August 2009 - Mels Moth

A very large Moth flew into the kitchen a couple of weeks ago. We've seen large moths like this before but as yet we've not been able to identify it. Well Melanie made up some sugared-water and fed it to the moth. It seemed to like the liquid and spent about 20 minutes drinking. These photos taken by Melanie show the moth and the extraordinary close-up reveals in detail how long a moths tongue is!

August 2009 - Lone House Sparrow

Sunday 30th: Today, and for a few days this week, a lone House Sparrow has been at the back door several times a day for mealworms. The Sparrow is a fledgling having not been out of the nest long, its beak is still yellow, but it always appears to be on its own even when there are plenty of other Sparrows around. It may be that its parents have cut it loose as they have younger chicks to manage, but this seems unlikely as it is rather late in the season. We usually measure the rate of chicks by the amount of Sparrows queuing for mealworms. This has dropped-off dramatically these past 2 weeks! I suspect that the young House Sparrow has either got itself lost or its parents have been predated. This seems the more likely as a Sparrowhawk has been seen on a daily basis and made numerous kills in our garden. This afternoon, the young Sparrow came into the kitchen wanting to be fed. It visits every hour or so and takes 3 or 4 mealworms and then flies away only to return about an hour later. It does tend to hang around by itself and is getting overly tame, to the extent that it occasionally will perch near Sunny our Canary who always has his cage hanging outside the back door. But more worryingly is that the bird spends alot of time in the open on the patio and an easy target for a predator.

August 2009 - Injured Collard Dove?

Tuesday 25th: Melanie took this photo of this strange-looking Collard Dove today. It had landed on the bird-table and was listening intently to all the noises around it. It let my wife get very close to take these photos. It appears that the Dove has one eye missing. What would've caused this? Possibly the bird was hatched with one eye missing, but unlikely as it is doubtful as to whether it would have survived. Maybe it had been attacked at sometime in the past? Or maybe the Dove has an infection that has become malignant? Looking closely at the photos, there appears to be some kind of growth underneath the skin on the neck. We assume that it only had one eye missing, my wife didn't get a clear look at the left side of its head. How else would it have got to the bird table if it was totally blind. It did fly off when Melanie approached too closely!

While on my lunch break today at Work, I had a splendid view of a male Kestrel perched atop a small building. It spent about 30 mins there, occasionally swooping down to the ground. Typically, I get a good view but no camera to hand!

August 2009 - Peacock butterflies in the garden.

Saturday 8th: Being a sunny and warm day, the flowers attracted the Butterflies and other insects into the garden. Two Peacock Butterflies were spending a lot of time fluttering over the Buddleia. This type of Butterfly must be one of the prettiest of all Butterflies. They seem to be fairly common as I myself have seen several at various locations this Summer! Another type is a common visitor to the garden, the Large White. Hoverflies are also attracted by the Lily and there are quite a few of them.


Until the 5th of this month, a couple of Fledgling Wood Pigeons had been visiting the garden on a regular basis. We think they were both related in that they came from the same nest. Whenever we saw one, the other was close at hand. So it was with sadness that we found the remains of one of them in the garden. We suspect that a Sparrowhawk was the culprit. The other young Wood Pigeon visited the garden a few times afterwards (I'm writing this on the 30th) but has not been seen for a few days now.

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