Wildlife spotting

[Pdine]

[Twonty Gostelow]

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

Yes! The grumpy painted clown mouth. This is the young sparrow from the previous pics:



A goldfinch parent and nipper turned up later. "One day you'll have a bright red bonce like mine. It was all fields here when I was young."

[Twonty Gostelow]

^^ Ace kite pic, Pdine.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Don't ask me how I know, but that bird's a knob

[Head Gardener]

topical

[bgmnts]

Saw a group of rabbits, nine I think, by the hedge (complete with warren entrances) behind some allotments next to a football field.  Hope they dont get ferreted or shot by cunts.

The buck was chasing another one,  possibly a doe or a younger male, quite vigorously.

[Twit 2]

GIVE A FUCK ABOUT DEER MATE

[bgmnts]

Saw a river rat today! Its made a home right by a carpark on the riverbank.

It scurried off as I tried to take a picture the bugger. They all do; birds, squirrels, rats.

Even the animals don't like me.

I am a nature voyeur though it seems, I can't get enough of it. I get so excited now seeing a new bird I havent seen before, even birds I have seen before. I thought an appreciation for birds was an age related thing but evidently not.

[Spoon of Ploff]

Saw and heard a pair of Stonechats on m'walk this morning. Never even knew they were a thing. Was only able to get an identification by the sound they make... which is like hitting to small stones together. Hence the name: Stonechat.

Here's a pic (not mine, sadly).

[Ferris]

This sounds sarcastic, but I am really enjoying all the nice animal photos on here. Nice.

Saw a couple of Kentucky warblers in the park - sounds banal (and probably is) but they were so yellow. Never seen one before, looked like it had been dipped in hi vis paint.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Saw and heard a pair of Stonechats on m'walk this morning. Never even knew they were a thing. Was only able to get an identification by the sound they make... which is like hitting to small stones together. Hence the name: Stonechat.

Here's a pic (not mine, sadly).

I was lucky to get a few photos of a stonechat over sand dunes on the Welsh coast. They don't usually hang around if they know they're being watched. This was April 2018 and I haven't seen one since.

[bgmnts]

Is there a collective name for these small fat birds? They are my favourite kinds of birds.

[Ferris]

Is there a collective name for these small fat birds?

[insert horrible bernard manning joke here]

I think they're called hedgerow birds or something? Might have made that up though.

Out of interest - you people with your nice photos, are you using DSLRs or nice cameras to take them? Phone cameras are absolute shit for anything more than 10ft away

[Twonty Gostelow]

I think they're called hedgerow birds or something? Might have made that up though.

I call them fluffernutters.

Out of interest - you people with your nice photos, are you using DSLRs or nice cameras to take them? Phone cameras are absolute shit for anything more than 10ft away

Mine's a Sony Cybershot DSC-HX90V, about 4 years old. I know next to nothing about photography, but it's got a 30x zoom and records decent video footage. Easy to carry, fits into trouser pockets even. I don't use a tripod.
It doesn't do slow motion video though, which I'd probably want if I bought again.

[paruses]

I was lucky to get a few photos of a stonechat over sand dunes on the Welsh coast. They don't usually hang around if they know they're being watched. This was April 2018 and I haven't seen one since.

They are still around rest assured. Have seen several pairs this year and am on the coast - mid-Wales.

[paruses]

Is there a collective name for these small fat birds? They are my favourite kinds of birds.

How do you mean? Birds like stonechat and blue tits are passerines - perching birds. Sorry for the boring answer. Fluffernutters is better.

[Ferris]

I call them fluffernutters.

Mine's a Sony Cybershot DSC-HX90V, about 4 years old. I know next to nothing about photography, but it's got a 30x zoom and records decent video footage. Easy to carry, fits into trouser pockets even. I don't use a tripod.
It doesn't do slow motion video though, which I'd probably want if I bought again.

Good to know, thanks.

The in-laws got us a nice camera for Christmas right before my son was born (with the implicit "take a shitload of pictures and send them to us") but I've never used it because the phone camera is so good and handy. I always have it on me more or less, I rarely think to take a camera out (in fact I never do).

You'd have to go out with the explicit aim of taking photos and I'm not conditioned to do that. Must start, really.

[bgmnts]

How do you mean? Birds like stonechat and blue tits are passerines - perching birds. Sorry for the boring answer. Fluffernutters is better.

