The Wildlife (and Gardening for Wildlife) thread

[elsiegee40]

Rescued a young Great Tit that had fallen down our woodburner flue (lucky it's summer!)

Could be it was trying to escape the sparrowhawk that's taken to hunting for prey round our bird feeder. It's way too fast to get any pictures!

 

Or it just fell. They’re curious and they’re clumsy.

 

It would be worth getting a bird guard cowl on that flue to stop it happening again. The smell of rotting bird when you come back from holiday is horrible!

[mikeprice]

There have been several blue tits around a nesting box in the woods at the bottom of next door's garden - they seem to have been nesting there and the chicks are just learning to fly!

 

 

 

bit blurry as they scare easily if I open a window or door so it was taken through a window - and they are at max of the zoom lens

[CHiLL]

I've got two imprints of pigeons on my bedroom windows. Dozy birds.

 

I'm in a ground floor flat and have a small tree ~3m away from the windows, where I've hung 1x seed feeder and 1x suet/nut feeder. I did have plastic ones, but the squirrels made short work of those. I've since gotten metal ones with a cage around them, so small birds can get inside. It doesn't stop the larger birds or squirrels reaching in, but at least they last...the plastic ones lasted half a day!

 

I frequently see Cole Tits, Blue Tits, Robins, Black Birds, Starlings, Magpies, Pigeons and Squirrels around. I have a small nest box on the wall just outside the window, which has been there for a couple of years now. Last year I had Blue Tits nest, then Cole Tits later in the year. I did have Blue Tits in it earlier this year, but I haven't seen them for months now and I don't think they were there long enough to raise chicks. I've been holding off taking it off to clean it out though.

[6Foot2]

Another visitor today, just outside my office door:

 

[stevejp]

Another visitor today, just outside my office door:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]58598[/ATTACH]

 

That’s at least three, now! Has your boss offered to buy a drink, recently...?

[6Foot2]

That’s at least three, now! Has your boss offered to buy a drink, recently...?

 

Ha! Nothing of the sort. I really do think it's a case of open windows and lights left on.

 

We seem to have a good variety, though.

 

[Ditto]

Anyone agree it's a Box Tree moth? Apparently an Asian moth introduced by accident just over a decade ago. The caterpillar is not popular around here, where in numbers it can decimate Box plants very quickly, especially problematic for those in to topiary.

[6Foot2]

Anyone agree it's a Box Tree moth?..

 

Looks like a good match:

 

Link: Box-tree moth [butterfly-Conservation.org]

[Ditto]

If the flag under your avatar is your location, this article suggests first sightings there were only three summers ago. There's a lot of data in that document that the entomologists will enjoy. It strikes me that the growth rate is quite explosive and I wonder if there is an 'R' rate for entomologists data in the same way as epidemiologists?! Or maybe the conspiracy theorists need to move their focus from 5G masts to moths...

[6Foot2]

If the flag under your avatar is your location, this article suggests first sightings there were only three summers ago...

For the removal of confusion/doubt: The flag is in honour of mum and dad who were both from Ireland. I live and work in Hertfordshire.

[Ditto]

Not moth related, but we had half a dozen starlings in my garden this morning foraging around at great speed, possibly picking up a lot of the dozy/dying flying ants that swarmed us yesterday - bigun's too! I haven't seen that many starlings in a long time, so good to see them making a comeback.

[elsiegee40]

Not moth related, but we had half a dozen starlings in my garden this morning foraging around at great speed, possibly picking up a lot of the dozy/dying flying ants that swarmed us yesterday - bigun's too! I haven't seen that many starlings in a long time, so good to see them making a comeback.

 

We had about 40 a month ago! Loads of juveniles all trying to get on the fat feeder simultaneously. Numbers have dwindled now although the parents are now bringing their second brood in to feed

[southhamster]

Just found a young Dunnock sitting on the floor of our bathroom! I think it must have fallen through the velux window and then didn't know what to do.

Managed to coax it into a box and put it outside where it flew off ok. We see them quite a lot here usually lurking round the hedges.

