Friday, 13 May 2011

Friday at the Flicks - Blackbird, Stretch Spider, Collered Dove, Great Tit

You can tell it's Friday the thirteenth! Blogger having been pretty well unusable for many hours since an attempted maintenance update to the system seems to have gone drastically wrong. As the service manager at our local garage used to say, "If it aint broke, don't fix it!".

Official explanation of the outage can be found HERE.

Very recently I spotted a female Blackbird pulling pieces out of my 'natural' fencing at the bottom of the garden to use as nesting material.



It is a bit late in the scheme of things as only this morning I saw the first juvenile Blackbirds visit the garden.

Most days I have checked the garden pond to see if any damsels are emerging but so far have only seen the Common Stretch Spiders busy building their webs towards dusk ready for a night of insect captures. I spotted the first damsel having emerged on 25th May Last year so there may be some about in the near future.



There is at least one Collared Dove which has become impatient waiting for seed to fall from the feeders and worked out that it can balance on the round perches.



All seems to be well in the Great Tit nest box. Mrs GT is very attentive to her eggs and Mr GT frequently brings food for her They are both very good at using the rim of the nest for moving about the box taking great care not to stand on the eggs. I would think hatching should start in the week beginning 22nd May.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

14 comments:

  1. Hi John,
    Lovely little videos!
    It has been annoying with Blogger being down!
    We have had a hen and cock Blackbird collecting nesting material just recently, so it`s never too late!
    J
    Follow me at HEDGELAND TALES

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  2. Great Tits looking goo John, looking forward to seeing them hatch. Have a great weekend!

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  3. Who knew doves were smart enough to figure that out? It will be interesting to see if any others catch on. The GT videos are so enjoyable. Your camera set up is just the ticket.

    cheers,
    Wilma

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  4. I enjoyed your videos, and wonder if the dove that landed on my chimney is a Collared Dove. It looks like yours...it is on my 'Seeing Yellow' post which has returned now that Blogger is up and running again. Good to see all going well in the nest :)

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  5. Definitely annoying not being able to get to blogger for a day or so! I checked my titbox after seeing yours the other day - only to find that a colony of bumblebees had moved in!

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  6. Great spider video, I can hardly wait for the Great Tits.....brilliant.

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  7. Really fascinating to see the spider at work John, something which is easily overlooked.

    Good to see the Great Tits being so attentive!

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  8. Thank you John. Good job they don't all nest at the same time as food could become scarce.

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  9. All is going well so far Paul.

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  10. Thank you Wilma. The Collared Dove doesn't fly straight at the feeder like the rest but uses nearer and nearer perches so it's only a short hop to the perch. I hope no more catch on to the idea - they eat too much.

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  11. Glad you enjoyed them Glo. Your dove looks very much like our Collared Dove. I love that pretty yellow bird of yours.

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  12. Hello Matron. I had a problem last year with a wasp taking over the box.

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  13. Thank you Adrian. I had a hard job trying to focus on the web but it only shows faintly unfortunately.

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  14. The spider seemed to be very haphazard in its movements Jan but I guess it knew what it was doing.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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