Cornwall holiday post 1 (the birds)

I have been unable to post for the past week because I have been on holiday! I will spread the writing over 2 or 3 posts because there is simply so much to talk about. We went to Cornwall, and stayed in a lovely cottage with family quite near a town called Launceston. The weather was rainy all week, like it is everywhere else, but we still had a really good time. The cottage owners were very nice and the countryside surrounding the cottage was fantastic. Even without bird feeders and birdboxes on the cottage, there were still plenty of birds around. Generally, I have to say that a lot more people in Cornwall feed the birds than they do in Bucks. Its not just birds either. There are insects, frogs, bats, plants and more.

First I will talk about the birds. Swallows were the most common sighting throughout our stay. They were everywhere and I noticed several nesting sites nearby. One was in a National Trust property called Cotehele. The nest was in an archway, and both Swallow parents were feeding some chicks (I'm not sure how many there were). The picture shows one of them looking quite tired after a quick burst of constant feeding!

This pic is of a group of Swallows which breifly landed on the roof of the building:
Another little bird was seen in large numbers, but this time a much more common bird. The Blue Tit. This might not seem very exotic but I wanted to illustrate just how many of these there were. Firstly, again at the National Trust property there was a large group of Blue Tits feeding on a fat ball. There were youngsters too. See picture and video below.

I managed to get a much better video player (blip) which shows everything in much better detail!

The picture of the Blue Tit below really did amuse me. Near our cottage, there was a little bit of building work going on. This meant that there was scaffolding around the half-built building. The Blue Tit was flying around and then landed on a scaffolding chube. It then crawled in, stayed in there for a bit, poked its head out and flew off again! The little bird must have been looking for insects or something when it did this, although there is a possibility that it was actually nesting there.

There are a lot more Buzzards around in Cornwall than in Bucks. The Red Kites in Bucks could be outcompeting the Buzzards. I didn't get a picture but I saw them frequently throughout the week.
On Wednesday, we went to Plymouth. The weather was at its worst, and I was only able to take my camera out a few times during the day. I only saw gulls and House Sparrows during the day. Here is a picture of a Black-headed Gull: