Brightening Up

Earlier on today the sun threatened to appear a few times and it was generally a bit brighter outside than it has been. It was also a degree or so warmer than it has been, so it wasn't quite so bitterly cold outside. The bird activity in the garden hasn't been quite as busy as a result, but I did see a Goldcrest flitting through the apricot tree earlier which was good to see. 

Below are a few pictures I took whilst I was outside with my camera earlier. Two long-tailed tits have been seen visiting the garden frequently, and as they are quite tame, getting close to them to photograph them is quite easy. The fact that there's only two of them says to me that a few of them may have died over the winter. It's really quite unusual to only see two of them, and in previous years, seeing 10 in a group wasn't unusual.  Hopefully they have a successful breeding year this year to boost numbers back up again.

Chaffinch numbers seem to be particularly high in the garden at the moment, and this chap was happy to have his photo taken whilst I was outside...

That's all for now folks, thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day :) 

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

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

College lake in the sun

-- NOTE - This post was done in March 2012, but I have posted it so that it appears as having been published on 19th June 2011 -- 

College lake is one of my favourite reserves around my area to visit. Its not only a huge wetland habitat but contains a lot of scrub and woodland too, meaning a very large diversity of wildlife is attracted. Highlights there for me in the past have been sightings of a hobby, as well as a huge range of wildfowl. The lake itself is man made, and I think I'm correct in saying the site was originally a chalk quarry before it was flooded to form the lake which now makes up the majority of the reserve. The photo below shows the view across only a small part of the lake, with the sun shining on the water...

Due to the diversity habitats there, there's generally something to see all the way through the year. Whenever I go, I usually try and visit the feeding station they have there which is always very busy and has some interesting species. The first bird to show up though was one of the more common ones, a Robin. This one looked a bit scruffy but came up close for a nice photo...

Chaffinches were pretty much a permanent feature on these feeders, and it was rare not to see any there at any one time...

One of the birds I wasn't expecting to see at the feeding station was a yellowhammer. I've seen them plenty of times in the wild before, but never feeding with other birds at a feeding station. This one was happy to feed on the floor, picking up all the seed that had been dropped by the birds on the feeders above. The photo below isn't great and is more of a record shot but I'm happy that I got at least one shot of it before I left.

Larger scale feeding stations like this one also attract other ground feeding visitors though. Rats were pretty common there, which I can imagine is unpopular with some visitors to the reserve. I don't really have a strong opinion either way on them, although it did appear that numbers needed controlling a little here. The photo below came out quite nicely in the end.


Given the time of year, it was unsurprising to see flocks of blue and great tits with a number of fledglings. The majority of them were feeding themselves but there were still a few younger fledglings being fed by their parents. The suet balls were the food of choice, held in a sort of basket feeder.

After a few minutes of watching, I spotted a different bird moving around with the flock of blue and great tits- a marsh tit! I hadn't seen one before so seeing one up so close was quite exciting. Telling them apart from willow tits is very difficult, but I think I made the right decision here. I could be wrong though so please correct me if I am :) The cap of this bird was slightly glossy, which is one of the only differences between them and willow tits, so I think I'm right on this one- please correct me if you think I'm wrong. Being much less common than any other bird at the feeding station, and also in significant decline, the smart looking marsh tit grabbed my attention for a while, and was probably the best part of the trip in general.

So onto photographing it then... well lets say I probably could have done a better job! The first photo below was so nearly a brilliant photograph. The marsh tit was sat on the wire that can be seen in the photograph. I had set up my camera perfectly, zoomed in and focussed on the wire, but just as I pressed the shutter button, the bird took off. So the photo shows the bird just about to fly out of the shot. At the time I was really disappointed to have missed such a good opportunity. But after looking at it a few times, I actually quite liked the effect I had created. Although the bird came out quite blurry, I like the way its positioned in the photo, and also the nice blurred out background. Overall, the picture actually looks quite arty- completely accidental but it definitely turned out a bit better than I thought it had...

I did manage to get a couple more shots, but both are record shots really

So moving on from the feeding station, I then wandered around the reserve for a while. There's a path which you can follow which pretty much takes you round the whole lake, and through all the other habitats they have there. When I was there, I didn't really think to take any photos of the overall scene of the reserve. So the only pictures like that that I do have show only a small part of the reserve. The photo below shows a blurred out teasel plant in the foreground, with part of the lake and one of the newer hides in the background.

On the way round the reserve, a flower I hadn't seen before caught my eye on the edge of the footpath. I had no idea what it was until I spoke to someone walking past about it. He told me it was a Bee Orchid. I'm useless on flower ID but this one will definitely be remembered for next time- it has a very distinctive appearance. They are apparently relatively widespread around the UK if you know where to look. This BBC page explains some of the basic information about where to look for the various orchid species in the UK. And this site explains in more detail about Bee Orchids in particular, such as its distribution and the factors which are threatening it as a species.

And then I came across these daisy-like flowers (identification please). I used to know what they were but I've forgotten now :)

I also need some identification help on the bird in the photo below. Looks to me like it could be a juvenile pied flycatcher? I thought it could have been a juvenile whitethroat originally but it looks to be the wrong shape and with the wrong type of bill. I could be wrong though. The photo is pretty poor- was taken from a distance and cropped quite a lot. The bird was also sort of hidden in a bramble bush so it only appeared occasionally. See what you can make of the photo..

That's all for now everyone, keep checking back to the updates list as I still have a lot to add.   

Summer mix & match

Over the last few weeks, I have been collecting some garden photos for this posting. I thought I would do a bit of a mix and match posting, rounding off the summer so far. I haven't posted in a while, so this posting has quite a few photos in store...

