Caught on Camera

The past couple of days haven't been shorts and T-shirt weather but at least the grass was dry enough in the afternoons to give it the once over with the mower. Hedgehog activity in the garden has tailed right off. The night before last saw one brief visit and last night none was detected by the trail or feeding cameras. I wonder whether it is a mama hog about to give birth. As for the fox. That hasn't been detected for quite a while. I am gradually building up a collection of video clips of the different birds which come to the old waterfall for a drink. Not enough yet to make a video.

Caught on camera?



Just a Wood Pigeon in full flight.

P.S. From what I have just read hoglets are not due untl June or July so it's too early in the year for that.

How Time Flies

After a bit of judicious trimming of vegetation and re-positioning the IR detector I set things up again to see what wildlife was visiting for a drink or a quick bath.

Here is the IR detector in place:

 

I was thinking I had built this a couple of years ago and was astounded when I found out I had originally written about building it ten years ago here (Heath Robinson Strikes Again). While the weather is fine I have left the detector in place so the birds get used to it being there.

A few regulars from Tuesday:

House Sparrows


Female Blackbird


Robin

(must remember to set the camera to manual focus)

Wood Pigeons


At least there were fewer false triggers and empty photos to delete.

Having an Early Morning Paddle

A Few Regulars

Coal Tit:


Blue Tit:


Great Tit:


Robin:


Wood Pigeon:

Friday at the Flicks - Showering in the Rain Shower

 

As mentioned earlier in the week here is the video of a Wood Pigeon taking a shower in the pouring rain:



Haven't managed any photos yet but I see the new broods are starting to arrive. I spotted a fledgling Blackbird and probably a fledgling Dunnock being fed in the garden.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Showering in the Rain

'Twas a good job I woke a bit earlier than usual on Sunday morning. Heavy rain was forecast and it was just beginning to drizzle so we went walkabout before things got worse. For once the forecasts were correct as heavy rain set in by 6.30 a.m. and it didn't clear until 1 p.m.. At least the 16mm of rain had topped up my rain water containers and given the land, which had become parched, a good watering.

As often happens in heavy rain one of the Wood Pigeons took advantage to have a good shower:



They will spend time first raising one wing and leaning over to get everything wet. Then they will raise the other wing and keep alternating until they are thoroughly soaked. I managed to take some video clips which I will save for Friday at the Flicks.

The temperature had risen nicely but by teatime we were again having heavy rain but this time accompanied by a thunder storm which means poor old Penny was having one of her panic attacks, shivering and panting. She really is badly affected by thunder.

Fortunately the storm passed through very quickly and was followed by nice Sunset to end the day:

 

Super Poop

Maybe best not read while eating.

Glorious day Friday. Lots of Sun. Temp up to 20C
Got the grass cut nearly a week early as rain is forecast to arrive Sunday and the whole of next week threatens to be cool and wet. Before cutting the grass I spotted a pile of poop:



By far the largest I had ever seen in the garden. What sort of creature could have produced it? From the size thoughts tend to go towards a mammal of some sort but you would be wrong. Twas a bird. Not a vulture or eagle (which we don't have here). No - believe or or not it came from a Wood Pigeon. The main time you are likely to find this size of pigeon poop is when they are nesting. According to one site I read, pigeons have what they called a built in cesspit where they can store waste products until they find a suitable time and place. So the birds can incubate eggs for long periods without having to leave the nest. The result being the sort of poop I found in my garden.

Waiting for Breakfast

Another nice Sunrise yesterday:



Hard to see on the wide angle shot but in the background is the usual gathering of Wood Pigeons waiting in their favourite vantage point ready to descend on the nearby field:

Friday at the Flicks - Wood Pigeon, Starlings

Just a couple of the regulars this week. There are always two or three Wood Pigeons hanging round the garden cleaning up the seed dropped by the smaller birds. The only problem is they can make more mess than they clear up.



There were several weeks when I hardly saw any Starlings in the garden but I think some of the Winter visitors have now joined the locals so there is usually a noisy session each morning as they squabble over whose turn it is at the Birdy Bistro.



The ticking which can be heard occasionally is the auto focus on the camera being picked up by the built in microphone. I must have a look round for an external one.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you, even the ordinary everyday ones.