[elsiegee40]

On our regular lockdown walk we pass a small pond and have been following the fortunes of a pair of moorhens that nested on a tiny island in the pond.

 

On Good Friday they hatched 8 chicks of which 5 made it to feathered freedom.

 

Before they left home, the adults hatched a second brood in the same nest (albeit slightly bigger because they added to it). Bad weather affected these chicks. Two left the nest and the first 5 helped to feed them.

 

Then we saw the adults start to drive the first brood away.

 

Now the the two second brood chicks have feathers.

 

The island has grown as the pond water level has dropped, a nest has been built on a different site on the island and this week Mum has started sitting for the third time!

[Pink_Panda]

again, no pictures (sorry) but I was in work yesterday and noticed that a pigeon was nesting in the tree outside my window (yes, I've got one!), even saw one egg as the pigeon got off the nest to stretch its legs. Quite a result, as a pair attempted previously, but they never managed to build a nest, the twigs just kept falling down.

 

I'm not expected back in the office until mid August, so will probably not see the little one!

[elsiegee40]

again, no pictures (sorry) but I was in work yesterday and noticed that a pigeon was nesting in the tree outside my window (yes, I've got one!), even saw one egg as the pigeon got off the nest to stretch its legs. Quite a result, as a pair attempted previously, but they never managed to build a nest, the twigs just kept falling down.

Pigeons are spectacularly bad at nest-building. They will nest at any time of year unlike most birds... probably because they get such a high failure rate!

I'm not expected back in the office until mid August, so will probably not see the little one!

Awww. Webcam? Actually, the chick(s) might not have fledged by then so you could get lucky

[Pink_Panda]

Pigeons are spectacularly bad at nest-building. They will nest at any time of year unlike most birds... probably because they get such a high failure rate!

 

Awww. Webcam? Actually, the chick(s) might not have fledged by then so you could get lucky

 

yeah, I can believe that. Last time round it was painful to watch. You could see they wanted to build a nest, but one of them got various twigs and just put them on the branch, and they all fell down. They moved on after a while, so I don't know if they were successful somewhere else or not.

 

No webcam available, but hopefully they are still around, it's only three weeks...

[Dos_Box]

Watched the second osprey chick at Foulshaw fledge live on the webcam yesterday. Apparently they are now learning to fly around the reserve and the opther day they had 7 differnt ospreys in the area (I'm told there are a lot more ospreys around that part of Cumbria than they'd like to admit as they can't monitor/protect them all).

Off up there after work to watch them flying.

You can watch one of them right now eating a large fish it's caught. This is one of the fledgelings too!

 

https://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/cams/osprey-cam

[elsiegee40]

Watched the second osprey chick at Foulshaw fledge live on the webcam yesterday. Apparently they are now learning to fly around the reserve and the opther day they had 7 differnt ospreys in the area (I'm told there are a lot more ospreys around that part of Cumbria than they'd like to admit as they can't monitor/protect them all).

Off up there after work to watch them flying.

You can watch one of them right now eating a large fish it's caught. This is one of the fledgelings too!

 

https://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/cams/osprey-cam

 

Still eating now. That is/was a big fish

[Dos_Box]

Still eating now. That is/was a big fish

 

It was, mind you, the Kent estuary is a very good hunting ground for ospreys.

[elsiegee40]

It was, mind you, the Kent estuary is a very good hunting ground for ospreys.

 

One rather full Osprey now having a snooze

[Andrew_C]

One rather full Osprey now having a snooze

Is that nest deeper than it looks? It seems that no one is home at the moment.

[Ditto]

Needs a 'Gone fishing' sign methinks!

[LeMarchand]

Sea lion having fun while pool is being cleaned.

 

[6Foot2]

We had another visitor today (not a moth, this time)

 

A robin was trapped in one of our Technology classrooms:

 

 

Apologies for the terrible image (a combination of the awful camera on my phone and not being able to get close to the robin)

 

I was able to encourage it to leave through a hole in the wall (probably its route in)

 

Before departing, it left a few 'presents' here and there: