As our site office just off the old Newton road was in disarray with desk moving yet again, I worked from home on the 24 and 25th of January, the dining area table is next to the large sliding double glazed door that I believe were once called "French windows". Anyway in that little corridor that abuts next door the 4 m space has moss growing on the concreted area and I was going to take a shovel to it to scrape the concrete clean when I noticed it was a regular feeding ground for a pair of hedge sparrows…
Went to see the battle of the five armies (the third part of the Hobbit) in IMAX, you have to watch this in IMAX it is truly amazing. It was a big day for me as I went to a barbers, a place I have not been to for years, same as the cinema. Oh and I did have a hair cut in a very busy Polish barbers shop, £9 quid well spent.
If you have read the Hobbit the title "the battle of the five armies" should perplex you, because in the book there is no battle after Smaug…
31/8/14, my son's birthday, and the osprey is still hanging around, surprised to see it. I assume it's the male, no sightings of marsh harriers at all, air is filled with swallows and martins then they're gone, obviously migrating. Saw a couple of hundred grey geese miles down the estuary and no chance to ID them due to heat haze. Assume early migrants, 35 Canada geese around, white domestic geese I think I counted five earlier in the season, well I saw three today. lots of swans and teal, saw some of the mute swans pairing up, the pair with…
Aug 18th by neilgd under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
11/8/14 been nearly a month since I visited the Ospreys, normally by now the juvs will have fledged and be around the eyrie being fed by usually the male and the female will usually be gone in a week, with the whole family migrated by the end of September. However this being the year of "nest frustration" I think both have gone as I saw and heard no Ospreys. The frustration nest in the man cage of the navigation pole has got bigger and was photographed from a boat that had obviously come down river to do just that, the…
13 July 2014, absence of bird song noticeable, even the swifts are quiet, went to the Osprey site for a couple of hours today and heard a reed bunting a robin tic tic ing and a great spotted woodpecker chip chip ing (calling, not chipping a branch), later a buzzard mewing at me and that was it. Oh and the female Osprey call begging for food, and from the frustration nest in/on a navigation pole, this man cage by the light is barely a metre by a metre in square dimensions, yet by careful entry two of them manage to…
Jun 28th by Ian under Bird Watching
I kinda knew where the Ospreys were, due to hearing begging calls and seeing the male bring in a fish to that area. The problem was I never looked behind me, when I was near the old, rebuilt by human hands, eyrie I looked behind me and there on a bifurcated pine was a large pile of sticks, too big for a buzzard or crow, but it was as described, a pile of sticks, and at an angle. I had walked under this tree several times and never heard a disturbed osprey annoyed at my presence. I have not yet…
Well it appears that my osprey diary could indeed come to an end, as I searched for them and failed to find them. The point is I searched where I could watch and failed, I certainly don't want to observe from a public place or the corner of a farmer's yard, kinda removes the "wildness" feeling.
However good news on the marsh harrier front, I just by mere fluke put my scope on a tree where a crow was scolding a male marsh harrier, and in his own time he departed to hunt, I watched him for about 30 mins…
Apr 21st by Ian under Bird Watching
Easter weekend and 4 days off, had two visits to the Osprey site where the usual viewing area showed no rebuilt eyrie, I did see an Osprey bathing in the estuary but it did not visit the eyrie site. On my second visit whilst "glassing" a female marsh harrier an Osprey with a fish came into the same view, ahh, which bird to follow? the osprey won and I watched it do, for me, unusual flight patterns, it circled like a buzzard over the far side of the estuary from the eyrie then after 4 or 5 circles it flew…
In the open plan office in Sth Devon I am fortunate to be on the second floor and have a window that looks out on the  remainder of the field not occupied by our office and car park. This about three acre patch is a useful distraction from email dross and open plan verbiage, it is suprising the regular bird visitors it has, carrion crows, magpies, meadow pipits, buzzard and kestrel, I have just watched a male kestrel succeed in the capture of a small item, shrew or mouse I guess, our convenient setting out posts was chosen as a perch to …
I saw our site friendly buzzard again eating human food, this time it was on top of the security cabin the food probably placed there by the guards.
I know the contact call of long tailed tits and whilst standing quietly under a tree with about a dozen of them feeding and calling, their calls all changed to a shrill Chree, Chree,Chree, then a buzzard flew over. so I had learned a new call, an alarm one. Within five minutes I heard it again and looked up, a female sparrow hawk cruised over the tree. I would not have seen…
