Mike Richardson
Formerly known as Skink1978
Not even a UK tick?
-
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John's Mammals 2012 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Farnboro John
- Start date
Not even a UK tick?
Mike Richardson
Formerly known as Skink1978
You're doing far better than me this year Simon. Doesn't help that the last day I had off work was in April when we went to Hungary.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Pix from the Monday dip-trip
John
John
Attachments
Farnboro John
Well-known member
And so to the rather better Wednesday
John
John
Attachments
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Friday afternoon I nipped down to Chichester for the Red-footed Falcon - I don't need much persuading to go for these charismatic little raptors. That started off a pretty decent weekend.
On Saturday Maz made one of her rare appearances in the field, being dragged down to Lodmoor with me and Clare for the Short-billed Dowitcher. Happily it was on view as soon as we arrived and on the front scrape at that, giving good views.
Once it walked out of sight and hadn't reappeared for ten minutes we decided it was time for the next Yank and moved to Easton where the Monarch butterfly was showing fantastically around a Buddleia, sharing it with a fat handful of Red Admirals and a Painted Lady. We watched it for soem considerable time: OK it was missing all of one wingtip and most of the other, but the colours were luminous and it was totally confiding.
BY the time we left there it was midday and time for a pot of tea - it is unwise to keep Marion from drinking tea for long - so we made our way to the cafe at the Bill. While we supped I spotted a Bottlenose Dolphin only about 30 yards from the East side of the Bill: of course my camera was in the car, but we had good views before it wandered away East.
After that Clare and I went looking for Slow-worms. We had no success but did find a helice Clouded Yellow flitting about the entrance to the quarry opposite the Cheyne Weares car park.
Clare mentioned that she hadn't seen Sikas this year, so we finished off the day with a trip to Arne where of course there were loads in the fields. The wardens warned us that the rut will get going soon and rolled their eyes skywards as they told us people were stroking the deer down at Shipstal Point.
If anyone on here is in any doubt, the Sikas at Shipstal Point are pretty much hand-tame BUT they will completely forget that when they are up to their eyeballs in testosterone, and people have been seriously gored in the last few years, though not there. So don't take liberties for the next few months, and that goes for Red and Fallow Deer as well.
For the record I saw two Sika stags half-heartedly sparring so the change is due right now.
On Sunday I had a stroll round Badminston Gravel Pits looking for Red-veined Darters. I didn't find any but had some nice Emperors, Migrant Hawkers and Golden-ringed Dragonflies instead.
John
Pix:
Red-footed Falcon
Short-billed Dowitcher
Monarch X 3
On Saturday Maz made one of her rare appearances in the field, being dragged down to Lodmoor with me and Clare for the Short-billed Dowitcher. Happily it was on view as soon as we arrived and on the front scrape at that, giving good views.
Once it walked out of sight and hadn't reappeared for ten minutes we decided it was time for the next Yank and moved to Easton where the Monarch butterfly was showing fantastically around a Buddleia, sharing it with a fat handful of Red Admirals and a Painted Lady. We watched it for soem considerable time: OK it was missing all of one wingtip and most of the other, but the colours were luminous and it was totally confiding.
BY the time we left there it was midday and time for a pot of tea - it is unwise to keep Marion from drinking tea for long - so we made our way to the cafe at the Bill. While we supped I spotted a Bottlenose Dolphin only about 30 yards from the East side of the Bill: of course my camera was in the car, but we had good views before it wandered away East.
After that Clare and I went looking for Slow-worms. We had no success but did find a helice Clouded Yellow flitting about the entrance to the quarry opposite the Cheyne Weares car park.
Clare mentioned that she hadn't seen Sikas this year, so we finished off the day with a trip to Arne where of course there were loads in the fields. The wardens warned us that the rut will get going soon and rolled their eyes skywards as they told us people were stroking the deer down at Shipstal Point.
If anyone on here is in any doubt, the Sikas at Shipstal Point are pretty much hand-tame BUT they will completely forget that when they are up to their eyeballs in testosterone, and people have been seriously gored in the last few years, though not there. So don't take liberties for the next few months, and that goes for Red and Fallow Deer as well.
For the record I saw two Sika stags half-heartedly sparring so the change is due right now.