Fluffernutters it is.

[Brian Freeze]

Had a quality wren fly by and perch jauntily for three moments this afternoon. Possibly my favourite bird.

[bgmnts]

Saw a huge bird perched on a fallen branch in the afon! It was black with greyish or browniah tint and with a huge, greyish beak. It was bigger than a mallard.

I think maybe it was a cormorant? It was spectacular, whatever it was.

[Cerys]

They are still around rest assured. Have seen several pairs this year and am on the coast - mid-Wales.

Aberystwyth?

[Brian Freeze]

Attila - I'm sure you've been asked this before but please could you recommend a wildlife camera? There's a lot of choice! Towards the economy end of the market is our price range.
We've been putting out unsalted nuts near a couple of badger setts and the kids are too small to stay up till dusk at this time of year.

We've got lots of bugs in the pond now, the water has gone crystal clear in the last couple of days and we can see loads of larvae, water fleas, a couple of flavours of diving beetle and have almost forty baby pond skaters bezzing about. The mother has hung around but dad effed off a long time ago.

[bgmnts]

I will echo the request for a cheap camera for taking snappy snaps of wildlife.

[paruses]

Attila - I'm sure you've been asked this before but please could you recommend a wildlife camera? There's a lot of choice! Towards the economy end of the market is our price range.
We've been putting out unsalted nuts near a couple of badger setts and the kids are too small to stay up till dusk at this time of year.

We've got lots of bugs in the pond now, the water has gone crystal clear in the last couple of days and we can see loads of larvae, water fleas, a couple of flavours of diving beetle and have almost forty baby pond skaters bezzing about. The mother has hung around but dad effed off a long time ago.

Lidl were selling one the other day - I know it varies from store to store - couldn't vouch for the quality but was about £70 and looked like a claymore mine. Also that sort of thing come with a no-quibble guarantee for 3 years (which they honour based on my experience with a faulty impact driver - just keep the receipt).

[paruses]

Aberystwyth?

Bit further up - Tywyn, Fairbourne, and Dolgellau.

[Attila]

Mr Attila bought ours as a way to track our big goon of a cat when he escaped (after only one week, but we got him back again thanks to Mr Gus the neighbour's cat).

It's an Apeman, and if you look them up on Amazon, they come in a load of price ranges and features. Ours has night-vision, which is really what we've been using it for -- we've collected dozens of hedgehog photos as the little guys and gals come to visit the party palace all night (plus assorted bords, foxes, and a number of visiting neighbours' cats).

It's a nice little camera, holds an sd card -- it stopped taking photos for a while, but Mr Attila records it's because the card filled up -- it's pretty sensitive to movement, so you can end up with loads of photos of insects flying by or when the grass sways in the wind. It's great when it comes to adjusting to the ambivent light; some of the early morning sunshine-lit photos have been gorgeous.

I need to post some of them here -- bear in mind they're not properly framed like some of the beautiful wildlife photos posted in this thread, but it's still really neat to catch the party palace visitors just messing about. One of the more recent nice ones is a magpie caught in the act of taking off -- just a blur of black and white, but you get a full sense of the energy exploding from its body as it takes off.

It's really fun to view through the photos every morning to see who'se stopped by. Plus we've got lots of goofy hedgehog faces now, as they've been caught in mid-drink, or scratching themselves.

[popcorn]

Can anyone identify the nature of this mysterious hole that has appeared in my garden? Is this a badger hangout?

[ZoyzaSorris]

Saw a huge bird perched on a fallen branch in the afon! It was black with greyish or browniah tint and with a huge, greyish beak. It was bigger than a mallard.

I think maybe it was a cormorant? It was spectacular, whatever it was.

Yeah cormorants are surprisingly big when you get a proper look at them out of the water. Proper prehistoric beasts.

[Cerys]

Can anyone identify the nature of this mysterious hole that has appeared in my garden? Is this a badger hangout?

Badgers have a habit of digging out a lot of soil when making a sett.  The lack of external soil here suggests that the hole wasn't so much caused by a badger as it was the result of subsidence or a very large earthworm.

[Twit 2]

Can anyone identify the nature of this mysterious hole that has appeared in my garden? Is this a badger hangout?

Stanley Yelnats did it.