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March 28, 2024, 09:17:42 AM

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Wildlife spotting

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

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QDRPHNC


Fishfinger

Great shots.

Saved a wasp from drowning in a bird bath today. I think it was pissed.

Endicott


Endicott

I went to a red kite feeding place near Aberystwyth. They get about a 100 birds coming in every afternoon for free grub, so I had a bit of a bonanza. These are my top 6.












kalowski

Utterly beautiful bird, utterly beautiful photos.

Buelligan

Amazing.  Incredible.  Great pics also.

Got a bat zooming round this place like a motherfucker right now.  Wow, there's tons of them!

Jumblegraws

Do errant cows in the woods count as wildlife?

Dex Sawash


Canada Resident Geese at work, nature's benefit scroungers


DoesNotFollow

Terrible photo but the other morning we got very close to this sparrowhawk (?) feeding on a pigeon. Couple of magpies nearby were going mental.
No photo but also saw a Hummingbird Hawk moth the other evening.


purlieu

Yeah, that's a sparrowhawk.
Nice sighting on the moth, I've not had one this year! They're often in and out in a few minutes so I've probably missed a few around the buddleias, but it's the first time in years that I've not seen at least one. They're such wonderful little creatures.

Brian Freeze

Last night we saw a flock of ladybird larvae doing their alien impressions all over a sunbaked wall. We stopped counting at hundred and fifty so there was at least triple that many. Some of them were on the turn n all.

Today we saw a couple of huge flocks of lapwings which got me extremely giddy. Barely seen any for years and then we were inundated with them. We watched a squadron of them swoop and circle in formation and then lose themselves against the rocks of the dam wall when they landed. Perfect dazzle camo. Nice.

Buelligan

Just thought I'd say, just been for a long old thing up on the mountain - really sunny and warm out.  Anyway, up on this steep slope is a place where I often see praying mantis but it's the last week of October, so ay.   However, did see the fucks there, quite bizarre (all biggies) a pair, one bright green, the other a bruised brownish grey, wrestling like buggery.  Brownie had bitten off Green One's heed, right off and yet they were fighting on, watched, all the time by Greeny Two.  Within twenty centimetres, another pair, green and brown.  With them, Vert Trois was eating Le Brun's front arm, Le B (being a bit unbalanced) was leaning on VT's back and biting her/him through the waist. 

Pretty grim when all's said.  Then I got home and read this

Quote from: pancreas on October 24, 2021, 12:56:53 PM
Find someone who makes you laugh. If you get bored of their jokes then you can always slaughter them for death-in-service benefits. This is what I will do with Gecko when the time comes.

Understood the importance of laughter in relationships, how a dearth of fun impacts on all living things.  Salutary.

Twonty Gostelow

This bit's not wildlife but I was up for a misty dawn a few weeks ago when it was possible to zoom in on the sun before it broke through.
It's not all that clear because it's handheld video, but I was amazed that I could make out sunspots.



Tried zooming in on some waders later. Pretty sure from the shapes there were curlews, lapwings, and dunlins (or sanderlings).





Curlew wandering about when the light improved:




Buelligan

Superb pictures, Twont, really I am not even lying. 

Have you considered, that first one might not be sun spots, could be Sir David Amess you just managed to catch there.  Difficult to be totally certain, of course.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: Buelligan on October 26, 2021, 07:07:46 PM
Superb pictures, Twont, really I am not even lying.

Thank you, I'm choughed!  (This one was a couple days later.)


Buelligan

Ah, god, I love choughs.  Seen 'em in Cornwall and Ireland, they're bloody lovely.  So beautiful, you're very lucky!

jobotic

In the Isle of Wight last week. Saw my first Red Squirrels ever! They're lovely.

Next time I go I want to see a weasel run out from behind an ice cream van without looking and a badger copper telling him off.

Should be called the Isle of Corvids. Woken up at 7 every morning by all sorts. Love jackdaws.

kalowski

Quote from: Twonty Gostelow on October 26, 2021, 11:09:07 PM
Thank you, I'm choughed!  (This one was a couple days later.)


I'm very jealous. I have never seen a chough (in the flesh?)

We regularly get the odd collared dove swinging by to visit the feeder and bird bath but this morning nine of the buggers showed up all at once - these six and another three on the lawn.

I'm used to sparrows and, to a lesser extent, goldfinches (although they disappeared some months ago and haven't yet reappeared 😢) arriving in small groups but I haven't seen this before.


Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: Voltan (Man of Steel) on October 27, 2021, 05:45:37 PM
We regularly get the odd collared dove swinging by to visit the feeder and bird bath but this morning nine of the buggers showed up all at once - these six and another three on the lawn.

I'm used to sparrows and, to a lesser extent, goldfinches (although they disappeared some months ago and haven't yet reappeared 😢) arriving in small groups but I haven't seen this before.



I love to see collared doves, but they're very nervy and often get bullied out of the way by graceless wood pigeons.

Strange to think there weren't any at all in the UK before 1954.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: Buelligan on October 27, 2021, 09:14:56 AM
Ah, god, I love choughs.  Seen 'em in Cornwall and Ireland, they're bloody lovely.  So beautiful, you're very lucky!

