Wildlife spotting

[ZoyzaSorris]

Love me a dipper.

[kalowski]

My kids were happy playing in the stream so I could sit and watch it for ages.

[phes]

Currently taking a short break in the Peaks. Seen a few buzzards, kestrels, a dipper and a lovely pair of grey wagtails.

Where abouts?

I was in New Mills on Saturday and saw my first Dipper of the year just after the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett. No Grey Wagtails, which was unusual. They usually dance acrobatically up and down that little stretch. The local heron was on the weir looking like a right old bruiser and gulping down some prey

[kalowski]

Just by the Manifold River. We were in Ilam yesterday where we saw most of them, although the buzzards have been flying over here daily.

[paruses]

Where abouts?

I was in New Mills on Saturday and saw my first Dipper of the year just after the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett. No Grey Wagtails, which was unusual. They usually dance acrobatically up and down that little stretch. The local heron was on the weir looking like a right old bruiser and gulping down some prey

No dipper sitings yet for me. Might have to go out and just sit by the river and wait until it happens. Conversely - loads of grey wagtails knocking about this year.

[paruses]

This is the fella that crashed into the doors recently. (can't remember how to do images so this might have  a few edits - have uploaded to imgbb)











[Edit - ah, getting there. Now how do I make it not massive? size=something something?]

[BlodwynPig]

[img* width=400][/img*]

remove *

use height instead of width for these

[paruses]

^ Excellent. Thanks.

[paruses]

Excellent info, thanks Phes. Sadly death is all about in my wildlife wanders. The squished sparrowhawk, now a squashed hedgehog (still not seen a living hedgehog in all my years). I did manage to use the powerful binoculars to get a good view of a buzzard riding the updrafts, wonderful.

Also seeing a lot of death at the moment (it's all relative  I suppose). Jub blackbird, quite a few badger roadkill. Squirrels ditto obvs. More upsettingly have found 2 dead moles on one of my usual walks through a particular field. And they are unbearably cute.

Upside - lots of little families of birds knocking around so life goes on.

[BlodwynPig]

Inspired by Attila and others I've bought a night vision camera thingy. Didn't come with batteries or SD card so will have to risk covid to go and get them. I'm very stupid. Always saving money and never investing in things that could bring me enjoyment, like a decent camera and pair of binoculars before moving to Canada. Well now I have. Probably won't see anything. I'm going to a field about a mile away where there is a suspected fox hole and I'm going to position it overnight outside there. Don't think it'll be nicked as its remote and the camera is camouflaged.

[BlodwynPig]

Bumper crop of Peacock butterflies today

[bgmnts]

Two days ago there was a dead rabbit in the hedge next to a busy t junction about half a mile from where a rabbit warren lives. Or at least did, it seems the football training has started up again on that field where they are/were.

Unsure if they're linked but if some poor rabbit had to die so some cunts can play footie...

[BlodwynPig]

Two days ago there was a dead rabbit in the hedge next to a busy t junction about half a mile from where a rabbit warren lives. Or at least did, it seems the football training has started up again on that field where they are/were.

Unsure if they're linked but if some poor rabbit had to die so some cunts can play footie...

An eye for an eye. Get on it.

[Blue Jam]

MOFF:

[BlodwynPig]

Question for Attila.

I set up the night camera last night - quite lackadaisically, just propped against a pole with hedgehog food in front, in the morning I was delighted to see the food gone and videos on the camera. Of course, I had propped the camera at a slight angle so only got to see the hump of the hog and not the face, but the sounds were pretty impressive in the night, like being in a Louisiana swamp (maybe the heat had brought out crickets, quite eerie with some background infrasound).

Anyway, at one point a few hours later the video turned on but there was nothing on screen, but I could here a chattering/grunting - is this the hedgehog? do you hear the same sounds. I had left the hedgehog food tub outside as it stinks and is full of dried grubs (lid was on). In the morning there were stones scattered around and at one point there was a video of a shadow passing the camera and then a clunk on what sounded like the plastic tub. Greedy hogs!

I will try and get a better angle tonight and put at higher resolution. A lot of glare and the humidity started to spoil the image around 4am.

Tips welcome from all you night camera enthusiasts. I will also see if I can get fox/badger images from the fields. There is a slight unease that there will be a monstrous zombie face on one of these at some point.

[paruses]

Good deed for the day was rescuing this chap from a watery death in a bucket of rain water. That's no way to go, is it?

I think it is a common sexton beetle. Prettier than the pic makes it look.

It dried off, preened, and then flew off. If my id is correct then assume it smelt a delicious corpse within a mile to breakfast on.

[kalowski]

I love that God spent so much time creating hundreds of thousands of wacky insects.

[paruses]

I love that God spent so much time creating hundreds of thousands of wacky insects.

Yes. Would love that as a job.

Adjacent to that an ecologist friend of mine once said because everything fits together so well that if there were ever absolute proof that God exists, he wouldn't be that surprised.

[phes]

Odd thing for an ecologist to entertain the teleological argument

There are thought to be in the order of a trillion microbes which must have been a fucking shock if God went into it thinking it would be all Vampire Squid and Leopards

[BlodwynPig]

Odd thing for an ecologist to entertain the teleological argument

There are thought to be in the order of a trillion microbes which must have been a fucking shock if God went into it thinking it would be all Vampire Squid and Leopards

I think the actual number is closer 1^21 or 1^23, more than stars in the galaxy anyway, or are you talking about species?

[Attila]

We (not a royal we, me & Mr Attila, I mean) just set the camera up to photo, not video. We did the video once, and ended up with lots of 10 sec videos from movement near the camera setting it off, but not enough action to see foxes, hedgepigs, etc in action. You may find you get a lot more results going with just photos.

