Not all bad news

First the bad news.  The woodpecker was ousted from the hole he had built opposite my front door.  I saw him in several battles with a pair of starlings and the next thing there was a starling in the hole overnight.  Here is the male singing outside the hole.

And here is the triumphant pair just opposite their new-won hole.

The male has a blue base to his beak.

The female's is pink.

The starlings in the lower hole in the next door tree are well settled in.  This is the male

and the female.

Then the good news.  The woodpecker moved to the next tree about 5m away and is busy excavating another hole. This one is on the shady side so photography is less easy.

I'm slightly puzzled that he is working so close to another old hole (it had starlings in last year).  I wonder if they will link up inside?

Here he is chucking out beakfuls of wood chips.

In between all this hard work he regularly flies down to the woodpecker feeder outside the kitchen window.  His mate is about in the garden all the time as well.

My only hope is that he'll be able to hang onto this new hole and defend it from starlings.

More fun with BadgerCam

Another good night with the trail camera in the woods.  I look for a well worn trail and position the camera to look along it, hoping the target will be walking towards rather than away from the camera.  This night it worked out well.  There were 33 photos, a record for badgers, and here are the best of them.

I don't think the photos are all of the same badger.  If you look carefully the first two above show a badger with a muddy nose and more white on its ears and neck.  The others below show a cleaner badger with white only along the tops of its ears.  I think the second badger is also larger.  The first badger may have retreated and been replaced by a more relaxed animal but there was less than two minutes between the second and third photos.  I wonder if the last photo is different animal again.

I had a video camera set up as well.  The first video clip below shows that the badger suddenly becomes alert, possibly hearing the flash charging, and retreats when the flash fires.  The second clip, later in the series, shows that the second badger ignores the flash.  It also shows that badgers eat peanuts much more quickly than foxes do.  (It is also obvious that jackdaws are not sound sleepers - this was 1.30 am and you can hear them chattering in the trees above.)

Bird of the week - Turnstone

The turnstone is one of our most approachable small waders. 

The turnstone is Arenaria interpres, the messenger from the sand.

We mainly see turnstones in non-breeding plumage as they are winter visitors in the British Isles.  They can be found all around our coasts.

A few non-breeding birds remain in the summer.

This is where turnstones breed in Europe (from the EBCC Atlas).

Turnstones are circumpolar birds and are also common in North America, where they are known as ruddy turnstones. There they have a longer migration and some birds travel as far as Australia or New Zealand.

Thomas Bewick engraved this turnstone for A History of British Birds (1832).

Archibald Thorburn painted turnstones several times.

This one is with a grey plover (centre) and a golden plover (right).

This one is with a ringed plover (L) and a Kentish plover (R).

John James Audubon painted this plate for Birds of America.

You can listen to the BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day here.

Beach birds

When I went to see the snow bunting I posted a few days ago there were lots of other birds on the beach.  Among them were shore larks and twites (both yet to depart for breeding grounds), skylarks, and reed buntings.  Here are a few photos.