On Sunday I had a stroll round Badminston Gravel Pits looking for Red-veined Darters. I didn't find any but had some nice Emperors, Migrant Hawkers and Golden-ringed Dragonflies instead.
John
Pix:
Red-footed Falcon
Short-billed Dowitcher
Monarch X 3
Attachments
Last edited:
Farnboro John
Well-known member
MarkHows
Mostly Mammals
Isurus
Well-known member
Now you've seen one for the year I don't have to feel guilty about what I just found happily attempting to empty Merry the Cat's food bowl:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deep-blue/7983339302/
Surprisingly lightfooted little chap or chappess this one.
kitefarrago
Well-known member
Following this blog I can't quite decide whether I should be sad I made the choice to try to live without a car (before I got into more serious bird or mammal watching) or glad...
I've just been to Spain for raptor migration (one full week of a Levanter blowing put paid to any really good photographic opportunities), and the only mammals we saw were brown rat (at least that was a properly wild one swimming through a lagoon on a reserve), European rabbit (no comment), red deer, field mouse, and the tail end of an Egyptian mongoose crossing the road. This despite putting in an evening shift in the rice fields...
Crazy stuff at times this, and I love reading about it.
Andrea
I've just been to Spain for raptor migration (one full week of a Levanter blowing put paid to any really good photographic opportunities), and the only mammals we saw were brown rat (at least that was a properly wild one swimming through a lagoon on a reserve), European rabbit (no comment), red deer, field mouse, and the tail end of an Egyptian mongoose crossing the road. This despite putting in an evening shift in the rice fields...
Crazy stuff at times this, and I love reading about it.
Andrea
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Southern Frogmouth
Well-known member
Hi John,
Thanks for the link to your pics of the Long-finned Pilot Whales. Are you still missing Hedgehogs for your year list as they are regular in my garden, but then you will insist on visiting the Edible Dormice without telling me
Cheers
Roy
Thanks for the link to your pics of the Long-finned Pilot Whales. Are you still missing Hedgehogs for your year list as they are regular in my garden, but then you will insist on visiting the Edible Dormice without telling me
Cheers
Roy
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Hi John,
Thanks for the link to your pics of the Long-finned Pilot Whales. Are you still missing Hedgehogs for your year list as they are regular in my garden, but then you will insist on visiting the Edible Dormice without telling me
Cheers
Roy
Er - no. But I have no recent pix. Guilty as charged on the dormice but I have put some business your way, you should hear from Jeff before long.
How regular is regular?
Cheers
John
Marcus Conway - ebirder
Well-known member
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Cracking Water Vole yesterday at Rainham was a bit of a day-saver after a nightmare with(out) the Baillon's Crake. I got ten seconds worth and Maz, who hadn't seen one, still hasn't.
For anyone visiting Rainham in the near future, the vole was showing on the small side of the pond with a boardwalk across it, about 300 yards South of the Shooting Butts hide. Loads of Marsh Frogs putting on a good display with full throat-sac inflation as well.
Pics later
John
For anyone visiting Rainham in the near future, the vole was showing on the small side of the pond with a boardwalk across it, about 300 yards South of the Shooting Butts hide. Loads of Marsh Frogs putting on a good display with full throat-sac inflation as well.
Pics later
John
Attachments
Last edited:
JCL
Well-known member
Water voles have been brilliant at rainham recently. My max count 21 in a circuit. Three othe particularly good sites: northern side, where bridges crosses algae covered hammer both sides, western edge of northern trail at the last bridge before shooting butts hide, and southern trail first bridge west of visiot centre
Farnboro John
Well-known member
With no nearby rarities for me to make a present of/drag Marion along to (delete where applicable) we decided to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary with a trip to the New Forest and have lunch at the Fighting Cocks, an excellent pub/restaurant at Godshill, right on the edge of the open areas of the forest.
I also suggested we might manage to see eleven species of mammal to mark the occasion. Marion as we were leaving home shouted "dog!" and when I remonstrated that it was uncountable, she suggested she would count domestics and I could count wild mammals.
Seconds later we passed two pedestrians considering a dead cat in the road and we decided to list roadkill mammals as well: so off we went doing three separate day lists.
By the time we left Moor Green I had not seen a wild mammal. Marion had added cat and horse and was chortling; the road surface had yielded rabbit, brown rat, grey squirrel and badger.
