Every time I arrive at the pond the heron takes one look at me and flies off. This time it was reluctant to leave, perhaps because it was busy eating frogs or frogspawn on the far bank.
The swans are back to four, one adult and three youngsters, so the new arrival from last week has been seen off. Here the adult is walking from the smaller to the larger pond.
At first I could see only one Canada goose and I was half hoping the fox had had another good dinner.
Then I spotted Mrs CG on the island, already incubating a clutch of eggs.
This was time to do my first bumblebee walk of the year for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. I saw only three bees, all buff-tailed bumblebee queens (Bombus terrestris). This one was searching for a nest hole.
I saw several peacock butterflies but they were all rather frantic and I didn't manage a decent photo. I also saw the first bee fly (Bombylius major) of the year. It mimics a bee but is a parasitic fly, targeting solitary bees and wasps.
A brief follow-up on two previous posts. I posted photos of a woodpecker before Christmas with a rather deranged hairstyle, probably sustained in a sparrowhawk attack.
Well he is still around. I am pleased to say the feathers have regrown over the bald patch on the back of his head but the sticking out feathers still stick out. Otherwise he is as good as new.
And earlier this month I wrote about a fox with a serious leg injury.
Well the fox is still about as well. It is still hobbling on three legs but doesn't seem in pain, as far as one can tell. The wound on the lower leg seems to be healed but the leg still won't take any weight. As you can see in the photos the fox can now put its foot to the ground but the leg is still in an abnormal posture. From the way it looks when the fox walks I think the leg must be broken but the fox doesn't look too thin, which I guess is a good sign.
I have had a few blank nights with the trail cameras trying to catch badgers recently but at last some success. There are lots of signs of activity with busy trails and lots of digging but trying to predict where they will be on any given night hasn't been easy. I returned to the badger bridge which is formed by the trunk of a tree that fell across the stream. I could tell that it is in regular use and set up an infrared video camera at each end. Nearly all of the traffic was in one direction so one camera only had pictures of retreating badgers but the other one was pretty good.
I also set up the Wingscapes camera which takes colour stills with a flash. It was strapped to a nearby tree overhanging the stream. It is the only one of four similar cameras that still works so I was very careful not to drop it in the water. It has a problem with sensitivity and took only three shots all night (whereas the infrared cameras each recorded over 40 video clips) but the three are worth seeing.
In the past few days there has been activity in the camera nest box with multiple visits from a pair of blue tits. When I cleaned out all the other nest boxes in the garden at the beginning of the year I left this one untouched. It was started by a pair of blue tits last year but they stopped before their nest was completed, probably because one of them was taken by a sparrowhawk. I left it to see what happened as it already has a layer of dried moss which should save this year's birds some work. The first view a few days ago was in early morning in poor light so the camera was mostly in infrared mode and the pictures were mainly black and white.
Here is a short video clip in better light to show the two of them.
This box has been up since 2009 and has been occupied every year since then. In the first year it had great tits and in 2017 a pair of tree sparrows. Every year from 2010-2016 it was occupied blue tits. I have records of the date of the start of nest building for 5 of the previous 6 blue tit nests and it varied between 09 March and 04 April, presumably influenced mainly by the weather. So far I haven't seen any nest material being brought in this year but these birds have a head start. First laying dates in the past have varied between 23 April to 10 May with clutches of 2 to 11 eggs. In the 8 years of blue tit nests altogether there were 43 eggs, of which 42 hatched and all 42 fledged, so productivity has been relatively good. If these two do take over the box and complete the nest I'll post regular updates on a separate page via a "Nestbox Camera 2019" tab at the top of the blog. That's assuming they evade the sparrowhawk.
The good news is that all the swans survived the week - in fact there is even an extra one this week. The newcomer is a full-grown cygnet, in almost adult plumage with just some brown on the wings. I presume he has flown in from a nearby pond or lake, possibly Big Waters, which is only 1km away as the swan flies.
I think he is a he is he has a very powerful neck.
The others didn't appreciate his arrival. Most of the time he kept his distance but if he got too close one of the resident youngsters was keen to chase him off.
Here is the challenger, presumably also a male, in full display.
At one point he chased the newcomer onto the bank.
Less good news is the arrival of a pair of Canada geese, presumably with a view to nesting here.
The Canada goose family last year did a lot of damage to the surrounding vegetation, possibly worsened by the drought. I wonder if the fox likes the taste of goose?
The sparrowhawk is still in the garden every day, sometimes for hours at a time. I haven't seen many kills recently but I don't now spend much time watching him. He must be making a living because he seems fit and healthy. He continues to spend most of his time sitting on the far side of the kitchen garden.
From there he can launch attacks all over the garden.
Sometimes he comes closer to the window and now that the sun is higher in the sky he may be in better light.
Another recent perch is an old log a bit farther away.
Here he is monitoring the sky from there.
The sparrowhawks here in the two previous winters both disappeared by the end of March so we'll see what this one decides to do.
Most times when you see a roe deer in the woods it is watching you intently, having seen/heard/smelt you before you spotted it, or it is running away. This time I did something different with the trail cameras and it allowed me to get a few videos of the deer when they were completely relaxed. I set up two cameras on a tree beside a trail that looked as though it was in use and left them there for five days and nights. There was less traffic than I had hoped but I did get a few clips of the deer, even if they mostly didn't stick to the trail and so weren't walking or looking in the right direction. Deer are the most unpredictable of the animals in the woods as they wander all over and won't take any bait, preferring to find their own food.
Here are three deer, walking across the trail and not along it (!) - a doe, a buck and a young doe, dawdling.
Some of them are looking a bit scruffy as they start to moult their dark winter coats.
The resolution of the cameras is less good at night when they use their own infrared light source.
This buck has uneven antlers so he should be easy to identify if I see him again.
On the last morning there was a brief fall of snow. Here are images from both cameras.
This was my set-up. I had two cameras at about (my) knee height which was perfect for the roe deer which are small, roughly the size of a sheep.
When I am targeting smaller animals such as foxes and badgers I put the cameras on the ground. There were several clips with a fox or a badger but the videos weren't great because of the camera height.
On several clips there was no animal to be seen but the audio revealed heavy breathing, snuffling or footsteps as something, probably a badger, investigated the camera out of view. One of the cameras has a low-glow infrared source meaning there is a faint visible light. This fox turned round and saw it, took fright, and ran off.
Other sightings (not shown) were pheasant and American grey squirrel. Most exciting of all was a tawny owl which pounced on something immediately below the camera. It must have been so quick that it didn't trigger the camera until it had already landed. It had a quick look around and flew off but was too close and so out of focus. If only it had landed a metre or two farther back it might have been a good picture.