Friday at the Flicks - Feeding the Youngster

Several juvenile Wood Pigeons visiting recently - as if there weren't enough of them about already. This morning I spotted an adult feeding a juvenile:




Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Chaffinch Song, No Hands Bread Eating, Pheasant

A bit more birdy activity captured this week. To begin with, after days of trying to find a Chaffinch which had spent many hours singing I managed to capture this bit of video:



Yesterday I was laughing out loud as I watched a Wood Pigeon with a piece of bread which had fallen from the feeder where I put it for the corvids. In its energetic tries to pull small pieces to eat the bread was flying all over the place: A corvid would have stood on the bread to hold it still.



I think I have a friend for life. When I see the Pheasant in the garden I go out and throw a few peanuts on the grass for it. Yesterday I did that twice and each time it moved a short distance away from me. On a third occasion I took some stuff out to put in the recycle bin. This time the Pheasant came rushing over to me expecting more food.  In this clip it is swallowing one of the peanuts. I have seen it do this in the past when a peanut is only just big enough for it to eat. (no sound on this clip)



All this week's video were shot using an Hitachi DVC Cam.

The Difficulty of Predicting Auroras.
Yesterday the strong CME (Coronal Mass Ejection / Solar flare) from the Sun did hit the Earth's magnetic field. It did not spark off the possible widespread auroras we had hoped for. Why? There is a good explanation on the NASA site.
Imagine the Earth's magnetic field as a bar magnet. The cloud of charged particles from the Sun also acts like a bar magnet. If both of these imaginary bar magnets are the same way round there is a small disturbance to the Earth's magnetic field resulting in some aurora activity near the Earth's poles. If they are the opposite way round to each other then there can be a large effect resulting in magnetic storms and auroras over a much greater area of the Earth. Although the strength of a solar flare can be measured as it leaves the Sun, the direction of the magnetic field (which way round the bar magnet will be) is not known until it arrives here so it is difficult to predict how widespread auroras will be.

There may be a chance tonight - strong magnetic variations have been detected by the Lancaster University magnetometer in Crooktree, Scotland since about 06.30 GMT Let's hope they continue until tonight.

Wings on Wednesday - It's My Garden

A few days ago I spotted a couple of Wood Pigeons having a bit of a contretemps. It looked as though one had decided the other wasn't welcome in his garden.









There was a lot of fluttering and leaping about but neither came to any harm.

The slideshow was put together using the app Splice (free version) on the iPad.

Friday at the Flicks - Moorhen, Rainy Weather

I don't see the Moorhen every day as sometimes it arrives while I'm still in the land of nod and leaves before we get up. On the whole I am pleased it doesn't stay all day. Since it arrived and decided water lily flowers were delicious I am lacking some colour in the pond.

Here an early morning visit:


The Moorhen may be smaller that a fat waddling Wood Pigeon but it is the only bird I have see attack one and drive it away from food.

Here the Moorhen went walkabout on the frame that supports the feeders and even spent a short while on the wires above. Unfortunately I missed recording it walk along the wires:


Finally another time when a Wood Pigeon took advantage of a rain storm to have a thorough shower. At one stage the rain was so heavy I thought it would knock the pigeon over.

Have a great weekend obsering the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Bathing Birds, Clouds, Song Thrush

Juvenile Starlings are always good for a smile when they bathe. Sometimes they soak themselves so much they can't fly. Several times I have seen three or four in the bird bath going round in circles trying to get in the deepest bit of water. Also amusing is the way Wood Pigeons sit out in the open in pouring rain and lift their wings so that the rain can get at the feathers underneath.



It is quite a while since I last made a time lapse video. One sunny day a couple of weeks ago I set up the 350D, a wide angle lens and my home made intervalometer to take a shot every ten seconds. This is the result of just over four hundred individual photos. I forgot that the lens hood would mask the coners of the frame!



Finally a video of a Song Thrush enjoying the remaining rays from the Sun as it reached the horizon. The start of the video is as the recorder saw it. The bird was two houses away from my garden. The second section is a crop I made using Aiseesoft Total Video Converter so the definition suffers somewhat. Also heard in the background are a couple of Blackbirds and a Wood Pigeon.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Tadpoles, Wood Pigeon, Wren

Not the best of days today. Spent ages trying to beat a WiFi PCI card into submission, waited in for three days now for a delivery which seems to have gone AWOL and watched paint dry while the video clips uploaded to YouTube. Anyway, got there in the end though it took a while for my remaining grey cell to work out what YouTube had done with the 'embed' facility. Now I have to click on the 'share' button which then reveals the 'embed' button. Why do the encoders at these places have to keep messing about and making it more difficult to use?

