Better Than Expected!!

 After feeling bad all week, though bravely struggling on at work obvs😏,so brave! I've pretty much just rested up this weekend, so after trips to B&Q and Tesco this morning I decided to have a lunchtime walk down Bullfinch Lane, the bright skies and strong breeze leaving me hopeful of a bit of Raptor migration, been a couple of Black Kites reported along the coast this week, would be an overdue lifer for me, but to be honest not that hopeful but you never know could be an Osprey, Honey Buzzard or one of the released WTE on the move, I'm ever hopeful or deluded you decide!! 😂😂 To be honest wasn't really expecting much due to the time of day!

I actually drove the half a mile from my house to Bullfinch Lane with reduced energy didn't want to waste it walking through a housing estate!! Quickly kitted up and headed down the lane the top is dark with overhanging trees, a couple of very active Speckled Wood Butterflies which I failed to get a pic of and some nice bluebells which were easier to take pics of 😂

Bluebells

At the first Junction I turned right for a little excursion to look over the Horse Paddocks, one day there will be a Hoopoe or at least a Wheatear, but not today though nice to see a couple of Swallows on the wires, not seen a House Martin or a Sand Martin yet this year!

Swallow as you can tell the light was at a point that was beyond my ability to get a decent pic despite the birds being very patient

The pair male with the long streamers

 Back on the lane I took my traditional pic of the church and while grilling the dung heap at Pakyns Farm  a Goldfinch landed on the wire right above my head!! Painful on the back but nice to see.

HPP Church

Goldfinch

I carried on down the lane, heard but couldn't find a couple of Chiffchaffs and a Blackcap but as expected was pretty quiet. As the track turns to a footpath things open up, with great views of Wolstonbury Hill and the Downs, as I walked up the path there were Skylarks singing on both sides, blue skies and a nice breeze as promised, very pleasant. headed down Yellowhammer alley to Yellowhammer corner, the hedge here has been taken down at least 2 feet since I've been in HPP however the Yellowhammers have hung on, as I walked along I heard a bird calling on the edge of the hedge, quick check in the bins, yep a Yellowhammer whoop! It posed quite well, giving the monosyllabic call, no "little bit bread and no cheese" song though!

Yellowhammer

Probably a few too many pics but a little cracker!! I made a stand at the crossroads and spent a happy hour  listening to the Skylarks and scanning for Raptors, on the Yellowhammer front, after the initial bird above I had a female fly deep into the hedge then pop her head up for a couple of minutes a couple of flyovers and a distant bird singing along the hedge right at the bottom of the field, has to be said the hedge was quiet, last year there were a pair of Dunnocks and a pair of Wrens, neither of which I saw or heard today and also last year standing in the same position there were calls coming constantly from the hedge which this year once the original bird left was very quiet, still on the bright side at least there are still some about! 

In terms of Raptors I had about 5 Buzzards mostly distant, a Kestrel also distant, a Sparrowhawk also distant and then from the southwest heading straight towards me a Kite could it be? Obviously not, soon became clear it was very bright Red Kite with it's 5 primaries and disgustingly white wing patches, it did at least have the decency to fly right over my head although I mostly just got a dislocation of my spine and some horrible silhouette pics!

Red Kite

Think this is the  point where the back went 😂

Had one Buzzard in close being harassed by a Crow, a couple of flyover Stock Doves, lots of Gulls mostly Herrings plus the usual Corvids and Woodies

Stock Dove

Herring Gull

Buzzard/Crow battle

Getting a bit tasty

Female Yellowhammer

The only sign of any migration were three Swallows, at 3o'clock I called it a day as I walked off a Skylark took off quite close by, up to now they had all been singing massively high in the sky and those on the ground were to far from the path for pictures. My usual rubbish pics below😂

Swallow on the move!

Skylark in song flight

I headed back down the lane, quiet again til I got to the farm, where the Goldfinch once again performed well, I was just bemoaning the absence of the House Sparrow flock that used to be here when one started calling from the Ivy on the wall, judging by the commotion there were at least 3 in there!

