Back in the USSR
A Green Heron emerges from the green water with an empty beak to land again on a log for his next attempt to find lunch.
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Yes, a nice pair.
A few (of varying quality) from a wander yesterday.
Golden Plover
Whitethroat
Curious Greylags
Cheers,
Ian
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Great pictures Adam, especially the second one quizzically looking at you.
Seem to be having a resurgence, which is nice.
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A friend of mine introduced me to a free phone app called Merlin. It’s produced by Cornell University and there is a research programme behind it.
But the interesting thing I have found is that you can walk into a wood with a cacophony of bird song around you (with no birds actually visible) and the app will tell what birds it thinks it is hearing, with each bird listing identified turning yellow when that bird can be heard. It is fascinating and shows me that there are a lot more bird species there in that wood than I thought.
And I now recognise many more birds by their birdsong. You download a database relevant to your country or region and it uses that to make the identification.
It also has photos of each bird species and notes about them. If you want to you can report your sighting to their database. There is a lot more to this app, but anyway I recommend it.
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Waiting for his chicken. He’s out there again just now.
What starts as a thrill slides into drudgery. Not.
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I have also been introduced to Merlin in recent weeks. It has been a revelation! It has identified at least a dozen bird species within a kilometre of our house. Many of these we rarely see (for example, goldcrest, sedge warbler, blackcap, mistle thrush), but we are beginning to recognise their songs. Some are easy to distinguish and heard more or less throughout the day - blackbird, wren, robin, great tit et al. Highly recommended app!
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Blackcap was a new one for me, which is also often there but not spotted by eye yet. And today in open heath a few hundred yards from the wood we heard what was reported as a woodlark, totally new for me too.
Black & White in Colors
An Eastern Kingbird, back from his wintering grounds in South America, resting after a long day of fly catching.
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Seems to be ‘bring your kids to the foodbank day’ this morning…
The Blackbird was feeding two youngsters with sunflower hearts dropped from the feeders. The young Goldfinch looked entirely nonplussed. Clearly used to mum and dad bringing tender morsels to its nice warm nest, picking little hard niger seeds out of a plastic tube is just not the same.
Pleasingly the Greenfinches have at least two youngsters, though no pics of them yet as they’re waiting in the trees and watching mum and dad still. Absolutely dozens of Tits, so assume a number of them are newbies too.
Shot through the double glazing as everyone’s a bit nervous…
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