And The Cold Spell Continues...

Well actually, now I've finally got round to posting this, temperatures have now started to climb and I think we can expect warmer conditions next week. But when I went out for a walk around campus on Saturday it was still only about 4 degrees, and even with plenty of layers on it was pretty chilly. 

Just a standard patch walk really, but saw an interesting range of species along the way including Kestrel, Kingfisher, a Grey Heron flying overhead (which isn't as common as you might think on the lake), a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Redwings and Mistle Thrushes, lots of Goldcrests and Nuthatches, Jays and Siskins. The photos below show the view across the lake: 

There wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary on the lake other than a Kingfisher flying over the water surface, and a couple of Tufted Ducks, which aren't always around on campus. As usual, the lake was pretty much dominated by Black-headed Gulls as seen in the photo below. As you can see, some of the gulls, like the top one in the photo below are starting to show their spring plumage with that dark chocolate brown head beginning to appear. 

Moorhens like the one in the photo below were seen plodding around the edge of the lake too: 

And these Mallards looking who were looking rather smart...

As I was heading over to the woodland, I saw this Jay hopping around on the ground underneath the trees. Please excuse the terrible photo- they're incredibly hard to approach without them flying off. 

The first bird I saw when I walked into the woodland area was a Blue Tit, which is photographed below. This one was perched on a branch just a few metres away and kindly allowed me to take a few pictures:

Quite a few Goldcrests were seen in the woodland although again, I was unable to get anything other than an average record shot. The thing is, when you see them they often stick around for ages and are very happy to forage around in the vegetation in close proximity to you, but they just don't stay still for a second and are constantly shuffling along a branch, hanging upside down or hovering around. The best I managed is the photo below. 

I was constantly looking around, hoping that the next tiny bird I saw would be the Firecrest, but I'm really starting to think it may have moved on now. Haven't seen it in a while and no one seems to be mentioning it anymore. Still, I feel pretty lucky to have seen it, and maybe it'll turn up again next winter, we shall see.  

And one more final record shot for the day, the Nuthatch in the photo below. Despite the fact there are lots of them here on campus, they're really very shy and getting close to them is pretty difficult, similarly to the Jays. Anyway, enough excuses, the photo I managed is below: 

That just about rounds up my walk yesterday, hopefully by next week the temperatures will have risen enough for it to start feeling like spring :D  

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: