Oi! Get orf my feeder!

All too often, I look out of the window to see this:

At least this is a bit more amusing:

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

All things bright and beautiful

Though I've lived here for three and a half years now, this garden still amazes me. It's just not normal. Yellow Wagtails aren't meant to have a bath in your pond, and then finish their toilette while perching on your garden table! It's not normal and I'm glad it's not.

These digiscoped-through-double-glazing photos (and video) aren't up to much technically, but they capture the moment for me. There were so many interesting poses and postures. And look at the length of those hindclaws!

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Scarce Chaser? Too right...

Made my annual pilgrimage to Roxton today in search of Scarce Chasers, but they were nowhere to be seen (despite being out and about at Woodwalton Fen, not that far away)!

Banded Demoiselles

Red-eyed Damselfly (I think)

Seven-spot Ladybird

the River Great Ouse

Hawthorn and Ash

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM or Canon Powershot A640

Corn Bunting song

Corn Bunting, Miliaria calandra by bogbumper

Rain/shine

Dark clouds developing tonight...

photo taken with Canon Powershot A640

Fat bird of the barley

They don't do a lot, Corn Buntings... Good beak though.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM, Extender EF 1.4x II 

Chick chick chick chick chicken...

These lovely ladies are my Mum's new hens. From left to right, meet Marengo, Speckle and [the as yet-unnamed] The White One. They arrived on Thursday and have each produced an egg per day so far.

I can vouch for the quality of the eggs, having tasted a sponge cake made with three of them earlier today. Mmmm.

photos taken with iPhone 3G S

Cute baby birds

Spent the afternoon ringing Starling chicks.

The chicks were carefully removed from their nestbox. We fitted them with lightweight metal leg rings, weighed them and measured their legs (normally we'd measure birds' wings but they didn't have any feathers yet!). Then they were put safely back in their nest where the parents resumed feeding and brooding them.

We also collected faecal samples (that's poo to me and you) for later analysis of what they'd been eating.

Well, I think they're cute, and I didn't get crapped on once!!

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Mr Cetti's Warbler

We seized the only opportunity for good Bank Holiday weather on Saturday. A visit for some ringing at Warren Villas was the way forward. We were pleasantly surprised to hear a Cetti's Warbler singing as we put up one of the nets. The sound got closer, and while we were securing one end of the net, a Cetti's Warbler appeared in the other end!

This is the first Cetti's Warbler to be ringed in the Ivel valley, the eighth ever to be ringed in Bedfordshire and the first for me (anywhere)!

We caught a nice selection of birds - Sedge, Reed and Garden Warblers, Blackcap, Song Thrush, Dunnock, Robin and Kingfisher.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Another bird that wasn't a Robin

Last April a Black Redstart turned up in our garden - a very nice surprise. I was digging the veg patch and it was pure luck that I saw a little bird perching in the ash tree.

This morning I was innocently looking out of the bathroom window (no frosted glass, you see) for no particular reason. I saw a small brown bird perching near the honeysuckle. From a distance it looked pretty much like a Robin, but its tail shivered.

Then it disappeared into the foliage. I knew what it ought to be, but I told myself I'd probably got it wrong (no binoculars in the bathroom, even in our house).

I got my bins from the study and watched for a couple of minutes, hoping it'd pop up out of cover. It didn't, so I got on with washing my hair.

I couldn't help looking for the mystery bird again before going to work. Something perching on our neighbours' fence caught my eye. I trained the scope on it (ready for precisely this kind of emergency) and I knew immediately that my earlier gut reaction had been correct!

A female Redstart sat on the fence, half-hidden by the leaves of a nearby tree. It was sod's law that some leaves completely obscured its head, but the warm buff colour of its belly was the important thing. The tail shivered again.

Leaving the scope in position, I had to charge downstairs to get Darren (I suppose I could have phoned him, but that would have been silly). We saw it again for a few seconds before it flew out of sight again, never to be seen again.

Like the Black Redstart, the amount of luck involved in seeing this bird is almost scary. If I hadn't looked out of the window at that moment, if it had been on the opposite side of the fence, if I'd ignored it, if I hadn't had my glasses on...

I can't help but wonder where it hatched, where it's going to breed - a Scottish or Welsh oakwood, perhaps? - and where it spent the winter. I'm quite certain there's nothing special about our garden, so how many other Redstarts are making their way through Cambridgeshire at the moment?

Life and death in the pond

Two damselfly larvae eating a young Backswimmer

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Wake up, little piggy!

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Fancy a dip?

Don't often see a Kestrel in the garden, but it was such a beautiful warm morning that the pond must have tempted this one in. I think it wanted a bath, but was nervous of the Rook sitting in the corner of the garden. In the end it made do with a brief paddle.