I've seen them in south-west Wales but this was South Stack on Anglesey where there's an established colony, so you're almost guaranteed a sighting.
Zoomed in on this one with RSPB rings:



Fun fact: South Stack is also known for these photos taken on the rocks below nearly 50 years ago:

 

 

Mr Banlon


Quote from: Twonty Gostelow on October 27, 2021, 06:30:46 PM
I love to see collared doves, but they're very nervy and often get bullied out of the way by graceless wood pigeons.

Strange to think there weren't any at all in the UK before 1954.

Didn't realise that - I just assumed they were native. Reading about how they've dispersed over the last century or so was very interesting.

We regularly see them in our garden - usually in ones and twos - sharing the spilled seed below the feeder with the pigeons. They do seem to love the bird bath more than any of the other birds. In fact I think they're the only ones I see using it.

Dex Sawash

Bird, unusual pattern so dunno for sure what it is, red shoulder hawk maybe.


Buelligan

Don't know what to think about this - couple of days ago - was walking down a track I walk most days, it runs along a high ridge, pine trees, rocks.  Anyway, up ahead I saw a cat sitting, when they sit down on their bum with their front legs straight like they're standing.  This cat thing was way up ahead, lion coloured, watched it for a bit, I was downwind, measured it up against what it was near.  It disappeared when I blinked.  Got to the spot and I'd guess, it was around 40-50cm to the shoulder.  Thought it was remarkable, very big for a domestic cat especially miles from anywhere.

Yesterday, took the same route, there had been the first light rain for weeks and weeks and weeks.  Noticed tracks.  I do like to follow and look at tracks.  Amongst the numerous boar spore were the unmistakable footprints of a cat.  More than one.  The largest set were something around the length of my thumb (5ish cm) across and there was another set, possibly two, that were about half the size.  Clear as fuck.  Followed them down, off this high ridge, into the river valley, up through some vineyards too. 

I know this is mad, lynx are rare as fuck, and yet, what else could it be?  I don't have a camera but I'm going up there shortly to make some casts (no camera but has plaster of paris).  Thinking, maybe I should contact some lynx bigwig - we have a lot of cunt-hunters here and, if they are lynx, and I can't think what else they could be, they need protecting.  Or would that blow their cover, any ideas?


Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: Buelligan on November 03, 2021, 10:19:53 AM
Don't know what to think about this - couple of days ago - was walking down a track I walk most days, it runs along a high ridge, pine trees, rocks.  Anyway, up ahead I saw a cat sitting, when they sit down on their bum with their front legs straight like they're standing.

'Sejant'?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_(heraldry)#Attitudes
I learned that from a crossword and never forgot it because my sister's cat did it all the time, as if she was the guardian of something we couldn't see.

QuoteThis cat thing was way up ahead, lion coloured, watched it for a bit, I was downwind, measured it up against what it was near.  It disappeared when I blinked.  Got to the spot and I'd guess, it was around 40-50cm to the shoulder.  Thought it was remarkable, very big for a domestic cat especially miles from anywhere.

Yesterday, took the same route, there had been the first light rain for weeks and weeks and weeks.  Noticed tracks.  I do like to follow and look at tracks.  Amongst the numerous boar spore were the unmistakable footprints of a cat.  More than one.  The largest set were something around the length of my thumb (5ish cm) across and there was another set, possibly two, that were about half the size.  Clear as fuck.  Followed them down, off this high ridge, into the river valley, up through some vineyards too. 

I know this is mad, lynx are rare as fuck, and yet, what else could it be?  I don't have a camera but I'm going up there shortly to make some casts (no camera but has plaster of paris).  Thinking, maybe I should contact some lynx bigwig - we have a lot of cunt-hunters here and, if they are lynx, and I can't think what else they could be, they need protecting.  Or would that blow their cover, any ideas?

It does sound like lynx is the most likely explanation, especially if there's more than one. Although their populations are few and scattered, this could be the first sign of a newly migrated group.
You're probably already aware of Athenas https://www.athenas.fr/consultation-pour-le-pna-lynx-lavis-du-centre-athenas/.  Might be worth contacting them, although a photo or two would obviously help. I'd probably keep shtum apart from that, even with someone you think has no connection to hunters.

Buelligan

Thank you very much for the heraldry thing, love all that shit, and the link.  I will, obviously, keep silent as the grave on this matter.  Have no fear, I live in a place where people hand on their mushrooming locations only on the point of death, so I understand the need for zipped lips.  Being serious though, I know some of these cunts - someone I know (not a friend) was given a dead robin as a present - to eat as a delicacy.  These people (they are men to a man) are really terrible murderous cunts.  Thinking I might destroy the spore after I've been up there in a mo.

Buelligan

Just to give a quick update - went straight out and up - looks like it's about to really pee down, so straight up.  It had rained, all the old prints were gone but there were new ones - same path.  Couldn't sort out the plaster to take quickly enough but did manage to lift a couple of semi-dried prints (one big, one smaller) with my knife and carry them home, one's a bit cracked but you can still see it plain enough.  Now drying gently in fire room.  Wondering whether it would be sane to pour a little melted wax on them to hold them together.  Obliterated all the other tracks, just for safety, it's going to rain like a mofo anyway.  Feeling excited and worried.  Will do some research and find out who to report this to.

Jittlebags

Last Saturday. Enclosed valley to the south of Dolwyddelan. Vast amounts of fly agaric associated with some conifers:


Buelligan