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Any cuckoos out there? ... and other BirdWatch/NatureWatch news


taxi4ballet

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It's all go on the bird front round here, I heard a cuckoo this morning :)

 

Yesterday I was treated to the sight of a sparrowhawk dispatching its prey on my neighbour's drive - I've never seen one so close up before. Don't know what it had caught, but it looked pretty big, and I was astounded when the sparrowhawk managed to fly off clutching it.

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I heard one this morning too, taxi; first time in years I’ve heard a cuckoo here!  Very pleased.  

 

The Magpies are back too though and one tried to attack our recently fledged blackbird.  Fortunately DH chased the magpie away and young Master Blackbird only lost a few feathers. 😳

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We've had a pileated woodpecker visit the bird feeder a few times this year. Compared with the other birds we've seen, he's enormous (according to an online source, these things are 16 to 19 inches long). When he shows up, most of the other birds make themselves scarce. This is a photo I found; we didn't have the camera nearby.

 

 

Capture.JPG

Edited by Melody
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My darling little gold finches and their families have been visiting our garden over the past ten days or so. They are so beautiful and love our yew tree. I was closing my daughter’s bedroom window which is really big and a gold finch alighted on the bough nearest the window. It magnified the finch and I had a really good close up view of it. It was lovely and really special.

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9 hours ago, Melody said:

We've had a pileated woodpecker visit the bird feeder a few times this year. Compared with the other birds we've seen, he's enormous (according to an online source, these things are 16 to 19 inches long). When he shows up, most of the other birds make themselves scarce. This is a photo I found; we didn't have the camera nearby.

 

 

Capture.JPG

 

Imagining they must be very loud when doing their pecking. We have some perfectly round holes in an oak tree and funnily enough a deaf neighbour who struggles to hear conversation can always hear the woodpeckers working away on their holes. 

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It can be pretty loud when they get going at the trees, although when they're at the feeder they're attacking a lump of suet, which is at least quiet. The real noise comes from the titmice and chickadees, which help themselves to sunflower seeds from the other feeder (not the suet) and then spend ages happily bashing the seeds to pieces on the metal railing just outside the window.

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Wouldn't like to be too near that woodpeckers beak! 

Inspite of their occasional raiding of nests .....often a robin or blackbirds 😢😢 I do like to see magpies in the garden too. 

They get their come uppance when the crow arrives.....who seem enormous in a garden context and soon frighten off the magpies. 

Jackdaws can hold their own against them too.

"Our" starlings are busy feeding the chicks in the box and now you can hear them chittering away when one of the adults arrives at the box  I guess will be about ten days or so now to fledging. 

I'm very much hoping to hear a cuckoo next week when we are going to the very beautiful ( but hilly) Leonardslee Gardens ( near Horsham) as it opened last weekend for the first time in about eight years after a change of owner closed the Gardens to the public and now another change of owner has them open again. Every time I've gone there in the past I've heard a cuckoo. This time of the year the azaleas there are terrific and there is a lovely wild bluebell wood full of birdsong ( first time I heard  a garden warbler there) so early May is a good time to go!! 

 

Sometimes some collared doves which usually have a three note "song" a bit like ke-KOO-ku however occasionally they just do the Ke- KOO bit and so might be mistaken for a cuckoo although the cuckoo has a much more bright  upbeat sound to its song.

Although our very singy Robin isn't nesting in our garden he ( and she) are now very regularly coming to the feeders and taking food away....mostly the currents or oats. The singy one is very tame and if there's no food will perch right outside the window and look in as if to say " well where is it then" 

Edited by LinMM
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On ‎03‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 20:30, LinMM said:

Sometimes some collared doves which usually have a three note "song" a bit like ke-KOO-ku however occasionally they just do the Ke- KOO bit and so might be mistaken for a cuckoo although the cuckoo has a much more bright  upbeat sound to its song.

 

Actually, I'm wondering if that was what I heard ...

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  • 1 month later...

I have a hedgehog feeding station ( underbed plastic storage box with a small entrance cut in one end, food gets put at far end out of reach of cats and other predators, base lined with newspaper as they are messy things) and I’ve been wondering what they’ve been up to the last few days as the newspaper has been pulled out and shredded over garden. Turns out the magpies are to blame, a couple of them are working together to use the newspaper to drag the bowl towards the entrance so they can easily reach it. Lot of effort for a few crumbs of food especially as they are doing this feet from the bird feeders. 

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13 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

No cuckoos, sadly, but the regular greater spotted woodpecker visitors to our bird feeders are now the proud parents of two fine juveniles.  All four together make an impressive wight.

Oops, sorry - for "wight" read sight.

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  • 4 months later...
1 hour ago, taxi4ballet said:

I drive past a village pond on my way to work each day, and today I noticed some unusual new inhabitants for this time of year - ducklings. 

