Return of the Hammers

 At Margie's behest,nay insistence and against my better judgement we stayed up late on Friday to watch the Scotland match, not only was it a predictably poor performance by the Scots and a dull match all round, the foolishness of the decision was compounded by  Margie sleeping through the whole second half! All this meant I was to knackered to go birding in the morning! Ended up having  a haircut and making a rather tasty Gluten Free Loganberry,sour cream cake, so not a total loss!! 

 So having regained some energy from a couple of slices, I headed out for an afternoon walk down Bullfinch Lane to check out the Yellowhammer situation, ever since I have been visiting and then lived in Hurstpierpoint the Yellowhammers have been frequenting this area, indeed my first ever blog post documented this same walk, see link below! 

First Post

In the last couple of years numbers seemed to have dropped off, this coinciding with the flailing of the hedge to about half its original size, not all at once but each year's cut taking it down. However over the last couple of years the hedge has not been flailed, not sure if this is deliberate or just welcome neglect, happily this seemed to have resulted in the Yellowhammers increasing, on yesterday's walk I heard 4 males singing and a couple of others with beak fulls of insects presumably feeding young! Not sure how many altogether but at least 5!  Hopefully the hedge can be maintained at this sort of size to keep them around!! The fields don't seem to have been cut yet either, I saw several Skylarks carrying food, so let's hope the mowers are held back for a few more weeks so that the young can fledge! Anyway a few pics below, Linnets, Swallows and a Red Admiral that thinks he owns the place among the other highlights!

Before we start a young Blackbird from the Garden, probably the offspring of the Legendary Mr White-Eye! Second brood this year!

At the start of Bullfinch Lane there are always some Hoverflies under the overhanging trees, they are blooming hard to get pics of!

I had a quick diversion to have a look over the Horse Paddocks, lots of Swallows which are to get pics of than Swifts but at least they gave the decency to land on the wires occasionally!

Swallow in Flight

Obligatory Church Pic

First Yellowhammer of the walk!

Yellowhammer Alley

The hedge is much thicker than last year, this helps stop Magpies and other predators getting to the nests!

Female yellowhammer, for one brief glorious minute I thought it was a Corn Bunting, but no a Yellowhammer

Linnet

Couple of Stock Doves

Rather a lot of Rooks!

With food for the youngsters, actually heard the young calling as he dropped into the hedge!

Skylark, saw several, mostly just flying low over the fields or chasing each other, but a couple went up for a singsong 

Red Admiral, seems a bit snooty!

Calf doing it's best to look cute but the Flies not helping the cause!

Had another crack at the Swallows on the walk back, with a predictable lack of success!

Linnets, the light was difficult, there were about 8 but all seemed to be adults

Creating the next generation

Job done, have a bit of a pose! Whose the daddy!!

All in all an enjoyable couple of hours nice to see reasonable numbers of Yellowhammers and Linnets, all looks nice and scruffy up there, lets hope the next owners will not be in to much of a hurry to "tidy up" Nature likes mess!!!!

On arriving home the Swifts were once again screaming around the house so I tried for a few shots, Margie informed that while I was at work on Friday, there Swifts hanging off the Ladder of our new Box!!! The old box has a pair so fingers crossed for a good year! The pics are gradually getting better, a few below!