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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Finally! (1 Viewer)

This for me, is the iconic sound of the Russian spring, It's past midnight and a Thrush Nightingale sings outside our kitchen window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ghxpsDalM

They are night migrants, males arrive first and then sing at night to attract any passing females. Unfortunately, this wonderful song is only given for a couple of weeks until they settle down to breed and then it's heard far less often and not at night.


A
 
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All seems present and correct in terms of migrants now, Whinchats are in and we still have White-fronted Geese passing over.

Just go to keep our fingers crossed this year that they don't cut the grass on our local patch as they did last year. It wiped out the Lapwings and probably did great damage to Skylarks, Corncrake, Little Ringed Plover, Short-eared Owl etc.

I don't know why they cut the grass, it's setaside land with no crops and they don't harvest the grass or at least they didn't lasy year so it's carnage with for real reason.

Nestbox update, male Flycatcher singing away, happily supervising the female as she comes and goes with nest material.

A
 
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I think both our boxes will now have the female on eggs.

The Fieldfares have shown extreme violence towards a female Great-spotted Woodpecker that comes to the feeder, a really ferocious attck as their nest is just 30m away.

A
 
This for me, is the iconic sound of the Russian spring, It's past midnight and a Thrush Nightingale sings outside our kitchen window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ghxpsDalM

They are night migrants, males arrive first and then sing at night to attract any passing females. Unfortunately, this wonderful song is only given for a couple of weeks until they settle down to breed and then it's heard far less often and not at night.


A

Lovely. I envy you. When I lived in Wales I'd occasionally get Quail doing its similar thing about this time of year, but obviously not such a thrilling song.

Cheers
 
Lovely. I envy you. When I lived in Wales I'd occasionally get Quail doing its similar thing about this time of year, but obviously not such a thrilling song.

Cheers

We are very lucky, drumming Snipe over our home as well at the moment and we also hear it calling at night.

All too brief however, spring and summer are shorter here.


A
 
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First young are apparent here now, our Fieldfares have fledged and are being fed by the parents in the trees close to the nest.

I'm curious now as it's still fairly early, to see if the produce a second brood?


A
 
Both our boxes now have audible young and the Tits are far more cautious in their comings and goings to their box than the Flycatchers are.

We've noticed that the adult Tits, will deliver their usual first choice food of caterpillars to the young but will then go to the feeder and eat seeds themselves. The weather here is still pretty cool and wet, could this indicate a shortage of their first choice food that the adults will take seeds?

The birds that endure our winters will take seeds so it's not unusual but at this time of year I wouldn't expect them to need to eat seeds unless they had to?


A
 
Hope you don't mind me adding to the Pied Flycatcher discussion. I help monitor Pied flycatchers in a local wood in Dumfries (bumper year, btw, over 300 pulli ringed and counting, highest number since the study started over 10 years ago)

Every year we find 1 or 2 dead males in nest boxes in spring. Killed by Great Tits for the rights to use the box. Dead with a smile on their faces as obviously the Great Tit can't remove the corpse and has to find another nest site.
 
Hope you don't mind me adding to the Pied Flycatcher discussion. I help monitor Pied flycatchers in a local wood in Dumfries (bumper year, btw, over 300 pulli ringed and counting, highest number since the study started over 10 years ago)

Every year we find 1 or 2 dead males in nest boxes in spring. Killed by Great Tits for the rights to use the box. Dead with a smile on their faces as obviously the Great Tit can't remove the corpse and has to find another nest site.

I don't mind at all, very interesting, chip in whenever you want.

Looks like we've lost the Tits to a GSW

I caught the male investigating the Tit box a few days ago but had thought that the hole, as intended, was too small for Woodpecker access. We also found what looked like nest material which had apparently been pulled out of the box. The Tits were seen taking food to the box last week but the nest is now empty and certainly doesn't look soiled enough to have raised a brood of Tits which I'd also expect to see at our feeder with the adults if they had fledged?

Thank God it wasn't the Flycatchers, my wife would have been inconsolable especially after last years abandonment of eight eggs.


Andy
 
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An unusual amount of sickly birds around our feeder this year, mainly Greenfinches but a couple of Siskins and now a Bullfinch.

GS Woodpeckers are attending the feeder with young which scatters the other birds at the feeder when they arrive and we've had to net off the window to try and prevent fatal window strikes which have become unusually frequent.

A
 
An unusual amount of sickly birds around our feeder this year, mainly Greenfinches but a couple of Siskins and now a Bullfinch.

GS Woodpeckers are attending the feeder with young which scatters the other birds at the feeder when they arrive and we've had to net off the window to try and prevent fatal window strikes which have become unusually frequent.

A

Some friends of mine have also noted this, towards the Finnish / Swedish border in the north. Has been far cooler and wetter than expected and the birds are clinging to the feeders.

Great thread by the way with an amazing spectrum of birding beauty!
 
Some friends of mine have also noted this, towards the Finnish / Swedish border in the north. Has been far cooler and wetter than expected and the birds are clinging to the feeders.

Great thread by the way with an amazing spectrum of birding beauty!

Thanks,
terrible here, cold, wet and very windy, a total waste of time for butterflies this year.

I've seen a single Blue, we get several species regularly but I've seen one single Common Blue so far. Black-veined Whites are only just on the wing, a full month later than last year, it's horrible.

Here's the first of our Pied Flycatchers that fledged

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMY9YpOC16U&ytbChannel=Andy Adcock


A
 
Arrived back in my flood forest this week too (breed in dry pine forest areas, probably not many kilometres away)

I've suspected for a while that our local forests are just too wet but it would seem to be perfect for Three-toed which don't seem to breed here either and won't be seen for a few weeks yet?

White-backed is around all year.


A
 
Three-toed is back, always a few weeks later than Black.

The bushes here are creaking under the strain a of a huge Rowan berry crop this year, let's see if it's a portent of a hard winter, may be expect some Grosbeaks if so.

I wonder if the Grosbeak will get split like the Three-toed did, the American race of Grosbeak is visually distinct from the Eurasian one.

A
 

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