Robin

Goldfinch

House Sparrow

Goldfinch on Dung, i am not obsessed with dung heaps!! honest guv!😂

I had a quick diversion for another quick squint at the horse paddocks, still no Hoopoe 😢 But were a couple of Mistle Thrushes running about in the long grass of the field opposite difficult to get pics, there were three Mole Hills in the field one of the Thrushes headed towards them, would it step  up on the hill allowing for a pic, I waited on tenterhooks, it skirted around it ,back and forth and then Bingo!! Of course once up there it pranced about like a good un!!

Good views of Wolstonbury from here

A distant Kestrel

Mistle Thrush

Finally on the Mole Hill

The Swallows were off the wires and zooming about the Paddocks but had been replaced by a nice Linnet having a sing.

Linnet

Dunnock 

That was about that, fairly quiet but what there was showed well, a very pleasant afternoon!!
 

Wildlife Garden

 No birding today, alarm went off at 5AM, felt crap so stayed in bed😢hopefully the Poms hold off til next weekend to come through😀 annoyingly I felt better by lunchtime!! 

Anyway whilst refreshing the pond with some water from the water butt, had no rain for ages, I spotted a frog in our pond so thought would do a post about our garden.

Frog in the pond

Our Garden is quite small 11 paces by 11 paces wide so not big by any standard, however it is still possible to do a lot for wildlife even in such a small space. Probably the best thing anyone can do in a garden is dig a pond, we dug ours in back in 2019, obviously for such a huge engineering feat you would expect all sorts of diggers and other earth-moving machines to be brought in ,but no I wasn't allowed had to dig it all by hand😢😲 when you take in my levels of fitness and the shoddy state of equipment at hand, scaled up it's the equivalent of building the Pyramids or Stonehenge!!😱

Basically an afternoons work and a few quid to the garden center for the materials, plants such as Hornwort, Marsh Marigold and Water Mint and you have what has become a source of endless interest and excitement, although obviously it depends on your threshold for excitement, it's not Bungee jump or spotting a Green-winged Teal levels of excitement but still fun.

The Pond today

Pretty much from the off the wildlife found the pond with various bugs and beasties being spotted, but this year things have really taken off  with several big lumps of frogspawn spotted producing  hundreds of Tadpoles this spring. Dragonflies and Damselflies have been in the garden and I'm pretty sure I've seen their Larvae in the pond so hopefully this summer some will emerge! The pond is also well used by the birds, with pretty much every species we have using it to bathe and drink from!!

A few of the Tadpoles

Marsh Marigold

Close up of the Frog bit concerned about his reappearance not sure if Frogs have cannibalistic tendencies hopefully he will stick to the Slugs and Snails that abound in the garden. 

Of course the Garden is not all about the Pond, it's also about plants, we have planted a couple of Trees/Shrubs the most obvious is the Rowan, this was planted as part of my long-term, extremely cunning plan to get Waxwings in the garden, a Cotoneaster is also part of the plan, although it does rather rely on a cold winter, a Waxwing irruption and the poxy Blackbirds not eating all the berries by the end of September😡 so pretty unlikely but I'm keeping hopeful!!😁 The Rowan was planted a few years ago as a 2ft long whip which I think we got from Tesco of all places it has now grown into a 20+ foot high tree which produces good amounts of Blossom in the spring for insects and as mentioned above plenty of Berries in the Autumn. It is a small tree with quite sparse foliage so good for a small Garden like ours.

The Rowan with plenty of Blossom starting to appear, that Trunk is pure Carbon Capture! Also look closely you can see our pair of Blackbirds, Berry stealers extraordinaire, but finding plenty of worms, think they are feeding young, didn't nest in our garden this year but the rate they are appearing at suggests youngsters nearby

Rowan Blossom

 

The Cotoneaster doesn't look much now but will soon be covered in white flowers and then in the Autumn a blaze of Red Berries particularly liked by our Blackbirds, the occasional Song Thrush and our over wintering Blackcaps

Forget-me-knot corner

The other major plant in our Garden is a Hawthorn again planted as a 2ft high whip at the same time as the Rowan which has spread out and again is almost 20ft high, it also produces large amounts of Blossom and Berries. Hawthorn is a very important plant in the countryside supporting numerous insects and birds, our visiting Blue Tits are always searching the branches for Caterpillars. It is a place of refuge for our Sparrows of which there are loads, they sit in it before heading to the feeders and flee back quick when the Sprawk appears!

