Author: helengibsondavies

Nature Can Be Cruel

The last couple of weeks I have been watching a pair of robins fly in and out or the leylandi  (do you spell it like that) hedge in our back garden.  It looked like they had nested there but I didn’t dare go and look.  This was sadly confirmed at the weekend when I found three dead chicks on the hammock which was next to the hedge.  The chicks only looked to be maybe a week old at most and had not been eaten at all.  So it didn’t look as if a predator had got to them.  I believe robins can sometimes get rid of chicks if they think the nest is not safe.  Or maybe it was a rival male?  What’s confusing me is that the chicks were actually  about a foot or two away from the hedge and not below the nest.  Looked like they’d been thrown out!!  If anybody can throw any light on this I’d like to hear.
 
Below are a couple of photos of the tadpoles in my pond. They’re not brilliant photos as I haven’t got a macro lens.  There are literally thousands of them – however, many are being eaten by the Blackbirds.  Maybe that’s why frogs produce so many.
 
 

Great Spotted Woodpecker On My Nuts!!!!!!

Just could not resist that title for my post!! This Greater Spotted Woodpecker was enticed onto my nut feeders earlier in the week.  I was really pleased as I had been watching it through my binoculars on the trees at the back of my garden.  However, I soon realised that this one was not the same one I had been watching.  It lacked the red spot on the nape of its neck and the red underneath its tail feathers was not quite as noticeable.    On looking through my guide book I found out that this is a female!  Brilliant!  That means there are a pair in this vicinity.  Probably nesting somewhere close—–wish I knew where.
Check out the differences.

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

This woodpecker has become a regular drumming on the tree at the back of our garden.  I took this with my canon 7d and 100-400mm zoomed in all the way.  Still not the crisp clear pictures I’d like but some nice compositions?

Click on thumbprints to see larger photo.  Sorry they are all over the place – can’t get the hang of placing them neatly into the blog!!!

Spring at the park and in the garden


Fantastic weather again-so glad I work part time.  Busy day in the garden yesterday, tidying up and seeding lawn.  Its very patchy and full of moss.  Raking it left a huge pile of moss for the birds building their nests.  Here’s half of my garden – it’s only small, with my summer house that I absolutely love and sit in as often as I can and watch the birds on my feeders.  We actually jokingly call it my Wendy house!  Does anyone know where that name came from for a child’s play house?

 Here you can see some of the feeders I have.  

  

 And two of my very contented companion animals.

Walking my dog through the woods at Golden Acre park at the weekends is one of my most favourite activities.  Watching Sparky hare through the trees after squirrels that he’ll never catch, seeing the birds and rabbits and the new growth as spring really gets going.




These photo’s all taken with my iphone.  Pretty amazing piece of kit – I love it!  Don’t love itunes though!!
Anyway, click on the thumbnails if you want to see the bigger version in all it’s glory.
I’m off now to have a blast on my motorbike.  Kawasaki EN500

Frogs like the sun

What a fantastic March we’ve had here.  Spring is coming earlier each year, but watch out because the unseasonably sunny warm weather is probably our summer!!! So enjoy every minute, these frogs in my pond certainly are.  During the breeding they alway hid every time I went near, no matter how quietly I approached.  Today however, they let me stand inches from them and didn’t move a muscle allowing me to get the photo I’d been waiting for.  Not sure which is female or which is male.  Female is normally bigger so I would guess it is the female that is out of the water.

Frogs Frogs Frogs


 We’ve had frogs in our pond in the front garden for years, but it appeared to have sprung a leak, so after the last lot of spawn had become frogs and hopped off wherever frogs go, I dug out.  I made it a little bigger and lined it with new liner, populated it with some nice new plants and filled it up again.  I was really pleased with it.
I was a little concerned that we wouldn’t get the frogs back, but I needn’t have worried.  They are back or never left!!  There are four males and just

one poor female!  They have produced between them two collections of frogs spawn.  Not as much as previous years though.    Not a brilliant photo but gives you an idea.  Hopefully I will be able to get more photos as things progress    .

 

This link will give you lots more information on the amazing common frog.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/483.shtml


BIG GARDEN BIRDWATCH 2012

Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend.  Great big survey of garden birds throughout the UK.  Did mine this morning at 11.15. The RSPB ask you to record the largest number of one species that you see in your garden in one hour. Here’s the results of mine:

House sparrows  6     Starlings  6     Robins 2        Blue tits 2       Great tits 4    Blackbirds    4    Coal tits 2     Greenfinch 1   Magpie 1
Dunnock 4     Bullfinch 3   Starlings 5

              

   Excuse the higgleypiggly appearance of this post.  Its a while since I’ve done a proper post and have forgotten how to do it!  Am determined to get my camera and binoculars out and start walking and photographing all things wild and some things soon.

Very similar to last years garden birdwatch – no chaffinch this year although have seen them in the garden, no collared doves but again have been around, no long tails but have seen a couple recently and no brambling which I got last year.  All the others are regulars and my favourites have to be the gold and bull finches.

Birds in my garden

My bird feeders and garden have been busy recently. Blackbirds, starlings, house sparrows, dunnocks, greenfinch, goldfinch,chaffinch,bullfinch, great tits, blue tits, longtail tits, coal tits, wood pigeons, magpies, robins and a couple of crows in the trees at the back