We took the A303 from Basingstoke and stopped at Bransbury. By then I had at last managed to get off the mark with a live Grey Squirrel bouncing across the village green at Hartley Wintney. However, the hares and roe deer I expected on the broad fields were keeping a low profile and by midday when we arrived at the Fighting Cocks Maz had added sheep, donkey and cow; brown hare and red fox had been added to the roadkill list and I was trailing on one.
We were doing quite well on raptors. I had picked up Sparrowhawk before we set off, Moor Green had given us Buzzard and Kestrel, and a Red Kite was wheeling over the M3 near Basingstoke. I had also had a Wheatear fly off a gate near Barton Stacey.
Anyway, the pub was excellent as usual. Well cooked sensible food in birders' portions and I allowed myself one pint of Hobgoblin in good condition.
Afterwards we staggered back to the car well stuffed - and I was feeling well stuffed on the mammal front. Time to start fighting back. Fallow Deer was the first target. I headed for Deadman Hill and nearby found half a dozen Fallow does sunning themselves in the open end of Black Gutter Bottom. They were distant so we drove down to Bolderwood, arriving at about 1410. There were a few Fallow does at the deer viewing place, but nothing like the numbers of a few weeks earlier: persumably many, including the bucks, had headed into the forest in preparation for the rut. By 1430 the feeder hadn't turned up so we left to check out the bog where the Red Deer hang out.
We had a nice walk up through the still green beech woodland to the edge of the bog, where a huge Red stag with eight hinds and a this year's calf were moving slowly away from a hiker couple who were trying and failing to stalk them. Moving slowly and carefully in the shady edge of the trees I got my camera set up without disturbing them further and got some reasonable shots before they heard another family approaching with dogs from our side of the bog and slid away into the trees in a definite and final sort of way. Three species.
By now it was 1530 and we decided to make a move towards home, with a small diversion to Greywell for a look at the fields out on the chalk. Finally that produced the Brown Hare I had looked for in the morning, and in seeing that I caused a Rabbit to bolt and added that as species number five.
Home, cup of tea, a few minutes consideration a to how to proceed.
At 1830 we set off again, first of all to settle the account of probably the easiest, most widespread deer in England. I stopped at the roadside by what I think of as the deer field, and to my surprise and delight there were three Fallow Deer - two does and a this year's fawn - they are pretty difficult hereabouts and these were my first local ones of the year. No Roe Deer though.
On we went, down past the back of Fleet Services where sometimes a Muntjac scurries across: not today. Under the railway and in the field on the right, jackpot: a Roe doe and her fawn of this year, grazing peacefully in rough grass and rushes. Six, and really I reckoned it was in the bag now.
A few minutes later we parked up on the steep verge by the Basingstoke Canal and set off along the towpath. As we ducked under the road bridge we had just driven over, my bat detector went a bit mental and in nearly full daylight we had good views of a Soprano Pipistrelle, our seventh wild mammal of the day. A quick look at the sett suggested the Badgers were still below ground so we continued to the fields across the next bridge where with the bat detector turned right up and stuck next to my ear I found there was at least one Noctule somewhere fairly close by. Eventually it came over us and that was number eight sorted.
We returned to the sett and while we waited for the stripy mustelids, I tuned the detector to 45 KHz and immediately discovered that although it was anything but dark the Daubenton's Bats were already skimming the surface of the canal and that was us with nine mammals under the belt, getting good views near the far bank with the nightscope.
After that we had all of five minutes wait until a Badger was regarding our whispering forms from the top of the opposite bank and the plan allowed us to make our way back to the car.
We drove round a few Fleet housing areas looking for foxes and clanged out, but they are common and not exactly elusive at home so we didn't panic. We were most of the way home, near the roundabout with the replica Gloster E28/39 on it, when a big bushy adult Red Fox became the eleventh wild mammal of our eleventh wedding anniversary by bounding across the road with his brush waving jauntily.
Home and Moet.
John
I also suggested we might manage to see eleven species of mammal to mark the occasion. Marion as we were leaving home shouted "dog!" and when I remonstrated that it was uncountable, she suggested she would count domestics and I could count wild mammals.
