Materials Man

I was in good time, having left Whitelee wind farm at 12.30 where for you road techies we are laying blacktop on a floating road, designed by several heads and road note 29, yes road note 29. Without fuss or hindrance got back to the m74 to travel south to Locherbie, when after junction 6 met solid traffic doing that stop starting shuffle. Radio Scotland informed me there was a breakdown on the south bound and traffic was building up, aye, right it was, 4/5 miles of it! there was several breakdowns in the hard shoulder, probable over heating as it was 28 degrees C. I was ever hopeful that having passed a breakdown the traffic would clear, not a bit of it. 40 mins of stop start and i see cones, two lanes into one, some bloody breakdown, it’s roadworks, and as I clear the jam I see the cause, bloody verge grass cutting. Now this is just stupid, how much does it cost to hold back 4/5 miles of traffic for 3 hours rather than pay the guys triple time to do it on a Sunday, they would be happy and so would the travelling public.

Job done

plus whats the point of cutting 1.5 metres of grass next to a verge?, I have seen in Englandshire motorway grass cutting at marker posts only and the like. Sensible cutting focussed on a purpose, not blind exercising of a contract that globally costs the public and private purse more than the spuriously beneficial action.

Well whatever wasps have nice for eating have attracted yet another dig em up raider. this is about 35 m away from the one I posted about earlier, the earlier one, despite me thinking it was being abandoned, is still on the go as well. So why not dig into that one  again? the job is half done. And because it is half done it surely cannot be a honey buzzard? Daft dozey badgers probably, or as I like to think of them, big scratchy weasels.

One country item I have learned is that a wasps nest is / would be hard to find but for a dig em up diddy doppy brock. This latest one has an original entrance that looks like a mouse hole and this entrance is 300mm away from the one one excavated and in the photo, that could be a rather large wasps nest.

Anyway I postulate as i do not know for sure what creature is responsible for digging out wasps nests just to the point of exposure.

While walking towards a small wood, a fox was walking up the side of it 200m away. I stopped he/she did not, but spotted me within a few fox steps and it half barked and disappeared into the wood. After about two hours I was climbing a gate at the other side of the same wood when a movement on a path about 5m away caught my eye, knowing there was a fox around (there usually is) I stood on the spars on the gate exactly at the point when I had seen the movement. A game of patience ensued as I did not move and the fox came into view, but my camera was in my pocket. Anyway I did get it out and took a few snaps, most of them useless as the camera focused on the herbage not the fox, it was on spot focus and spot exposure as well!  One of the three here is not bad. I would say in the face of springwatch and other programs, that, foxes have much more of the AHH factor than badgers, to me a badger is a big scratchy weasel. I don’t get the cute factor at all. Mind you if I kept chickens or ducks Mr fox would have a much reduced cute factor!!

This fuzzy pic was taken this morning, and clearly the female is watching me. I had watched from a less disturbing point earlier and I could only see one chick. no female and male preening nearby, and 30 mins later there was still only one chick, now I was worried where on earth was the other chick?  Took my eye of the scope to look around me and when I  looked again within a minute, there was the female and she had a fish, not that I could see it but she attempted to pick off a bit and feed the chick. Chick was not interested in feeding neither was she and she just stood there, dozing I swear. Now i see the other chick, phew, little sod was kipping in the nest bowl.

Next thing that happened was interesting, the male hops next to the female opens his wing lowers his head and sidles to her, she is dozy and stays still. So bold as brass he has the fish, and I see it is as usual large one, back to his spot where he was preening and starts to feed. Now because I missed her arrival, did she bring in this fish, or was the fish there and she landed next to it? I will never know for sure but I think she brought it in, no one was hungry except the male. Now as he was feeding, for the first time I saw a yellow leg ring on his right leg. That is why I went closer to see if i could photograph it. I couldn’t but I did get the chicks, then I retreated.

I retreated to the water side and was watching all sorts of stuff when on a pan around here’s my male Osprey with fish and ring in good view on a branch. Unfortunately my photos are fuzzy due to the wind and slow shutter speed but I have sent off some shots to the BTO to see if they can identify this male who is now clearly not the same male as 2007, as he had a silver ring with ES on it.

note the orange colour of the chicks eyes, they change to yellow later.

My brother, sent me this pic, could have done with a close up as well. however for you botanistists out there, it is an orchid? of some type, at Peel park near East Kilbride. Suggestion (from my brother) is early purple orchid?

I had checked out the Ospreys and was heading back from an uneventful session, except the females penchant for chasing crows. The male just sits there and she has a right go at them! two chicks are wing stretching, one is noticeably larger. Anyway i took a different path back to my car and saw this, or rather heard it.

Of course being a birder and seeing a plundered wasps nest, I’m thinking Honey Buzzard, but i don’t think so, not enough decidious forest here. Plus a honey buzzard would not have left the plunder behind as one of the photos shows large grubs. I believe this has been broken into by a badger and has fled under wasp attack, perhaps a fox did it as it was 10.00am and the wasps were still moving home. If a badger did it in darkness by 10.00 am you would have thought  the wasps would have moved. The wasps weren’t to bothered about me either, they were too busy moving nest.

Osprey chicks, there are two, are big enough not to need brooding so it is easy to confirm there numbers. My crap picture, I blam heat haze! should show two heads. The male when I arrived, I can now separate them by plumage differences, was doing his flapping about trying to stablise his footing near the nest. I knew he had a big fish just by this behaviour, and sure enough after feeding himself he flapped onto the nest and I caught a glimpse of a long skinny, covered in blood fish. I think it was a pike. Meantime she had gone chasing crows in a very determined manner, I think it was an excuse for some exercise. Meantime the male had looked at the fish now on the nest edge, and the chicks and had a bit chew at a stick in the nest. No attempt to feed was made. She came back and was calling when she settled, I wondered why? he had provided fish, so why was she calling? Anyway she started feeding the chicks and I thought I would go to the waterside as this happy family situation would last some time. I can’t see the Osprey’s nest from the waterside, but I was not surprised that I saw an Osprey perched on a pole. A wooden one not a polish farm worker. I just concluded it was the male from my nest, although I had never seen him on this perch. Within ten minutes another Osprey circles looking at landing in the shallow water, the female for a wash, I have seen her do this before and she takes a good ten minutes for ablutions, choosing the right depth of water that may take three flights and landings. But the other Osprey was on the pole and she was bathing, chicks left alone? I doubted it and took five mins to return to my usual spot, no female, but the male as I thought was on station. So a third Osprey is around. No surprise, I have seen visiting Ospreys before and there are many large trees around. But is it nesting?

I was also watching a pairs of hares, the picture is the buck having a stretch. To the non birders the big birds are the parents and the two wee heads are the chicks, yes they are heads, each facing the opposite way.