Basking in the Sunshine

First - Tricia Ryder's comment yesterday got me thinking about the mystery bird table visitor. She thought it looked like a Dunnock. Well it certainly isn't a mature one. I have several as daily visitors but a Google search for some Dunnock Juvenile photos showed several which almost matched my visitor - pale belly with bold black streaks. In fact when I search I find I had photographed a juvenile Dunnock a couple of years ago.  So it looks as though that is favourite. Whatever it is it has visited several times every day so far. Also visiting the bird table have been two juvenile Robins.

Today has been a scorcher. Cool with heavy rain and hail yesterday morning.
Many creatures have taken advantage of blue skies and temperatures up to 25C:

The Damsel flies have started emerging from my garden pond.
Here a male Blue Tailed Damselfly sunning itself on a rose bush:



and a female on a pond plant:



A Red Admiral taking a short rest:



A Dunnock looking quite bedraggled but actually having a quick sunning session:



On the cricket field a Crow which didn't really want to move out of the way, until we got too close for comfort.:



I say sunning themselves but maybe the birds were actually trying to cool down.

Surveying My Realm

A couple of days ago my attention was drawn to a couple of Carrion Crows kicking up a might din as only crows can:

Eventually one flew off and the remaining one moved to the highest point on a chimney pot and spend quite a long time just gazing around as though it was checking that all was well in his neighbourhood:

Friday at the Flicks - Corvids, Doves, Goldfinches

Apart from Wednesday which was gloriously sunny most of the day it has been dull and very cloudy - not the best of conditions for photography of any sort. Even more so early mornings when any of the corvid family visit the garden. In fact I have never seen a Carrion Crow actually in the garden and I was surprised to see a couple on the very top of my leylandii tree. I was interested to note the consideration one crow showed as it moved over to make room for another to join it.



Over the past week or so I have spotted a couple of Stock Doves visit daily which makes a change from the regular Collared Doves. It really needs brilliant sunshine to show off the metallic sheen on the Stock Doves' necks.



It doesn't seem that long ago when I could count up to thirty Goldfinches visiting the feeders but this year I am lucky to see three. Usuall there are only a couple.



 Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Checking some aurora sites this morning it would appear the jet of plasma emitted from the Sun slowed down as it approached the earth and didn't produce the effect initially expected.
Spaceweather.com looks to be an interesting site which has, at the moment, a marvellous photo of the Sun's surface activity taken in a UK backyard observatory. Also HERE on the site is a map showing recently uploaded photos from around the world. Click on a pin and then on the thumbnail image to see them larger.