Who's been making a mess?

What's going on here? Looks like someone's been busy with a chainsaw

Ah! A freshly-excavated Green Woodpecker nest hole

photos taken with iPhone

Speckled

Juvenile Green Woodpecker ringed today at Beeston

and a juvenile Nightingale at Paxton Pits

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D or Canon Powershot A640

What colour is your pecker?

Fantastic, but very noisy and wriggly birds.

photo taken with Canon EOS 30D

Green Woodpecker feeding

video taken with iPhone + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

The wonders of technology

Now that Flickr have released an iPhone app, I've been able to the use the phone for the entire photographic process.

I took the above photo with my iPhone held to my Leica scope (through the double glazing). Still on the phone, I cropped the photo using Pixelpipe - dead easy - and then uploaded the photo to my Flickr account, adding a title and tags along the way. The last bit was a little slow, but that was because of the bad signal in the building where I was. Isn't technology wonderful...

photo taken with Apple iPhone 3GS + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

And in the garden

This Six-spot Burnet moth was a garden tick. Which reminds me, really must get mothtrapping started again.





A male Green Woodpecker brought his fledgling offspring to the garden yesterday (excuse the fuzzy images, they were taken through the window)


Bumblebees are lapping up nectar at the moment

The Badger has been back every night so far since we first noticed it on Tuesday.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Now that's a beak

Note ragged, bleached secondaries


Male Green Woodpecker


Male Goldfinch (note the red behind the eye)

Another enjoyable ringing session at Beeston today. The sun shone, the wind was gentle, butterflies (Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Brimstone) fluttered, five Buzzards thermalled overhead and we were brought bacon butties and cups of tea. And caught 72 birds!

33 were Greenfinches (and one of those was a control - a bird that someone else had already ringed, somewhere else). The Green Woodpecker and a Starling brought a bit of variety to proceedings. A super-fat Chaffinch weighed 27 g and had a wing length of 93 mm (it could be on its way back to Scandinavia); many of the females were carrying plenty of fat, showing as a smudge of yellow on their chests.

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Visitors

I was washing up when I first spotted this juvenile Green Woodpecker on the lawn. I didn't have my glasses on, and for a split-second I wondered what on earth the big grey thing hopping on the grass was...

Green Woodpecker (juvenile)

The other news from the garden is that the rabbits seem to be getting smaller, and cuter:

We've also been trapping moths again. Last night was quite good - warm, dry and fairly still.

Leopard Moth

We're just putting the trap out at weekends at the moment, as we're so slow to identify the contents that getting the moths done before going to work would be a real challenge!

Being almost total beginners is really interesting. Though there are a few common species that are easy to ID, we're still having to look in the book to check many things. I'm sure we're making lots of mistakes - species like The Uncertain and rustics are proving a bit problematical. It's very tempting to just open the book, find what the moth looks most like, and say, 'well, it's one of those!'

On the other hand, we've had some pleasingly distinctive beasts, such as Poplar, Lime and Privet Hawkmoths, Black Arches and Leopard Moth.

Moths in plastic pots have taken over the salad box thing in the fridge (refrigerating the moths stops them from flapping about while you ponder over what on earth they are).

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Bambi's older sisters

This morning was a good one for the garden.

Last night, they started harvesting the oilseed rape from the field at the back of our house. And this morning, these two female Fallow Deer were wandering around in the field, just over our back fence!

Fallow Deer

Green Woodpecker

When I looked out of the back window, the first thing I saw was this male Green Woodpecker digging in the lawn for ants. He then went and sat on the clothes line post and posed for a little while. Which was nice.

And finally... we were just about to get into the car when two Kingfishers flew past, calling. There are a few ponds and small lakes nearby so I guess they were commuting from one to another. Garden tick!

photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20-60x eyepiece + bedroom window glass

On the move

In case anyone wondered, I'm still alive.


I've moved house, that's all. Here's the garden. As you can see, it's quite big and open. I can't remember the garden list so far, but after a month it does include Peregrine and House Sparrow!

House Sparrow seems to be a major rarity just here, as we've only had two records of a single female bird.

Green Woodpeckers are somewhat more frequent, and a male Great Spotted visits every day for seed.


Up to five Pheasants also visit daily and are making a bit of a mess under the feeders.

Here are some of our noisier neighbours.

photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995

Ferry Meadows Country Park

Willow Warbler at Coney Meadow

Another post-work visit to Ferry Meadows CP. I headed for Coney Meadow again since the park was still fairly busy.

If last Friday was the day of the Willow Warbler, this week it was Reed Buntings which were singing all over the place. At least five males sang in stereo within a small area of hawthorn scrub. I tend to think of them as inhabitants of fen, rather than scrub, but I think they know what they're doing.

There were two male Whitethroats duelling among the brambles, too. I tried for ages to get photos of one of them, but gave up playing cat-and-mouse after a while... Nice to see them back, though.


Coney Meadow

What else was about...? About ten Common Terns were around Overton Lake, and it was interesting to see that two of them had BTO-type metal rings on their right legs.


Green Woodpecker at Coney Meadow

A Green Woodpecker was very vocal along a line of oaks nearby. I finally caught up with him when he flew to an isolated tree in the middle of the meadow, and I got a half-decent photo! Green Woody is one of my favourite species. Very charismatic.

I was hoping for a repeat of last week's Wheatear, which I now believe was of the 'Greenland' race leucorhoa. That's a mega-migrant for you. Anyway, there wasn't one, but I did finally see the Pink-footed Goose that hangs about with the feral Greylag flock. And I got a lovely pic of it, too...



The Cormorants were on the Overton Lake island, as usual.



What's in my CD player: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea - PJ Harvey