Well I never did get to Brazil, having had to pull out at the last hour. I instead had the pleasure of enjoying a wonderful UK autumn! Now it is just dark, wet and dreary with only an occasional remaining leaf falling along with the rain drops. Winds and sea surges brought a record number of Little Auks past the north east coast last week, 50,000+ I believe. I didn’t see one! Oddly enough whilst the Farne Islands were being hammered with winds, just a few miles down the road and not far from the coast there was no sign of the slightest breeze.
There has been no reports from me recently because I have not been involved in my usual walks although I did find 4 Goosanders on the lake last week so must get around and see if more have arrived. There is little in the way of flora around now although I was surprised to find a patch of (3 or 4 sq metres ) of Charlock Sinapis arvensis just across the road from here and the Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium is still hanging on in there with a few flower heads still showing.
The bad weather is bringing in the birds to the garden with Blackbirds and House Sparrows being the most numerous. The pair of Coal Tits is still here and very active and numbers of Blue Tits are not indicative of the very poor year they have reportedly had. After several months a Song Thrush has taken to visiting again and I am hoping to hear its song in the near future as I did last year right through winter. So nothing out of the ordinary, but the most rewarding sighting was the male Sparrowhawk devouring a Collared Dove on my postage stamp sized lawn just a few days ago. I didn’t actually see the kill so perhaps that made it easier for me to watch this bird devour every bit, from what I could tell, of the Collared Dove. I took full advantage and watched this Sparrowhawk through my binoculars for over ten minutes. It takes a chance like this to really appreciate the markings and colouring of this bird’s plumage. I have never watched one so intently before. I was rather surprised to note that tarsus and toes all went down in one gulp. The bird also appeared, every now and again, to deliberately pick up feathers only and these seemed to be used as a cleaning agent. After the feast was over I watched a very well fed bird fly to the fence and very cleverly pick every feather from its toes before flying off leaving only the tell tale signs of a circle of grey feathers on the lawn.
I am reading Rural Portraits/Polly Pullar at the moment. The book is illustrated by one of my favourite wildlife artists, Keith Brockie. Whilst the focus of the book is on rare breeds of farmland animals in Scotland it is much wider than this and gives great descriptions of local individuals, flora, fauna and landscape of various parts of Scotland and the art work is excellent.
Take care
There has been no reports from me recently because I have not been involved in my usual walks although I did find 4 Goosanders on the lake last week so must get around and see if more have arrived. There is little in the way of flora around now although I was surprised to find a patch of (3 or 4 sq metres ) of Charlock Sinapis arvensis just across the road from here and the Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium is still hanging on in there with a few flower heads still showing.
The bad weather is bringing in the birds to the garden with Blackbirds and House Sparrows being the most numerous. The pair of Coal Tits is still here and very active and numbers of Blue Tits are not indicative of the very poor year they have reportedly had. After several months a Song Thrush has taken to visiting again and I am hoping to hear its song in the near future as I did last year right through winter. So nothing out of the ordinary, but the most rewarding sighting was the male Sparrowhawk devouring a Collared Dove on my postage stamp sized lawn just a few days ago. I didn’t actually see the kill so perhaps that made it easier for me to watch this bird devour every bit, from what I could tell, of the Collared Dove. I took full advantage and watched this Sparrowhawk through my binoculars for over ten minutes. It takes a chance like this to really appreciate the markings and colouring of this bird’s plumage. I have never watched one so intently before. I was rather surprised to note that tarsus and toes all went down in one gulp. The bird also appeared, every now and again, to deliberately pick up feathers only and these seemed to be used as a cleaning agent. After the feast was over I watched a very well fed bird fly to the fence and very cleverly pick every feather from its toes before flying off leaving only the tell tale signs of a circle of grey feathers on the lawn.
I am reading Rural Portraits/Polly Pullar at the moment. The book is illustrated by one of my favourite wildlife artists, Keith Brockie. Whilst the focus of the book is on rare breeds of farmland animals in Scotland it is much wider than this and gives great descriptions of local individuals, flora, fauna and landscape of various parts of Scotland and the art work is excellent.
Take care