The last time I filmed the tadpoles in the nursery pond was on the 2nd of this month when they were skinny little things with large external gills. This morning I filmed them again. They have matured well in the past two weeks and are now large enough to enjoy eating floating Koi sticks as well as all the algae they are scraping off everything in the nursery pond.



 This morning I saw a Wood Pigeon sat on the ivy growing the other side of my fence and having a grand tuck in to the ripe berries.



Finally, also seen this morning,  a Wren sat on top of my artificial wagon wheel having a very energetic preening session. It may appear to be speeded up but it is actually filmed at normal speed. To give an idea of the size of a Wren to those who are not familiar with them - the wood of the wheel is about 2 inches (50mm) wide.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Feathered Visitors to the Pond

As it was a dry day, mostly, on Monday I again set up the 350D and the home brew IR detector to automatically photograph any birds which visited the garden pond waterfall. The IR detector goes near the waterfall and the camera on its tripod is set up at the opposite end of the pond. Once they have been in place a short while the birds carry on visiting as usual.

Wood Pigeon


Collared Doves


Male Blackbird


Starlings can be guaranteed to have a good splash about


My favourite of this batch:
Female Blackbird - shall I have a drink, have a bath or continue nest building?


Slightly out of focus range, a male Chaffinch looking dapper in his mating plumage.


Wet and windy today so the auto setup will have to wait until the weather settles for the next attempt.

Friday at the Flicks - Nestbox, Ripe Berries, Ladybird

I think the Great Tit had better make its mind up about using the nest box as a nesting site as it is not the only one interested. A few days ago I happened to catch sight of a Blue Tit in there. Luck must have been on its side as a minute after it had left the Great Tit arrived.



I had often wondered why there were so many berries left on plants, especially after a harsh Winter. I can only assume they were not ripe enough. It would appear that they are in just the right condition now as a Female Blackbird and a Wood Pigeon were seen helping themselves.



Yesterday was a beautiful day. The afternoon temperature just topped 14C.
It would seem Spring may not be too far away. Not only have more birds been singing and the local Hedgehog getting up and about but I also spied this seven spot ladybird on the move from its winter shelter. The video is a bit wobbly as it was taken hand held with the Lumix TZ7. Seeing it close up was the first time I had noticed little things like the order it moves its legs when walking.



That's it for another week. Have a great time observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Amorous Wood Pigeon, Pair of Stock Doves

There hardly seems to be any time of year when the Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves don't think about breeding.



On cold days recently there has often been a solitary Stock Dove and very occasionally a pair visiting the garden.



RSPB BIG GARDEN BIRDWATCH
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you and don't forget that this weekend is  RSPB  Big Garden Birdwatch time in the UK. Can you spare an hour any time over the weekend to count the bird visitors to your garden or other area? If so visit the  RSPB web site for details.

A Bath Too Far

Spotted this Wood Pigeon a while ago. At first I couldn't work out whether it was soaking wet or had been in a fight.



In the end I decided it was soaking wet. My thought is that it had either been very vigorous  in bathing in the waterfall on the pond or it had fallen in. Looking at it I think it had, as I have often seen, been standing on the raised edge of the pond to drink and lost its balance. Either way it took a couple of days for it to dry out completely.

More Blackbirds by the Dozen

The colder the weather the more Blackbirds arrive in the garden at first light. This morning, at -6.5C, I counted at least 26 Blackbirds milling around the back garden gobbling up the seed I had scattered late yesterday.

Watching this male Blackbird searching in the snow yesterday reminded me of an old television advertisement for a make of toothpaste which used the sound bite - Ring of Confidence....



Here a female Blackbird with its feathers fluffed out to keep warm.



Many of the birds show frost on their backs and wing feathers.

Wood Pigeon:


Rook:


Every so often a group of Goldfinches arrives. One day so many arrived I had to put up a second feeder just for them. They don't exactly welcome any other birds to share their food store.



A prolonged cold spell like the one we are having is very hard on wildlife. Yesterday it was mentioned on the television that small birds such as Robins don't have enough body mass to use to generate enough body heat over a long freezing night. Small birds like the Blue Tits can lose a third of their body weight in shivering (the way small birds keep warm) during a night of freezing temperatures. Last night's minimum here was just below -9C and even in the daytime it is only managing the dizzy height of -1.5C

There is a certain four legged hairy monster which insists on exploring from time to time. He goes out, has a quick enquiring bark to see if one of his girlfriends is about, ambles round his favourite spots and then charges back in and curls up in his chair - until the next time.