Depending on your camera, you should have a test mode that lets you see what the camera sees before you turn it on -- I didn't realise this til Mr Attila pointed it out to me, and as you'd expect, it makes a big difference! I keep the camera up on a tripod with the field of vivew looking down on the hedgehog party palace, water bowls, and now the fox bowl (the foxes were eating the kitten food I had for the hedgehogs, so now I fix them their own bowl of puppy chow).

Hedgehogs will grunt and chuff, especially when they're in the mood for love. They also knock a lot of stuff over. I heard one banging around behind the bins last night where Mr Attila keeps several million plastic flower pots, and I could track his progress under them as they fell over like a series of dominoes.

What brings the hedgehogs around, especially now that it's so hot: keep fresh water out. The HH like their kibble, but they're into the water bowl all night -- sometimes literally.

Lately we've been getting a bona fide array at the party palace -- three hedgehogs at once in the food bowl. It's at least three fox kits that come by, a big boy and his two smaller sisters. There's a magpie that visits the kibble bowl at almost exactly the same hour window every morning, between 6 and 630, to nibble on what's left in the bowls.

These uploaded weird, but here are some recent shots -- these are out of around 3,000 photos we've taken since the start of July, so you will get a lot of nothing, but then neat things appear.

Various shots of hedgehog cavorting, Mr Gus coming over to visit (there are several neighbourhood cats who come to visit; I have a sequence on the SD card of a hedgehog sniffing one's tail, and said cat is NOT happy about this). Foxy foxes.

Question for Attila.

I set up the night camera last night - quite lackadaisically, just propped against a pole with hedgehog food in front, in the morning I was delighted to see the food gone and videos on the camera. Of course, I had propped the camera at a slight angle so only got to see the hump of the hog and not the face, but the sounds were pretty impressive in the night, like being in a Louisiana swamp (maybe the heat had brought out crickets, quite eerie with some background infrasound).

Anyway, at one point a few hours later the video turned on but there was nothing on screen, but I could here a chattering/grunting - is this the hedgehog? do you hear the same sounds. I had left the hedgehog food tub outside as it stinks and is full of dried grubs (lid was on). In the morning there were stones scattered around and at one point there was a video of a shadow passing the camera and then a clunk on what sounded like the plastic tub. Greedy hogs!

I will try and get a better angle tonight and put at higher resolution. A lot of glare and the humidity started to spoil the image around 4am.

Tips welcome from all you night camera enthusiasts. I will also see if I can get fox/badger images from the fields. There is a slight unease that there will be a monstrous zombie face on one of these at some point.

[notjosh]

Love those pictures Attila.

Strolling through the Forest of Dean last week I stumbled across a large black stag. Didn't even know that was a thing, but here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MISc9OJCSaVcWyHbfL6wGR4SFLOC7tMi/view?usp=sharing

Might look like a silhouette, but had a good look through the binocs afterwards and it was properly black.

[bgmnts]

Great pictures!

The tail on the fox is not as fluffy as I'd expect.

[BlodwynPig]

Thanks Attila. I had it on mixed photos and video, to be honest the photo was basically just stills of the first frame of the video - or equivalent, so I may just stick with video as what I got was lots of hog action, just at the wrong angle. I did think about a water bowl for tonight as the heat was intense last night even up in Newcastle.

Sad news again though, another cygnet dead - this time it seems to have succumbed to the heat or something other than an attack as it is floating in the lake near the island. I think it was the weakest and smallest of the remaining 3 cygnets. It was always apart from the other 2, but the father seemed to be keeping an eye out for it. Yesterday it was sitting alone, tired and it took the father to cajole it out on the lake. I then got close to the whole family and they all seemed 'together', scratching with their big feet and feeding normally. I got a great photo of the little one "winking" and raising a foot to me as I left. Sad sad sad to see him/her dead this morning, especially after the joy of hedgehogs.

[kalowski]

I think the actual number is closer 1^21 or 1^23, more than stars in the galaxy anyway, or are you talking about species?

1^21 = 1^23 = 1

You mean 10^21.

Yours,

A maths nerd.

[BlodwynPig]

1^21 = 1^23 = 1

You mean 10^21.

Yours,

A maths nerd.

Sorry, I meant 1E21, yes...don't tell Pancreas

[bgmnts]

Sorry about that Blodwyn. Fucking shit it all is.

[BlodwynPig]

Sorry about that Blodwyn. Fucking shit it all is.

I worry about the corpse - hopefully it will be moved by a bird of prey or the geese or swans, wouldn't want to see it rotting over the next few days. The two siblings came over to check on it and it was the saddest thing. nudging the body with its beaks.

how are your pigeons doing?

[bgmnts]

Still there! Mother pigeon actually charged a stranger pigeon getting too close to the nest the other day, it shat itself and flew away.

I'm unsure if they have hatched yet but I haven't witnessed any feeding, if I would even see it. I am hoping it'll be very soon though.

It's nice to have SOMETHING good happen for once.

[paruses]

Odd thing for an ecologist to entertain the teleological argument

There are thought to be in the order of a trillion microbes which must have been a fucking shock if God went into it thinking it would be all Vampire Squid and Leopards

I don't know - it's easy to get sidetracked and carried away when you're into something. Maybe microbes are fun to make.

I think it was more sitting alone on a beautiful island catching storm petrels and drinking a box of wine that drove the comment than a rigorous examination of theistic arguments. Have just remembered I said I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up living in a commune at some point. I do stand by that.