Seconds later we passed two pedestrians considering a dead cat in the road and we decided to list roadkill mammals as well: so off we went doing three separate day lists.
By the time we left Moor Green I had not seen a wild mammal. Marion had added cat and horse and was chortling; the road surface had yielded rabbit, brown rat, grey squirrel and badger.
We took the A303 from Basingstoke and stopped at Bransbury. By then I had at last managed to get off the mark with a live Grey Squirrel bouncing across the village green at Hartley Wintney. However, the hares and roe deer I expected on the broad fields were keeping a low profile and by midday when we arrived at the Fighting Cocks Maz had added sheep, donkey and cow; brown hare and red fox had been added to the roadkill list and I was trailing on one.
We were doing quite well on raptors. I had picked up Sparrowhawk before we set off, Moor Green had given us Buzzard and Kestrel, and a Red Kite was wheeling over the M3 near Basingstoke. I had also had a Wheatear fly off a gate near Barton Stacey.
Anyway, the pub was excellent as usual. Well cooked sensible food in birders' portions and I allowed myself one pint of Hobgoblin in good condition.
Afterwards we staggered back to the car well stuffed - and I was feeling well stuffed on the mammal front. Time to start fighting back. Fallow Deer was the first target. I headed for Deadman Hill and nearby found half a dozen Fallow does sunning themselves in the open end of Black Gutter Bottom. They were distant so we drove down to Bolderwood, arriving at about 1410. There were a few Fallow does at the deer viewing place, but nothing like the numbers of a few weeks earlier: persumably many, including the bucks, had headed into the forest in preparation for the rut. By 1430 the feeder hadn't turned up so we left to check out the bog where the Red Deer hang out.
We had a nice walk up through the still green beech woodland to the edge of the bog, where a huge Red stag with eight hinds and a this year's calf were moving slowly away from a hiker couple who were trying and failing to stalk them. Moving slowly and carefully in the shady edge of the trees I got my camera set up without disturbing them further and got some reasonable shots before they heard another family approaching with dogs from our side of the bog and slid away into the trees in a definite and final sort of way. Three species.
By now it was 1530 and we decided to make a move towards home, with a small diversion to Greywell for a look at the fields out on the chalk. Finally that produced the Brown Hare I had looked for in the morning, and in seeing that I caused a Rabbit to bolt and added that as species number five.
Home, cup of tea, a few minutes consideration a to how to proceed.
At 1830 we set off again, first of all to settle the account of probably the easiest, most widespread deer in England. I stopped at the roadside by what I think of as the deer field, and to my surprise and delight there were three Fallow Deer - two does and a this year's fawn - they are pretty difficult hereabouts and these were my first local ones of the year. No Roe Deer though.
On we went, down past the back of Fleet Services where sometimes a Muntjac scurries across: not today. Under the railway and in the field on the right, jackpot: a Roe doe and her fawn of this year, grazing peacefully in rough grass and rushes. Six, and really I reckoned it was in the bag now.
A few minutes later we parked up on the steep verge by the Basingstoke Canal and set off along the towpath. As we ducked under the road bridge we had just driven over, my bat detector went a bit mental and in nearly full daylight we had good views of a Soprano Pipistrelle, our seventh wild mammal of the day. A quick look at the sett suggested the Badgers were still below ground so we continued to the fields across the next bridge where with the bat detector turned right up and stuck next to my ear I found there was at least one Noctule somewhere fairly close by. Eventually it came over us and that was number eight sorted.
We returned to the sett and while we waited for the stripy mustelids, I tuned the detector to 45 KHz and immediately discovered that although it was anything but dark the Daubenton's Bats were already skimming the surface of the canal and that was us with nine mammals under the belt, getting good views near the far bank with the nightscope.
After that we had all of five minutes wait until a Badger was regarding our whispering forms from the top of the opposite bank and the plan allowed us to make our way back to the car.
We drove round a few Fleet housing areas looking for foxes and clanged out, but they are common and not exactly elusive at home so we didn't panic. We were most of the way home, near the roundabout with the replica Gloster E28/39 on it, when a big bushy adult Red Fox became the eleventh wild mammal of our eleventh wedding anniversary by bounding across the road with his brush waving jauntily.
Home and Moet.
John
Farnboro John
Well-known member