First up then, a photo which I should have posted ages ago. It really is a bit out of date now. A month or two ago, we saw Alliums bursting out in the front garden. It is the first year we have planted them, and certainly won't be the last either.


In the back garden, the birds have been busy feeding most of the time, despite the hot weather. This female Chaffinch was seen amongst the fruit bushes a couple of weeks ago. I was quite surprised with how well the photo came out. Its sometimes not until you view the photo on the computer these things.


The Goldfinches have really got through the Nyjer Seed fast recently. The feeder is now quite near the end of the garden so it seems to be getting more visitors. I'm not sure why, but photos of Goldfinches taken by me often appear quite grainy.


And lastly, a Blackbird, which looks to be a juvenile, although it may just be a female. We have seen a few more Blackbirds around this year.


Hopefully I can get back to frequent posting now. I have a couple more postings planned for this week. Even though this is my first post i a while, I have still been reading all of your blogs too. As it is the summer holidays here, I have lots of time to do more on the blog.

Norfolk birds

So, here I am posting about our family holiday to Norfolk which I have just come home from. We stayed in a nice cottage in northern Norfolk (rather near where Springwatch is currently being filmed at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve this week). The variety of wildlife seen around the garden and grounds of the cottage was amazing. I think I will share my Norfolk wildlife and plant sightings over at least 2 posts. The grounds of the cottage were amazing. My favourite part of the grounds was the small lake pictured below.

Pretty much as soon as we went into the back garden of the cottage for the first time, we saw Blue Tits were nesting in a small hole in a wall. The adults were seen flying in and out of the hole with insects all the time and it was difficult to follow. This activity was constant until later on in the week when the Blue Tits stopped feeding the young. We think that they must have fledged, although we have not seen any fledglings around. Of course it is possible that the nest was predated but the hole was too small for anything large to get in and take the young. The picture below shows the hole.

Also nesting nearby, but in the grounds of the cottage rather than the back garden were Goldcrests. In a conifer tree, a pair of Goldcrests were rearing young in a tiny nest on the end of the branch. The young looked very close to fledgling when I saw them on the first day of the holiday. It looked like there were 2 or 3 chicks crowded inside the nest. One of them decided to exercise his/her wings outside the nest, before returning to the nest cup. I just managed to get a picture before it hopped back inside the nest, which is seen in the top left image of the photo montage below. The nest was empty the next day so I am assuming they have fledged.

Other fledglings that were seen around were Great Tit (main picture in montage) and Coal Tit (bottom left photo in montage).

Also nesting in the garden of the cottage were Blackbirds who had built a nest high up in a shrub. Unfortunately, while the male was around, it only appeared to be the female who was feeding the chicks. Nevertheless, the female came in frequently with mouthfulls of insects.

The first picture below is of the female perched on the garden wall about to fly into the nest. The second photo is of the nest, which I managed to take a quickly and quietly. If you look carefully, you should be able to see the beaks of a couple of chicks. Maybe they will fledge next week. The photos were taken this morning before we left.

A flock of 15-20 Long-tailed Tits visited the garden twice and were very entertaining. They always look busy and never seem to stop. These little birds were flitting around the branches of a tree in the garden. I love the way they follow each other around. The biggest flock we have seen in our garden at home was made up of around 10 or 11 birds, so I was impressed to see such large numbers in Norfolk. I got a few photos of the tiny birds in action.

In the lake in the grounds of the cottage were Mute Swan cygnets and Egyptian Goose goslings. The cygnets were very closely watched by the adults and any threats to the cygnets were scared away very quickly. Also on the lake were Tufted Ducks and Mallards. The Egyptian Geese were often seen sat on the edge of the lake in the sun. The goslings were still quite small and were seen huddled together looking like a pile of feathers.

My highlight bird-wise in the grounds has to be the Barn and Tawny Owls that were seen flying around in the evening. A few evenings during the week, we walked to the barn near the lake to watch the Barn Owls. I think the Barn Owl must be roosting in the barn at the moment. We have seen it come out of the barn in the evening to hunt over the surrounding fields. I don't think they have young yet as they didn't return to the barn with any food.

Barn Owls are such incredible creatures and it was fantastic to see such good views of them as they hunted silently in the dark. We only saw the Tawny Owl once, but heard it much more often. They could well be roosting or nesting nearby too. Also seen near the barn were bats in large numbers. We also saw a Treecreeper one evening just as it was going dark on a tree near the barn.

Away from the cottage, we saw plenty of other birds. National Trust properties often have gardens that are fantastic for birds. We went to Felbrigg Hall, a National Trust property near the cottage. Click here for the link to the website. As I was looking around the gardens, I came across a House Sparrow terrace nestbox in use by a Great Tit. It was seen bringing food into one of the holes.

A Chaffinch was seen singing on a tree.

And Jackdaws were seen at another NT property, Blickling Hall. Click here for more information on the property.

Many other birds were seen on various walks throughout the week. On the beach near a town called Sheringham, Little Tern were seen at the shore. I had to check the bird book to make sure they weren't Common or Sandwich Tern. They certainly were little and were struggling to fly against the wind. Just slightly further along the coast near some cliffs, I saw a species of pipit. This bird, I was unable to identify even with the bird book. I am guessing it was either a Rock Pipit, or more likely due to its brighter outer tail feathers, a Meadow Pipit.

Also seen in Sheringham were Starling:

And finally, on a sunny walk in the countryside, a female sparrow on the roof of a house. It's great to see the declining House Sparrow in its well-known habitat.


Other bird highlights were: Nuthatch, Marsh Harrier (seen at Blakeney Point), Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Meadow Pipit, Yellowhammer, Chiffchaff, Cuckoo and Great Spotted Woodpecker. Blimey, isn't it amazing what you can see in a week!

Finally this posting comes to an end. I did chatter a bit didn't I?