Early morning

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.