The Hawthorn, 

Hawthorn Blossom

The area in front of the Hawthorn has been sown with wildflower seed and Beebombs again doesn't look much at the moment but has plants such as Birdsfoot Trefoil, Oxide Daisies and many I don't know the name of, it is a magnet for Bees, Butterflies and many other Bugs. It also has Teasels, now I like a Teasel, the flowers are excellent for Bees and the Seed Heads a favourite for Goldfinches and although we only have occasionally visits from Goldies I did on a red letter day get a picture of a Goldfinch on OUR Teasels. Margie however is not a fan as she keeps treading on the prickly leaves!!

Goldfinch on Teasel

We don't mow our lawn much, not as alleged, down to my latent laziness but to allow wildflowers to thrive, mainly Clover, Daisies and Forget-me-knots which are again favourites with the Bees, we used to have Ivy on our back fence which was excellent covered in Bees when in flower and the Birds loved the berries but unfortunately the owners of the building behind decided to slash it down along with the Bird Cherry tree, on the plus side the Honeysuckle,Wild Rose and the Winter Jasmine have taken advantage are slowly taking over and we have planted a replacement Bird Cherry on our side of the fence which seems to be flourishing and is covered in Blossom, the Blackcaps love the small berries.

Bird Cherry

Bee Hotel always seems busy, but may need an upgrade

Honeysuckle et al replacing the destroyed Ivy

Our garden is in a suburban area the nearest, fields or woods or several streets away most of the gardens around us have been paved or are just lawn, but we get some good stuff here, I like to think we are a green oasis in the desert!! Obviously people garden for many reasons traditionally for flowers, this of course can lead to a war on the insects that feed on them sprays and slug pellets cause havoc, other people pave them over for parking or ease of maintenance, others play areas for kids with trampolines and all sorts, all of course legitimate uses, although I personally believe that pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc shouldn't be on sale to the general public. Our plants are mostly natives that we have planted or have seeded themselves although we have a buddleia which brings in the Butterflies, they are there to create the ecosystem for invertebrates to thrive this in turn brings in the birds, there is always something of interest to see. I highly recommend this form of gardening it is easy, basically mow the lawn a couple of times a year and top up the pond from the water butt occasionally!! 

If more people turned their Garden or part of their Garden into a wildlife garden our wildlife would benefit massively, do you really need miles of sterile grass or worse plastic grass, if you have kids they will be stimulated and interested by the bugs and wildlife that appears also Frogs are awesome!!

We feed the birds, mainly Sparrows, Blue Tits and Starlings, the Sparrows have bred in the Terrace Box on the side of our house the last couple of years but this year the Blue Tits seem to have taken over one of the holes be interesting to see how they get on. We have a pair of Robins, a Pair of Dunnocks, 3 Woodpigeons that seem to spend the whole time chasing each other, a pair of Collared Doves, some Feral Pigeons visit occasionally, Blackcaps over winter and a wren appears every now and then. In the winter we get Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits and the odd visit from Greenfinch, Goldfinch and of course up to three Sparrowhawks visited last winter though not seen them lately, think I've only seen the catch one Sparrow though lots of failed attacks usually thanks to the Hawthorn!

Checking out the Box

Male House Sparrow on the Rowan

Female House Sparrow on the Rowan

Starling in The Hawthorn

Starling wars from a couple of years ago looking forward to seeing the noisy youngsters in a month or two

Starling having a bath, important to provide water, these days they wash in the pond were 12 in it the other day!!

Sprawk posed for Margie on the feeder, I was at work😢

Sparrowhawk 

Prize winning photo anyone 😁😁😁😁