It was ringed, so it seems reasonably likely to be the bird that we caught on 11 February last year.

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

Blue skies above Castor

I've never seen a sky like this before. Perhaps I never will again. Living on a crowded island, there are always planes flying over at some height, no matter where you are. So thanks, Eyjafjallajoekull, for giving us beautiful blue, quiet skies for a while.

It was a gorgeous spring day, warm and sunny. These are the eyes of a male Whitethroat, the first one I've seen this year.  We didn't catch a whole lot at Castor... the hoped-for surge of birds near dusk never quite happened. Despite that, it was a beautiful day to be outside, admiring blossom, listening to Blackcaps singing (not Nightingales, unfortunately), eating cake...

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Cherry blossom

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Jenny Wren

Or it could be Jimmy Wren - it's impossible to tell. 

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

Cute bunny wabbit

This cutie has taken up residence in our garden. He hops around the lawn, selecting the finest dandelion leaves and tenderest grass stems to nibble.

Sigh

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

Spring green

Spring is here. Let's celebrate.

Seven-spot Ladybirds

Primroses

Robins threatening to punch each others' lights out (it ended peacefully when one walked away)

Brimstone slurping on hyacinths

Tulip

Celandine

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Everything's all white

Well, OK, not all white, but this is the whitest Woodpigeon I've ever seen.

There have been loads of Woodpigeons around this winter, munching their way through local oilseed rape fields. Today was the first time I've seen this beast, with its white back end and wishy-washy head and breast.

It stuck out like a sore thumb from its grey colleagues - this looks like a case of leucism to me. Here's what a normal Woodpigeon looks like.

There can't be many Woodpigeons around that look like this. So have you seen it? It'd be really interesting to find out how far it travels!

photo taken with Canon Powershot A640 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Seed-munchers

Been playing around with digiscoping garden birds through the double glazing...

Sometimes the results are pretty good, considering

Chaffinches

Rook

Good light seems to be the biggest factor (it's really dull today)

Greenfinch

Other times they are not very good, but it's nice to have a record of what's been visiting the garden

Yellowhammers

Reed Bunting

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Spring ringing

This morning Jacqui came round to ring in the garden. It was a beautiful day but perhaps a tad too sunny for ringing (if the sun shines on the net, birds can see it more easily).

Things started slowly with a Dunnock we'd caught before.

But soon we hit the jackpot with a female Pied Wagtail! That was totally unexpected... I saw the male singing from the roof yesterday but never though we'd catch one! A lovely bird to handle... very soft feathers and with a beak totally ill-suited to vicious finger-pecking. Excellent.

We also caught four new Reed Buntings - all males. It was interesting to see the differences between them. One had lost almost all the brown tips to his black head feathers, but others were much scruffier looking.

It was a steady - rather than spectacular - catch, but that's just fine.

Here are the totals...

• Chaffinch, 5 new
• Blue Tit, 4 (+ 1 retrap)
• Pied Wagtail, 1
• Great Tit, 4 (+3 retraps)
• Reed Bunting, 4
• Goldfinch, 2
• Greenfinch, 5
• Dunnock, 1

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

The white stripes

Just about every other pond in the country is stuffed with frogs at the moment, but not mine. So I went to have a look for newts instead. Yesterday evening, while pulling out sheets of blanket weed, I accidentally scooped up a smart little male Smooth Newt. I admired his bright orange belly before putting him back.

This morning, I saw another Smooth Newt (or maybe the same one) swimming about, and then a white stripe down at the bottom of the pond. I wasn't sure whether it was a root, but when I looked back again it had disappeared. So I'm hoping that was my first Great Crested Newt of the year - the males have silvery-white stripes down their sides. Must be quite useful when you're in a murky pond.

Plenty of beetles and Backswimmers to be seen, too.

Yellow and gold

Male Yellowhammer, hatched last year

Male Goldfinch, also hatched last year

Been ringing again, this time on our monthly visit to Beeston. It was really too windy to be very productive, but we did catch the first Yellowhammer for quite some time, an array of Greenfinches and Chaffinches, and a Goldfinch.

Yesterday, we were very close to catching a Sparrowhawk, but by the time we'd legged it to the net, it had got out and flown off.

To make up for the disappointment, we caught three Long-tailed Tits. Two of them had consecutive ring numbers - they were the same two we'd caught together at dusk the previous month! Everyone say 'ahhhhh'...

I've been so busy lately that I've barely had any time for photos during the week, and I haven't managed much at weekends either. Hopefully normal service will soon be resumed. Highlights in the garden have been up to 15 Reed Buntings and four Yellowhammers. No sign of newts in the pond yet, though there have been a few Backswimmers and Lesser Diving Beetles pootling around.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D