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March 29, 2024, 03:15:40 PM

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Wildlife spotting

Started by Twit 2, August 06, 2018, 12:59:58 PM

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Spoon of Ploff

The owl is back:



She has her favourite tree... try to get any closer than this and she nips into a hollow.

Buelligan


Attila

Lots of birds been at the party palace -- might just give in and add a small bird feeder.

First, tho, hedgehogs stepping and sitting in their water bowl





For whatever reason, got lots of reflections the other night.


The mouse is back nightly now, much bolder than before


Magpie & biscuit


Robin


Blue tit




Starling with nesting material


The crows have been back daily, as well, still in residence. As are at least two or three foxes now.





Brian Freeze

Lots of tadpole action, they are growing pretty fast. Legs soon I reckon.

Bloody love sitting watching them, very time consuming in a good way. Have seen them first thing in the morning coming up for big gulps of air from the surface, cool as anything seeing them opening wide to do it. Going to look for teeth in there next time.

Brian Freeze

Had a half four wander this morning to try and see the Barn Owl but didn't succeed. Four times Ive been out without spotting. It wasnt a wasted trip as it was an incredible time to be up and about.

As the oversized moon went down it did a great impression of saturn as it dipped through a thin strand of cloud and then turned into Jupiter as it turned hellish orange as it crashed into town past the horizon. I was put in mind of that Lars Von Trier film. It was proper good.

Worth being out just for that but went exploring and saw four deer in total and a good close view of a Dipper.

I think they were Roe deer. Big white arses on them. Quite sizeable for what i thought was only a smallish deer?

Fishfinger

Angle Shades moth (I think) resting on the back doorstep.


Bazooka




Found a couple of Smooth Newts(might be more) in the pond, never seen any in there before. Saw a grass snake also which went in the same pond, but there were at least two newts today, and many frogs.

Buelligan

Whoo, lovely stuff.  Forgot to mention, first cuckoo last Tuesday.  Citing.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Voltan (Man of Steel) on August 08, 2018, 11:39:29 AM
I spent about twenty minutes just sitting silently in my garden earlier this morning, and I must have seen at least three wasps. Everyone should make time to just stop and look at the beauty that's all around.

What breed?

ZoyzaSorris

With a mere 7000 species of wasp in the UK it shouldn't be too hard to narrow it down three years later!

ZoyzaSorris

(7300 if you include bees and ants which are both just fancy wasps that have got a bit full of themselves)

Brian Freeze

7000?

Bugger. I saw an unusual one yesterday drinking from the edge of a pond and thought it might have been German from looking online.

Brian Freeze

The tadpoles leave rafts of bubbles on the pond surface in the morning as they do their little gulps and burps.

Not as interesting as Bazookas pond mind.

paruses

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on April 24, 2021, 10:14:17 PM
With a mere 7000 species of wasp in the UK it shouldn't be too hard to narrow it down three years later!

I would like to do a bit of insect / wasp recording this year. Can anyone recommend a good field guide? Or App. (everyone loves an app but I do find them more of a pain to work with out and about).

Endicott

Last weekend, saw this guilty looking squirrel.



BlodwynPig

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on April 24, 2021, 10:14:17 PM
With a mere 7000 species of wasp in the UK it shouldn't be too hard to narrow it down three years later!

8 in UK, 5000 worldwide

Fishfinger

Quote from: BlodwynPig on April 24, 2021, 08:59:58 PM
What breed?

Plain.

Love this thread. Lockdown's really made me appreciate having access to a garden more, and it's become less a source of chores and more of a soothing kind of fundamental enjoyment. Although nettles can fuck off.

ZoyzaSorris

Quote from: BlodwynPig on April 25, 2021, 12:56:24 PM
8 in UK, 5000 worldwide

I'm being slightly facetious as he obviously meant your classic 'social' wasp, but I'm including all of the thousands of solitary and parasitoid wasp species in there, of which the UK total is approx 7000. There are a lot of parasitoid wasp species in particular.


ZoyzaSorris

(And from a cladistic point of view, bees and ants are wasps)

Attila

Checking out the past few days' wildlife-camera photos -- we've got at least 3 or 4 new foxes coming to the food station now (including one who'd definitely been in the wars -- very ragged ears), and a big bollocked boy who flashed the camera with his nutsack.

The main new visitor now is an older guy who has absolutely no fear. Whereas we have many photos of various foxes eating and running, this guy noses around, sits in front of the camera without a care in the world, and shows up around 9-11 in the morning (rather than in the middle of the night with the majority of them). When I was checking the photos this morning, I exclaimed to Mt Attila that looking at the time stamp I'd already been in and out of the house several times by the time this guy showed up.

Not the greatest of photos (I seem to say this a lot) but there's a group of red deer hinds in this zoom lens photo I took in Perthshire the other day.  Also in evidence were red kites and buzzards in their dozens, oystercatchers, lapwings and various other birds I failed to identify (I should try and learn a bit more).

I know there are too many red deer in Scotland generally, with the natural predators long extinct etc, but I still find them quite an impressive sight.


ZoyzaSorris

Impressive animals to be sure...

Attila

!

Just back from a late afternoon shop, put all the stuff away, refilled the wildlife bowls, and went back in to the house to get my shopping bags (they live in the car.) By the time I stepped back out, Old Mr Fox was trotting up the driveway, headed for the chow line. We stopped about 2 metres away from each other with a 'Whoa! Wasn't expecting 'this!' moment.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy


BlodwynPig

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on April 25, 2021, 01:11:39 PM
(And from a cladistic point of view, bees and ants are wasps)

like saying all scooters are vespas

ZoyzaSorris

Well it's more like saying all vespas are scooters - or to use a more direct analogy, all birds are dinosaurs.

All bees and ants are wasps, but not all wasps are bees and ants. Both are lineages buried deep within the myriad branches of the wasp family tree. Bees being wasps that gave up the carnivorous ways of their young - wasp adults eat pollen, bees merely made the leap to feeding it to their young as well -  and ants being wasps that spent more and more time in their underground nests until it made sense for them to lose their wings, opening up a whole new set of niches.

If they weren't to be called wasps, then by all rights most wasps shouldn't be either, as bees and ants are more closely related to members of the branches of the wasp family tree from which they emerged than those wasps are to lots of other wasps. This is the cladistic viewpoint anyway - and while it wilfully ignores human layman tendencies towards to categorisation, which let's face it are here to stay, and it is rather counter-intuitive, I like the way the cladistic paradigm emphasises all of our shared ancestries, rather than our differences. Just like, if sharks are fish, then we are, by all rights fish, as sharks are more distantly related to almost all other fish than we are. OK, thats's a harder sell. But I like it.

ZoyzaSorris

On a lighter note, got a bunch of footage of these little guys last night.

Saw them cavorting around yesterday at the bottom of the garden and thought it was the perfect opportunity to dust off the old apeman and get it working again in time for my renewed effort to find wild boar when I'm back in the woods...

(yes, I haven't been bothered to set correct time/date)

Gurke and Hare

Long-tailed tit posed for me for ages on Saturday.


ZoyzaSorris

Do love a long-tailed tit