

Yes - I love their grumpiness too. I forgot to add that + how great I think they are and not just weird looking. Always find it so strange that they turn into what the adult looks like. Can't think of another common british bird that does that (there's probably loads).

[Ferris]

[tag]are you looking at my bird[/tag]

[Spoon of Ploff]

lovely baby birdie shots folks.