The end of 2013

Blossom in December

The Great Ouse

Cygnets

Frosted leaves

Fly Agarics

Sweet Chestnuts

Parasol mushroom

Comma feasting on blackberries

My good deed for the day

Rescuing a green-veined white from the pond. Found some thyme flowers for it to fuel up with and put it in the sun to warm.

Ripening acorns

Elderberries

Parasol

Snail in the garden

In the shade

Small Tortoiseshell

Seedy

Where do birds come from?

Well, the obvious answer is 'eggs', of course. But after 18 months of bird ringing at home, I'm starting to get some interesting results - from birds I've ringed and which have then gone elsewhere ('controls'), or birds ringed elsewhere which I've then caught at a later date ('recoveries').

Before I went off to Canada, I managed to catch some warblers in a net over a ditch. Two of them were controls and another produced a recovery, which is pretty good going.

I caught a Chiffchaff which had been ringed as a young bird at Rye Meads the previous autumn, as well as the Whitethroat I mentioned in a previous post.

And I just heard about one of the Blackcaps I caught on 20 April. It had reached Rutland Water six days later, and they caught it again four days after that, by which time it had lost a couple of grams in weight so is probably breeding there. Fat is migration fuel, and there's no point carrying it around if you've arrived at your destination!

A couple of other birds have been less fortunate. A female Siskin ended up in the jaws of a cat in Sandy a few weeks later, while a Song Thrush lasted for another seven months before dying in unknown circumstances, also in Sandy.

Here's a map with the best bits so far.


View Bird movements in a larger map

In the garden

The trees are weighed down with cherries. Birds are gobbling them up and a family of foxes is enjoying what falls to the ground.



There are two young foxes...



They seem pretty happy wandering around in daylight.
 

Meanwhile, birds are coming to the pond for water.



I was surprised to see such a nice-looking Broad-bodied Chaser in July

Early-nesting Bumblebees went mad for the thyme flowers.

 

Summer hawthorn leaves

Fluffy babies

It's that time of year again... the time for fluffy babies.

Juvenile Robin

This one's starting its post-juvenile moult, getting the orange breast feathers

Wren

Blue Tit

Coal Tit

Great Tit

Another Great Tit

The fluffiest of them all... baby Long-tailed Tit

Crumpled wings

Oh dear. This Common Darter won't be getting very far. As Imperfect and Tense said, it "went straight to the chapter on inflating its abdomen and missed out the page about wings."

My Canadian beach holiday

I spent the whole of May on the shores of Lake Erie, in Ontario, Canada

I was helping Bird Studies Canada with their Migration Monitoring Program at Long Point Bird Observatory

We caught some pretty nice stuff. Here's a male Prothonotary Warbler

Male Blackburnian Warbler

Male Cape May Warbler

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird (didn't band them, but just handling them was AMAZING!)

Male Magnolia Warbler

Red-eyed Vireo

Male Eastern Bluebird

White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-breasted Chat

Brown Thrasher

Male Common Grackle

It wasn't just birds. These are Coyote tracks not far from our cabin

Gulls at the Tip of Long Point

Early mornings take their toll after a month, but they were worth it

We watched some spectacular weather passing us by, in the middle of the lake

Some of the facilities were a bit basic...

Here's my stuff drying on the line

A fantastic gourmet meal starring freshly-picked wild asparagus, the best I've ever tasted

Dawn at the Tip

My last evening was beautifully calm and I didn't want to leave :o(

Eventually they dragged me off in a boat and I was sent back to Blighty

To see a whole load of photos, have a look on Flickr.

photos taken with Apple iPhone