September 2009: Newport Wetlands Centre RSPB

Friday 11th: Having driven back to South Wales from Cornwall last night, a few hours at another RSPB Reserve was on the itinerary. So this morning I drove over to the RSPB Wetlands Reserve situated outside Newport and on the Severn Estuary. A fine warm day in which I saw plenty of birds and wild fowl. What I liked about this Reserve was the paths that actually went through the reed bed. So giving an opportunity to catch a glimpse of reed Warblers, Bearded Tits etc. In fact a couple of weeks previously several Bearded Tits were spotted. But as is my luck, I saw none. What I did see was 4 Curlews on the mud-flats in the estuary, 92 Shelducks! Yes 92, I counted them! There were good numbers of Goldfinch and other small passerines. Newport Wetlands Center is a very smart reserve and next time I visit the area will go birding here again.

September 2009: Sea Swans & RSPB Marazion Marsh

Thursday 10th: While down in Cornwall visiting relatives, I took time-out and drove 30 minutes along the coast to Marazion, a small town lying in the shadow of Penzance. Marazion Marsh is a small reserve across the road from the beach. Getting there at 9:15am, the blue sky was bright with the Sun and contrasted wonderfully with the blue sea. Immediately I spied 2 Little Egrets, an adult Mute Swan with 2 juveniles close-by. The Reserve is mostly reed-beds surrounded by heath type ground. What is readily apparent is the great abundance of rabbits on this heath! I must've counted 20+ rabbits in one small area alone! Plenty of Jackdaws about and House Martins. I did also see a Buzzard through binoculars, but it was far off over farm land and was not circling my way. I had been told of a Hide deep within the reeds but time was limited and I wanted to get on the beach to check on the bird life there.

When I arrived at Marazion, the tide was in. Some waders were on the shore and small flocks of Wagtails, both Pied and Yellow dashed abouts. A local birder had mentioned to me that a Pectoral Sandpiper, Citrine Wagtail and a Corncrake were in the area. Well, I wouldn't know a Citrine from a Yellow Wagtail or a Pectoral from a Common Sandpiper and the Corncrake required some serious time amongst the reeds of the marsh! Time I didn't have!

Now the tide was moving out rapidly revealing the Causeway to St Michael's Mount. Intriguingly, a group of sea birds had gathered at a point where a fresh water stream trickled from the marsh, across the beach and into the sea. These sea birds - a mixture of various Gulls and Mute Swans - appeared to be drinking seawater! Swans on the sea! Yes...Sea Swans and really sailing on the sea. The pictures here are proof of that! It transpires that the Swans as with other birds (and Butterflies) swim, sail or fly from the island mount to the Marazion beach. Several Cormorants were also perched on the rocks and although I saw a group of Sandpipers, I need to examine the video footage of them to see if one or any was a Pectoral Sandpiper!

Visiting Truro, I stopped by Truro mud-flats as I had heard that many Bar-tailed Godwits descend on the flats. Unfortunately only Gulls were in residence at the time of my visit. Neil, apologies for not getting over to see you, time was very limited. Hopefully next year! Below are some images from Truro.

September 2009 - ONE GREENFINCH!!!!

Wednesday 2nd: At 4:40pm a male Greenfinch visited the garden and in particular a seed-feeder favoured by the hordes of House Sparrows that live in and around the garden. Yesterday a male Greenfinch also came into the garden to the seed-feeders at around 4pm. That too was a male and was exactly the same colour shade. Melanie saw both yesterday's and today's bird. The photo is of today's Greenfinch taken by Melanie. Are these one and the same bird or are they two different individuals? With just the one bird we both suspect that it is the same Greenfinch from yesterday. It may be that it is seeking out new feeding opportunities and will rally a flock in the near future. WE DO HOPE SO!! It's very rare to get Greenfinches in our garden! It's hard to imagine that two individuals would visit the garden alone on consecutive days. Why not come with others? Yes, it must be the same bird,let's see if it pays us a visit tomorrow!



The lone fledgling House Sparrow was around again today. When I got home, it was at the back door waiting for mealworms. It's not eating as many mealworms as a couple of days ago so hopefully it is ready to move on into the big wide world! The Sparrow also seems to be associating a bit more with other Sparrows. Spending time in a nearby lilac shrub with other youngsters.

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.

>

July 2009 - Great Crested Grebes and chicks

Saturday 18th: The Great Crested Grebe pair that had been coming back to the same location for the past 5 years, have successfully hatched two chicks. The female is still sitting on, maybe 3 eggs, or so I have been told.


The pair look very confident and assured with each other. Watching them for half an hour or so, I could see and hear the two adults communicating with each other as they fed the two chicks, hidden amongst the feathers of Mum's back.


This video below is quite long, at 4mins. It shows the male taking time-out to preen himself after taking care of his parental duties. What you don't see (out of shot,top left) is a small group of Canada Geese drawing closer to the female on the nest. The male does make a leisurely drift back while still preening himself. As he gets nearer to the nest, the Geese turn around and swim the other way.

We haven't come across many Dragonflies in the garden this year but in the space of 3 weeks we've found 4 empty Dragonfly larvae cases well away from the pond, as shown below. It looks quite menacing and I'm sure for any aquatic animal it would be a monster. Below is a photo I took showing the size of the larvae. At the top of the head, if you look closely, you can see where the Dragonfly emerged. A few days later, I came across this Dragonfly in the garden. It was sunbathing on the bird table perch. I managed to get very close to it too! A few days ago a moth flew into the living room and clung to the ceiling. Now this was such a unusually marked moth and one I had never seen before that a photo was called for. It is indeed called a "Magpie Moth" for obvious reasons.

June 2009 - Sparrowhawk kill.

Monday 29th:this morning at 9:45am a female Sparrowhawk attacked and killed a House Sparrow in our garden. My wife captured this short footage on my Finepix S5700 camera of the Sparrowhawk plucking its prey in the garden next door. Just out of shot is a female Blackbird voicing a loud disapproval but mostly because she has a couple of chicks in a nest nearby.

<

JUNE 2009 - Acrobatic Squirrel!!

Wednesday 17th, this morning Melanie captured these videos of a couple of Squirrels performing acrobatics to get a morsel or two of bird food. We quite often get visits in the garden by one or two Squirrels and the birds don't seem to be too worried by this, though they do keep a respectable distance.





Tonight at about 9:10pm we had a visit from a couple of Black-headed Gulls! To my knowledge this has not happened before. Oh..we get Black-headed Gulls on the school playing-fields close-by, but we have never had any land on our house roof! The quiet of this Summers' evening was shattered by a loud squawking. At first we were at a loss as to what it was. We looked through the back windows, then the front windows, but could see nothing. I dashed outside into the back garden (minus camera) a saw this pair - a mating pair of Black-headed Gulls stood on the ridge tiles squawking their heads off and presumably eyeing-up the fish in the pond! On seeing me they flew off still squawking. Does this mean that they will come back at some point in time to take advantage of an easy meal? Who knows? But in my experience, when a bird has made a mental note of where there is easy food, they invariably make a return visit!

June 2009 - Bempton Cliffs revisited - PUFFINS!

Tuesday 2nd, only 11 Puffins! Yes I took advantage of what the weatherman said was going to be; "the last of the hot sunny days", and went back to RSPB Bempton Cliffs as I had heard that some of these magical birds had returned in May.