 

There are still young coots and moorhens on the canal near me.  It's the latest I can remember seeing them so young.

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  • 5 months later...
7 hours ago, taxi4ballet said:

I was out for a walk this morning in a patch of woodland near my house, and saw a treecreeper. It was a sweet little thing, I've never seen one before.

Lucky you!  we had a regular treecreeper visitor to our garden, appropriately enough dashing up and down the weeping silver birch, but I haven't seen it for a couple of years now.  Perhaps the preponderance of red kites has something to do with it?

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14 minutes ago, bangorballetboy said:

We heard a woodpecker on the common a couple of days ago but couldn’t find it.

 

That is the story of my life.

 

I saw the woodpecker at the entrance to the park a couple of weeks ago (having often heard it), shrieked in amazement and it flew away!

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I rather thought treecreepers could only creep upwards and once they get to the top of the tree they fly down to the bottom of the next tree to begin another ascent. Makes life slightly easier to follow a treecreeper once spied. Woodpeckers too move up the tree using their tail for support. However, nuthatches can go up and down a tree. In the last couple of days I’ve had a pair of bullfinches and a yellowhammer in the garden.

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6 hours ago, JohnS said:

I rather thought treecreepers could only creep upwards and once they get to the top of the tree they fly down to the bottom of the next tree to begin another ascent. Makes life slightly easier to follow a treecreeper once spied. Woodpeckers too move up the tree using their tail for support. However, nuthatches can go up and down a tree. In the last couple of days I’ve had a pair of bullfinches and a yellowhammer in the garden.

Of course you are right!  We had a nuthatch visitor as well as a treecreeper and I always muddled them up.  Haven't seen either for ages.  Our frequent visitor woodpecker family congregate mainly on and around the feeders or perch on the fence.  If they are on the tree it's just to wait for their turn on the feeders - not much climbing in evidence.  Although there are a lot of green woodpeckers in the woods and fields opposite the house we never see them in the garden.

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14 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

Lucky you!  we had a regular treecreeper visitor to our garden, appropriately enough dashing up and down the weeping silver birch, but I haven't seen it for a couple of years now.  Perhaps the preponderance of red kites has something to do with it?

 

Red Kites wouldn't harm small birds

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2 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

Incidentally our first sighting of red kites was in West Wales several years ago.  We were so excited!  Now they're very common here and I see at least one every day.  Beautiful birds!

 

they are! When I was a nipper, they were very rare, and confined to wooded valleys in central/west Wales, so seeing one was really exciting. Now you see them all along the M40/M4 corridor. In fact, I knackered an interview once (which admittedly was not going well anyway, as I had decided during the course of the interview I didn't really want the job), over in a site near Reading, when one flew past the window behind the interviewers head. All concentration immediately evaporated as my mind returned to nipper-hood

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2 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

At 6.30 am this morning I was out on my permitted exercise allowance (aka dog-walking) and spotted a kingfisher for the first time in ages.  Too cloudy and dark to get the full value of the colours, but a spirit-lifting moment, just the same.

 

We sometimes see one along the river at the end of my road - pollution allowing. Usually just a flash of dazzling blue, as they rocket up or downstream when you disturb them. Must be OK pollution wise at the moment, as saw a Little Egret on Sunday, and a Grey Heron this morning, on that stretch of the Wandle

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3 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

 

We sometimes see one along the river at the end of my road - pollution allowing. Usually just a flash of dazzling blue, as they rocket up or downstream when you disturb them. Must be OK pollution wise at the moment, as saw a Little Egret on Sunday, and a Grey Heron this morning, on that stretch of the Wandle

Ah, the Wandle! - I remember it well (used to live in Wimbledon).  We had a pair of little egrets here but as with other water birds I haven't seen them for a while, especially dabchicks which used to be ten a penny - and I still miss our resident water rat on the stream across the road. On the other hand herons are commonplace .  Lots of Egyptian geese locally and of course hundreds of Canada geese.  Swifts now very rare and never any screaming parties nowadays.  We live across the road from the Jubilee River, a man-made flood relief stretch of water from Maidenhead to Windsor, which has been beautifully landscaped with reed beds, marshy bits, scrapes, fish hatcheries and all sorts of wildlife havens.  It's quite fascinating.

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we used to have a pair of Dabchicks on Waddon Ponds - not seen them for a few years now though - gulls probably ate them! 😞

I don't think I saw a single Swift round here last summer. As a tangent, when I worked in Sutton, a Swift had gotten itself in through the window in the fire escape stairwell, and couldn't get itself out again, as it didn't understand the concept of going to the flap at the top of the pane of glass. So I manged to catch it (it was exhausted by this time) and let it fly free from another window in the main office. Quite a thrill! Oh - and come July, we always had Peregrine fledglings flying past the window squealing and begging for food from their parents. Now that was exciting!

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