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[CLKD]

Our heron doesn't undulate, he's too busy looking in my pond  - I am sure that's what was running across our roof in Feb/March  so we added more fishing line to the ponds.

Male blackbird gently chirping for meal worms earlier but however quietly I feed him, starlings are never far behind    Tadpoles growing in the top pond 

[Taz2]

Oblivious to the pike below and the heron above!

Blackbirds need less help than starlings though CLKD. Blackbirds are not in decline.

I'm watching the green woodpecker spiking the ants around the lamp post. I love their laughing call and one of the starlings mimics it exactly. Also mimics the buzzards flying overhead. Nice to see the buzzards, incidentally, rather than the red kites which seem to have driven the buzzards away. 

Taz x

[Wrensong]

Mrs Brown - thank you, but it's easy to conjure up a pretty picture at this time of year, when there's so much to enjoy out there.  Anyway I had some help - I'm sure the gently smiling jaws are familiar to many people as someone else's work!

[Mbrown001]

 

Just a bit.

Mrs Brown

[Wrensong]

Late afternoon yesterday, dodged a minefield of liberally strewn cow doings to walk beside the river in sweltering sunshine, the whole field to ourselves.  A brood of 8 new Canada goslings floating on the water, their prettily marked parents just behind & watching closely.  Coats more sparse fur than feather, the youngest of their type we can remember seeing here.  Clambered confidently out of the water & up the bank, tiny, pointy wings raised like elbows to stabilise their climb.  Realised with an inner shrug of helplessness, their stripy primrose down is close to the colour of highlights I paid an arm & a leg for last week, rather pretentiously & ever the optimist, asking for “platinum, pearl & silver”.  Seems instead, in the din of the salon, what my hairdresser heard was “gosling yellow, please”! 

[CLKD]

  ............

[babyjane]

still marvelling at nature as mummy sparrow has now finished feeding the babes and handed over care of the nestlings to daddy sparrow to teach them the art of being a sparrow - ie fending for themselves and using a bird feeder 

For some reason the lessons take place on our bottom patio in line with the kitchen window 

They get abandoned on the fence and sit there, all fluff and feathers, cheeping.  The reaction when daddy returns is like our dog when we come down in the morning, complete with waggly tails 

[Taz2]

They are lovely aren't they? Mummy sparrow will be busy with getting ready for the next brood.

Taz x 

[ariadne]

Our "neighbours" on the allotment showed us a robin's nest on their plot about 10 days ago. The nest was almost at ground level in a grass bank right next to where they have been building a shed. They hadn't spotted the nest until later. When I told them it would be best to leave the shed building u til after the birds had fledged and left the nest as the parents might abandon them if the shed building continued, they seemed surprised but took heed and left off working.

Since then we have all observed the parents coming and going and were quite excited about watching the babies grow and leave the nest.

Sadly it was not to be. Last night we noticed the parents were no longer flitting about and concerned, we rang our allotment neighbours to ask if they had seen them recently.

They were sad to tell us that they had discovered the nest empty and one dead  baby robin nearby😓

I knew robins nested low but is it common for them to nest at almost ground level? It seemed such a risky position within easy reach of cats and other predators.

I felt upset all evening thinking about the parent robins and all the hard work they had invested in nest building and feeding their brood.

Does anyone know if the pair are likely to build another nest together and rear another brood?

Ariadne xx

[CLKD]

Yep.  They will build whilst there are enough grubs to feed young ones.

We had a nest in a sack of potatoes that Himself was growing - with all the cats around the 3 chicks were raised and flew away 

[Taz2]

How sad Ariadne but, yes, Robins have two or three broods a year. They do build in silly places but robins aren't the only ones. There are some interesting nest sites here http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/wildlife/b/notesonnature/archive/2011/03/31/weird-nests.aspx

Taz x

[ariadne]

Good stories there - very interesting but couldn't get some of the links to work. Thank you for posting it Taz.

I hope their next brood survives. I feel like helping out somehow - providing a safer nesting place for a start! But who knows where they will choose next time. 

I was worried about the nest and did consider putting some metal mesh ( with robin sized holes) around it. I wish I had now.

Ariadne xx

[CLKD]

..... and frightened the parents away  - let Nature take her course otherwise the gene pool gets weaker and weaker ;-).  We had 1 nest in the greenhouse, I thought that all that glass would cook them but she/he raised 5 - we saw them fledge one evening.  Himself would spray cold water on the earth greenhouse floor to keep them cool. 

Our neighbour fed our hedgehog, he was late 1 evening and it was waiting  ........ we could hear a 'hog snuffling under the window where we were staying last night ...... hopefully we will be able to sit out by our ponds this evening, once we've watched Fernando Alonso racing in the US.

[Wrensong]

A good year for goslings on the river here - broods of 6, 7 & 8 looking bigger almost by the day.  Lovely, sunny clumps of flag iris, a buttery smear reflected on the dark surface of the water.  OH impressed me with a conjuring trick.  Said he wondered whether we would see a kingfisher.  Nah, I said, unwisely, wrong time of year - we only see them in September/October here.  No sooner were the words out of my mouth, than a flash of metallic blue sped low across the water & into overhanging branches on the opposite bank!  OH, looking the other way, missed it, but seemed satisfied to learn his instinct had been more reliable than mine.  Suspect it'll be a while before I live that down!

[babyjane]

A huge rook landed on the fatball feeder and it broke - the feeder not the rook!  I have never seen one so close up before, absolutely massive it was