A few more squirrel photos

I have had time to process more squirrel photos from last week.  I was able to watch this squirrel feeding for 15 minutes.  It seemed to be taking pieces of fungus on the bark from underneath the branches and sitting on top to eat it. At times it was hanging from a branch by just the claws on its hind feet, completely fearless and ignoring the 50 foot drop to the ground.  Squirrels have ankle joints that can rotate 180° to enable them to do this and to run headfirst down tree trunks.  It is amazing to watch.

A walk round the pond - week 43

This feels like the end of the season.  It is cold this weekend and cold weather is set for the next few days at least.  I went to the pond at the beginning of the week and even then I could find only one dragonfly, a solitary male common darter.  He wasn't flying, perhaps he didn't have the energy.

There were no butterflies and no bumblebees.  Despite that, there were still a few flowers, hoping for a late-flying pollinator.

There were also plenty of fruits in the trees and hedges.

The two mute swans were still present and seem to have settled in.  I hope they stay.

The only other animal I saw was a tiny frog, no bigger than my thumbnail.

I think this will be the last in this series of posts on A walk round the pond.  I started in week 13 so that's 31 weeks in a row.  It has been fascinating to watch the changes in and around the ponds over three seasons.  I will continue to visit regularly but I am not sure what to do for next year's blog.  I could just repeat the weekly reports as the weather is likely to be different from this year's cold winter, wet spring and hot summer.  Another idea is to do a monthly report from January to December.  I'll have a think about it.

Good news and bad news

First the good news.  These photos were taken yesterday in Gosforth Park Nature Reserve, less than a mile from here as the crow flies.  This is first time red squirrels have been seen in the reserve for several years and it is more than two years since I saw one in my garden.

Then the bad news.  Twenty seconds after my first glimpse of a red squirrel and 20 yards away I saw an American grey and over the next few hundred yards in the same patch of woodland I saw several greys.  They took over in these woods and ousted the reds more than 10 years ago.

In recent years there have been concerted efforts to control the greys in and around Newcastle with limited success. Red squirrels are absent from most of England and we are on the front line of the battle between reds and greys. Generally the two species don't coexist for long but if greys can be controlled or removed the red squirrels can get re-established.  There continue to be sporadic reports of sightings of reds in and around the city so we are encouraged to keep up the efforts to support them.

Kingfisher

This blog has been a bit overrun recently by hornets, dragonflies, foxes and so on, so it is high time for a change.  I had a great time watching this kingfisher from the hide in my local nature reserve yesterday.   It is a female (orange colour on the underside of the bill) and a juvenile (dark feet and white tip to the bill).

She was fishing quite successfully, making several catches including small fish

and what I think were probably damselfly larvae.

The kingfisher was flitting from perch to perch, in very bright sunlight but varying the angle of the light.  When the low orange sunlight was nearly behind the bird a lot of her feathers looked black.

Here the side in the sun is black whereas that in the shade shows more blue.

When she moved a bit more into the sun there was more blue.

In full sun the colours changed dramatically.

Other things change as she moves.  Here the back appears as a bright blue band.

Here there are three stripes down the back.

Although she was comfortable with the presence of people in the hide she was constantly looking out for danger from sparrowhawks.  Fortunately none appeared.

A walk round the pond - week 42

The good news this week is that there are two swans.  The first one has brought its mate and they seem very settled. With luck they will stay until next spring and make a nest.  Whether they will stay all the time to stake a claim remains to be seen (I fear the Canada geese may also fancy returning).   While I was watching the swans spent most of their time preening.

There was also lots of wing flapping going on to get the feathers back in the right position.

Twice I saw a male migrant hawker in flight but I couldn't get a photo.  There were still plenty of common darters with several mating pairs making hay while the sun shone.

The only butterflies were small coppers

and large whites.  This one is a female.  It is quite late in the season to find it.

I saw a couple of bumblebees, a common carder and this one, probably a cuckoo as it has very dark wings and no pollen baskets on its legs - possibly Bombus barbutellus.

While I was photographing the bumblebee a common darter landed on my wrist.

I twice saw a hare, possibly the same one, but each time it was off too quickly for me to get a photo.  Birds I saw this week included goldcrests and a redwing, probably both winter visitors.  All the summer visitors (swallows, martins, warblers, etc) have gone.