The birds of Somerset

I thought I would just use this post as a record of the bird species I saw throughout the week in Somerset, and also an opportunity to upload a couple of record shots of birds which I haven't got around to uploading in other posts. I was originally going to finish the post about Hestercombe gardens first, but this will definitely take a little while so I thought I would use the opportunity to quickly share some of the stuff which will otherwise end up not being posted.

We didn't go out of our way to go to nature reserves during the week, and all birds we saw were all just spotted on countryside walks, and around the house itself. We didn't visit any wetlands or marshlands throughout the week, so species of that variety weren't seen. But considering this, the number of birds I came across was actually quite impressive and just shows the habitat diversity of the area.

Now just to warn you, these next set of photos really aren't very good, but I'm still going to upload them as a record of what I have seen. I'd rather this blog was more of a way of recording and sharing what I have seen out and about as opposed to just a show of the better photos I have taken. The couple of photos below show a nuthatch that I saw in a woodland not far from the house we were staying in towards the end of the week. Despite the fact they are relatively common, its not actually that often that you see them. Hearing them is quite easy though as they have quite a distinctive call.

Remember that clicking on the photos will enlarge them :D

Pretty much all week, chiffchaffs could be heard almost everywhere we went. Again, its one of those birds that's actually quite difficult to spot, and tends to stay at the backs of trees rather than showing itself. Annoyingly, I did still have several opportunities to take some good photos of them but I missed all of them. As a result, I have quite a large number of record shots. Its quite annoying really because I was hoping at least one of the images might have turned out well. Ahh well, always next time, eh! The montage below shows a collection of my incompetent efforts.



The list below shows all the bird species I saw/heard throughout the week. I have counted birds that I have seen on the car journey there and back as well.

Mute swan
Mallard
Pheasant
Grey heron
Red kite (seen in car on way there and way back around where we live in the chilterns)
Sparrowhawk
Buzzard
Kestrel
Common gull 
Herring gull
Woodpigeon
Collared dove
Great spotted woodpecker
Skylark
Rock pipit 
Pied wagtail
Dipper
Wren
Dunnock
Robin 
Redstart (April is when they are supposed to be in the UK, so its just about early enough to see one. Also the warmer March weather may have brought it here slightly earlier)
Blackbird
Song thrush
Mistle thrush
Blackcap
Chiffchaff
Coal tit
Blue tit
Great tit
Nuthatch
Jay 
Magpie
Jackdaw 
Rook
Carrion crow
Starling
House sparrow
Chaffinch
Greenfinch
Goldfinch
Yellowhammer

Also a possible hen harrier sighting but I really can't be sure as it was seen from quite a distance. Anyway, 41 species are listed above, not bad considering I didn't visit a proper reserve for the whole week. Urgh now I sound like a twitcher- which I most definitely am not (not that I have anything against twitchers). Hmm maybe I should just leave it there :D

Will post about this garden visit as soon as I can :) Other than that, happy Easter (for those who celebrate it) for tomorrow, and don't eat too much chocolate!

The search for grubs...

Just a quick post from the holiday cottage here in Somerset. Over the last couple of days, a pair of mistle thrushes have been seen hopping around on the lawn looking for worms almost constantly. The rain we've had over the last day or so has obviously made the ground softer, which has been very popular with the thrushes, and also blackbirds and robins as well. And each time they come, they fly off with a beak filled with grubs. Every time they fly off, they fly in the same direction. So I've come to the conclusion that they are feeding a nest of  chicks quite nearby.

The frequency of the visits has been quite incredible really. About once a minute at times, the mistle thrushes were coming back and forth from the lawn. The photos below were all taken throughout the course of yesterday. They were all taken through a window, so they could have been better, although I'm happy with how they turned out considering.

That's all for now, I will probably post at the weekend about a visit to Hestercombe gardens here in Somerset. Have a great day and lets hope this weather improves! :D

Walking in Somerset & Fyne Court

So yesterday, given the continuing sunny weather, and the warmer conditions than we are getting today, we decided to walk in the countryside to and from a National Trust property called Fyne Court, near to our holiday house here in Somerset. The conditions were pretty much perfect for walking, with temperatures around 13/14 degrees and low wind.

We started off the walk at the top of Lydeard Hill, where we parked the car. The view from this spot was incredible...



We then set off on the way to Fyne Court. The habitats around here are so varied that all sorts of wildlife can be seen. One of the first birds I saw on this walk though was a rather more common one, a blue tit hiding at the back of a tree...

Great tits have been one of the more common birds I have seen on the holiday so far. The "teacher, teacher" call has been heard frequently all week.

The walk involved walking on bridleways, footpaths, through fields and short parts on minor roads. The rapeseed fields are now a brilliant yellow colour and was quite a sight in the sun...

Eventually, after what was a fairly long walk, we got to Fyne Court. After a bacon sandwich and a much needed drink, we headed around the grounds, which is more a nature reserve/nature trail than anything else. Find out more about Fyne Court here. Once again, the sound of great tits could be heard when we got there. I stopped for a few moments to take this video of a male great tit performing the classic "teacher, teacher" call which I have become so used to in the holiday so far. The video is really shaky and I wish I had brought my tripod now, but you can really hear the sound of the call very clearly. 

Blackcaps have a lovely call, not dissimilar to the robin, which could be heard at several points throughout the trail... 

After finishing the trail, we stopped for a much needed cream tea. But even as we were sat outside, the wildlife action didn't stop there. A rather tame pair of chaffinches came in to eat the crumbs around the tables, and allowed me to take some pictures that I was pretty happy with. I was surprised that they came in so close to allow me to take the pictures. They are one of the more tame birds, but its not that common that you get as good a view as this... 

The female chaffinch showed a fungal growth on its left foot, something which is so common in chaffinches these days. It didn't really appear to be affecting her too much though, and it was only hopping around on the ground that looked uncomfortable. 

And then the male chaffinch returned for one more photo...

And the female retreated to a nearby branch for a while... 

... Only to fly down from her perch for one more meal... 

And that was that, all in all a very good day out. I still have a couple more posts for this holiday to come yet, but one of them is likely to be quite long, so it could be a little while before that one is posted. Anyway, hopefully the weather warms up a bit over the next couple of days ready for Easter Sunday :D

Holiday in Somerset - Kilve Beach

Its the second full day of our holiday in Somerset, and today we paid a visit to the village of Kilve, a nice little town on the coast between the towns of Bridgewater to the east and Minehead to the west. Taunton is also close by. Here's a fun fact- Kilve lies within the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the first AONB to be established, in 1957. The map below shows where Kilve lies within the county of Somerset...



This website gives more information on the town of Kilve. When we got there we headed to the path along the shoreline and the rocky beach. Since we've been here, we've heard chiffchaffs almost all the time. So it was no surprise to hear them when we got out of the car at the start of the coast path in Kilve. I got a number of photos, but none were very good. They're one of those birds that are difficult to track, either sitting at the back of a tree out of sight or flitting around too quickly that they're difficult to track.

The photos below were all taken along the coastline path:

According to wikipedia, "The beach is part of the Blue Anchor to Lilstock Coast SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). Along this coast the cliffs are layered with compressed strata of oil-bearing shale and blue, yellow and brown lias embedded with fossils". The limestone and mudstone rock pavements on the beach were an interesting site. Don't ask me how they formed, as I'm clueless!

We then headed down to the beach itself for a closer look at the rock formations on both the cliffs and the beach itself...

After looking at the geology of the place for a while, I became aware of a small group of birds flying around on the rocks. I could see that they were pipits but didn't know what kind at the time. Getting near them to get photographs was difficult as they were quite shy. I did end up getting a few record shots to look back on when we got back to the house. It turned out they were rock pipits. Correct me if you think I'm wrong :)

This turned out to be a bit of a mammoth post, so well done for reaching the end! That's all for now, I do have another post tomorrow as well with more photos from the holiday :) 

Chaffinch visiting garden

Recently, chaffinches seem to be the most common visitor to our garden. There is almost always one on our feeders or sat in the tree. Its interesting how about 5/10 years ago, greenfinches were easily the most common finch species in the garden. Things appear to have changed somewhat. Although having said that, greenfinch numbers in the last year or so do seem to have recovered a bit.

Anyway, below is the selection of photos I took of a rather tame male chaffinch coming to feed a few days ago...

As you may have noticed, I have uploaded these photos in "extra large" size, mostly just to test what they would look like. I haven't decided whether I like it or not, could well be that I carry on uploading photos as I used to.

I'm continuing to update the 2011 archive of this blog with some of the photos I never got round to posting so feel free to check out my posting yesterday (before the Twitter one), showing the list of posts I have added. Anyway, have a great day :D

Joining Twitter

Just to let you all know that I have now made a Twitter account for anything related to my blog. You may have noticed the Twitter widget on the right of the screen, which shows all of my recent tweets. I have decided to create an account for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it will be really useful for giving people short updates on stuff that's going on here when I don't have enough time for doing full posts on stuff. So if I haven't done a post in a few days, there'll be a fairly chance I will have tweeted about something instead. Also I'll be able to let you know if I'm currently working on a post and when to expect it posted and stuff. And finally, it allows me to just share the odd thing that occurs, such as an observation or something, that isn't really long enough for it to be worth writing a full post about.

Anyway, as you've probably seen, my Twitter username is JoeWG2012 (the WG standing for wildlife garden). Follow me if you do have a Twitter account, and I'll follow you back :) I have no idea how many of you use Twitter so I don't know whether this will be a good idea or not. But anyway, I really recommend those of you who haven't got a Twitter account yet should jump aboard. Its free to join, and getting used to it doesn't take very long at all. Also its good to be able to follow naturalists such as Chris Packham, and conservation organisations such as the BTO. Honestly, its worth it! I've had a personal twitter account for ages now and I was really sceptical at first, but its one of those things where you'll only really understand what I mean when you try it yourself.

The screenshot below shows the layout of Twitter for those who haven't seen it before:

Anyway, hopefully some of you will at least notice the Twitter feed on the right of my blog even if you don't create an account yourself. Happy tweeting everyone! 

The 2011 catch up marathon

As you probably gathered from my last post, I have a lot of photos and video from last year still to post on this blog that I never got round to doing. What I have decided to do though since my last post is to post all the photos to the date they were actually taken. So basically, I will be filling in the gaps of last years archive so that everything will be posted on the date that it happened. All of the photos I have taken show the date they were taken, so it will not be a difficult task.

I realise though that you won't want to go trawling through my 2011 posts to look out for stuff that happened in some cases nearly a year ago. So I decided I will use this post to add links to the the posts I do. Obviously I appreciate that not many of you will want to check this out, but its there if you want it, and is useful for my own purposes as it will allow me to organise all the stuff I still need to post. This will be a gradual process so stick with me and I'll do my best to add the posts as quickly as I can. So here is the list...

• 25/02/2011 - Blue tit pair visits conservatory camera nest box  - turns out I had already posted this video, but I only realised after I had posted this. This post though has more info on the visit than the original and I also added it to the camera nest box diary for 2011
• 02/05/2011 - Male blackbird searching lawn for worms (photos)
• 03/05/2011 - Starling visits bird bath (photos)
• 19/06/2011 - Visit to college lake in summer (photos)

Thank you for checking this out, much appreciated :) Keep checking back every now and then if you like, as the chances are a new post will have been added. I do have a lot to post! Also expect to see camera nest box postings from last year appearing on the list too, I haven't forgotten about those :) Its just the fact that I have to use my old (about 6 years and very slow) laptop to record any camera nest box footage, so anything that gets recorded needs to be transferred to the laptop I use for everything else. The only reason I don't use my current laptop for recording is because the sound doesn't work on the capture software, despite my best efforts to try and sort it out.

Anyway, have a great day folks and enjoy this weather while it lasts :D

Catching up

Hi all :) Before completely starting a clean sheet with this blog, there is some stuff which I really want to get posted without it getting buried under all my new photos and videos. Most of it is photos and videos from last year. Trouble is, once you've got into the habit of not updating it for a while, it can get much harder to get back to regular posting again. I really would like to get back into blogging and I won't ever leave this blog for good.

Obviously, should I go on to uni next year (which is the plan), blogging is pretty much going to be impossible, mostly given that I won't have a garden to post about :D The great thing about blogging though is that its entirely your own choice how or when you post. There should be no pressure attached. I've found in the past that trying to do a post when you're not motivated to do it is almost pointless. So in the future I will post whenever I can, and whenever I feel like it really. And if we have nest box activity in our camera next box, material on that will definitely get posted.

Cheers for sticking with me, and hopefully I'll be back on track with this from now on.

So, lets kick off then... back in May when I left you, I was half way through what was looking like quite a promising camera nest box diary. A pair of blue tits had built a nest, the female laid 7 eggs, and all 7 chicks looked to be growing quickly into healthy little blue tits. Both parents were regularly feeding the chicks mostly with caterpillars which seemed to be in decent supply. Unfortunately though, the male parent seemed to disappear at a pretty crucial time. I just didn't see him after he left, even feeding in the garden. So it might have been that he'd been eaten by something but I just don't know.

Anyway, things started to go downhill from here. The female blue tit was left to find food chicks by herself and was clearly struggling. She was spending far too long out of the nest looking for food. It seemed that the caterpillars which were in good supply a few days earlier had begun to run out, and she ended up bringing in suet from the fat blocks in the garden. She also spent too long sat on the nest at times and looked tired. The chicks became obviously weaker. I don't remember exactly how long the process took, but I remember being amazed at the speed at which a previously healthy looking nest goes downhill. Sadly, all 7 chicks died in the end after what had been an intriguing few weeks.

It was great though seeing that other blue tit nests around our area had been successful, as fledglings came to feed in our garden in the following weeks. And even though our nest wasn't successful, it was our first nest box diary and it was incredible to see what we did.

Anyway, enough of that, here's a few photos I never got round to posting last year :) I think these few photos were taken around the same time as the nest box diary actually, but I just didn't do anything with them as I was so focussed on the nest box at the time:

On the hunt for worms...

That's all for now, should hopefully be posting more catch up posts like this in the near future :)