what bird burns your spring?
- Thread starter wayward bob
- Start date
wayward bob
i ate all your bees
our cat won't go out on the roof anymore after the seagull encounter
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Kept awake by a bleeding owl most of last night. Considering an air rifle with night-sight.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I'm amazed there aren't any down here in Bristol.
The exotic green birds I kept seeing turned out to be woodpeckers and I think I heard one on the way to work the other morning.
It's blackbirds for me and they've been taking chances quite a lot recently on the cycle path - though the geese at work are the first birds I notice.
Good luck with that the owl will be getting a very much better view of you than you are of him and by all accounts they are pretty handy with their talons!I have a couple of owl-boxes under construction always thought their hooting had ,if anything,a soporific effect.Guess it may depend what type of owl visits.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Bahnhof Strasse - try a louder recording of another owl, might be enough persuasion to move off the territory. Although I find owl hooting restful, the screeches are another matter.
I've been waiting for years for buzzards to reach these parts. A couple finally turned up about three years ago. I'm not sure if more have arrived yet as I only see one at a time but I love to watch them. And we have ducks back on the mill pond.
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
The parrots. I love them.
We felled 7 poplars and greatly enlarged the central clearing in the wood - last year, a marsh harrier alighted on the firepit logs and little owls, tawnies and barn owls have all been feasting on the huge multitude of voles which love the friable and deep soil - sparrowhawks are bold and often whizz overhead while we are sitting about but the bigger hawks are also obviously feeling comfortable with the wider perspective offered by clearing open rides. Have not seen a hen harrier but I did, at least, hear a bittern in the reedbeds on the Yare. Oh yeah, we also have a colony of weird Egyptian red-eyed geese (as well as pink-footed ones which feast on the sugar beet tops our farmer grows for his cows (I think - they are always harvested in great piles by the winter barns). I am raising conifers in the hope of attracting Goldcrests.
Ah, I also saw the first swallowtail of my life last summer - still quiver with glee and embarking on huge milk-parsley sowing.
I was an utterly ignorant townie 4 years ago (still am, really) - the countryside (I thought) was full of biting, stinging things - quite terrifying.
Ah, I also saw the first swallowtail of my life last summer - still quiver with glee and embarking on huge milk-parsley sowing.
I was an utterly ignorant townie 4 years ago (still am, really) - the countryside (I thought) was full of biting, stinging things - quite terrifying.
crossthebreeze
Well-Known Member
No parakeets in Bristol surprises me - we have a colony of them in Newcastle upon Tyne close to where I live!
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
I ddidn't realise they are so widely dispersed. I thought it was a London only phenomenon!
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
Really? That really surprises me.
I love hearing about your woodland, sounds like a magical place.
Treacle Toes
Time
Crowds of Blackbirds in the garden everyday at the moment...also a pair of nesting Robins literally follow me around to see what I am doing and be first to swoop in and pick at uncovered grubs and worms. 
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
Stuff seems to be on the move: I saw some big groups of fieldfares and redwings on fields the other day, they were down to only a few individuals the day after... also saw a flock of around 20 whooper swans go overhead, glad I had my binocs in the car as I'd assumed they were mutes.
It used to be usual hereabouts, from seventeenth of April onwards, to wake up to the sound of a cuckoo newly arrived from Cameroon or wherever.More recently that became sometime in May and last year I neither heard nor saw one of those improbable birds.I once saw a documentary from the days of black and white TV with footage of cuckoos flitting between gorse- clumps, on Brown Clee I think, in Shropshire.Cuckoo numbers have definitely nose-dived since those days unfortunately.We have acquired a buzzard-population though and on windy days we even get the odd kite.
Sirena
Don't monkey with the buzzsaw
Had this little goldcrest in my hedge this morning.Had the little yellow mohican in his/her head.
First time I've ever seen one What a little cracker. Below is a proper photo.
View attachment 85942
Would love to see one. Never have though.....
spartacus mills
let's wee on each other
For me the chiffchaff is the first sign of Spring. Then the dozens of skylarks on the common.
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
We've got blackbirds nesting in the honeysuckle that's growing up the side of our garage 
It's Ringo* and his missus.
I've been putting bits of chopped apple out for them, which they seem to like.
*not named after ringo, but named (by my neighbour) because he has a white ring round one of his eyes.
It's Ringo* and his missus.
I've been putting bits of chopped apple out for them, which they seem to like.
*not named after ringo, but named (by my neighbour) because he has a white ring round one of his eyes.
great tits have colonised some of our nest boxes. The ones with smaller entrances have been comprehensively beaked to enlarge the holes. Chiffchaffs and tree-creepers everywhere and the wrens are fearless - actually come into the horsebox for a look about and flap about our heads and feet. Not heard a cuckoo yet. Maybe today as I am off to the woods later. I can also hear some very noisy babies - possibly kestrel or owls - big birds in a tree right on the river edge of the wood. I can only see the parents in silhouette though. Need to sort out my monocular.
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
Saw a few swallows yesterday which cheered me, also heard a chiffchaff giving it some welly. But...
Time was when you'd have also heard willow warblers without much difficulty by now... not a sausage. Or sedges. Whitethroats. Not many these days. All our migratory warbler species are well down I think, as well as other inland migrants like cuckoos. Turtle doves? Forget it. The ones that managed to find some decent habitat remaining amidst smouldering tree stumps and vast fields of oil palm in West Africa are blasted out of the sky on their return over Malta by their traditional sportsmen. A few manage to make it here but it's all fucked too, in one way or another.
Sorry to be such a downer.
Time was when you'd have also heard willow warblers without much difficulty by now... not a sausage. Or sedges. Whitethroats. Not many these days. All our migratory warbler species are well down I think, as well as other inland migrants like cuckoos. Turtle doves? Forget it. The ones that managed to find some decent habitat remaining amidst smouldering tree stumps and vast fields of oil palm in West Africa are blasted out of the sky on their return over Malta by their traditional sportsmen. A few manage to make it here but it's all fucked too, in one way or another.
Sorry to be such a downer.
spartacus mills
let's wee on each other
Today I saw my first swallows and wheatears of the year.
First cuckoo of the year for me...in the woods today. Also, the babies I can hear are a pair of kestrels - the racket the babies make can be heard all over the wood while the parents can be seen sitting on telephone wires and hovering in the meadow next to us. just got back - attempting camera stuff now.
