What have you seen
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Seriously TW have you been to Logan Bot Gdns if so do you think it’s similar to your area?🤔
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I’ve not been to the gardens but we have stayed at NEB in terrible weather and explored the area. NEB itself is not unlike the Hayle area of Cornwall (minus the Philps) and the fishing villages are similar to those down here. Yet, despite the similarities, it still felt a bit different.
Sit on the fence - me?😀
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That’ll be the miles & the fact you could understand the Scots but they struggled with raw Piskie🤣🤣
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Dunno wot ee means 🤷🏻♂️
I imagine Logan gardens being rather like Glendurgan down by the Helford river. They have all sorts of tropical plants there including a banana plant so there are similarities for sure👍🏻
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It’s all thanks to the Gulf Stream too👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻
PS-Banana?🤷🏻♂️, it looks like a Triffid to me😳
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Me too but they say it’s a banana 🤔
It’s a terrific place to visit but not dog friendly and one hell of a climb back up from the little beach down the bottom at the river.
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Another day spent cycling around the canals, meadows and alongside copses.
Managed to catch a quick sight of a Golden Oriole as well as a Purple Heron in flight and a singing Marsh Warbler amongst others.
Had lunch on a bench being entertained by several Four Spotted Chasers dragonflies.
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Stayed local today and went to find the Black Terns which nest on the nearby lake and there must have been about 30 or so there, some quite close up. A couple of Common Terns and a Reeling Grasshopper Warbler who thought he couldn't be seen plus plenty of sedge type warblers in the reedbeds.
A few Marsh frogs near a water pump burping away as they do. Nice green stripe down their backs.
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No, I'm not WN, never been there. Having read your posts on the other thread about your trip, I'm glad you're enjoying all the cycling over in the Lowlands! It's a fabulous network of signposted cyclepaths, I do miss that over here.
Enjoy the rest of your trip and the cycling.
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It was lovely to get out into the larger part of the Weerribben reserve today and well worth it. Cycled around a large portion of it and were amply rewarded for our efforts.
In no particular order we managed to see Honey Buzzard, Bluethroats, Purple Heron, Marsh Harrier, Black and Common Terns, Spoonbills, Great White Egrets, Icterine, Sedge, Grasshopper and Reed Warblers, Breeding Black Tailed Godwits, Variable Damselfly, Small Red-Eyed Damselfly and we heard Bittern, Water Rail, Golden Oriole and Nightingale. Also saw some Water Violets.
All in all a super day and worth getting a sore bum for.
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Had a email from Adrienne and Martin of Burnham Wick CL. Yesterday they completed a bird count on their 500 acre arable farm, the results were very encouraging
Skylark: 88
Linnet: 52
Corn Bunting: 24
Reed Bunting: 15
Yellowhammer: 1 (singing male)Cuckoo: 6
Yellow Wagtail: 12
Cetti's Warbler: 5
Reed Warbler: 46
Sedge Warbler: 15
Common Whitethroat: 33
Lesser Whitethroat: 1
Chiffchaff: 3
Blackcap: 4Pied Wagtail: 7
Goldfinch: 6
Chaffinch: 6Marsh Harrier: 2 (pair)
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We have never been to Glendurgan, mainly because of the dog ban☹️ But we love Trebah next door, probably my favourite Cornish Garden now that Trevarno is no longer open. Beautiful place. Logan is no where near as big, and a lot flatter, but still very interesting.
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Wow that's great and doesn't surprise me at all. Great place for wildlife generally. Miss going there since our van went. Did pop down to walk that way along the wall. It was so lovely to watch the barn owls quartering over the paddocks and hares running among the horses from the van.
Surprise there's no barn owl or little owls listed. I hope they're still safe!
Heard the cuckoo a few days ago whilst walking in Crown Lakes.
Saw some swifts and swallows a couple of weeks ago from the garden but they've been missing for several days, but back in numbers today.
The crows certainly chase the kites, a novel experience for us happens several times a day here.
Beautiful male pheasant visits our garden and the nextdoor school playing field. Not seen a female but neighbours have seen young in their gardens. We have lots of birds nesting in our tall back hawthorn hedge and in the front tightly clipped leylandii hedge . Several blackbirds, robins and numerous sparrows. We get lots of goldfinch - treated them to Niger seed and a feeder which they decline to partake of... we even have a jackdaw and chaffinches. Very happy 😊 no squirrels 🤞sad I've yet to attract a hedgehog, but I might have seen evidence in the close 🤞🤞
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I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner, but althought we're on holiday at the moment, part of it is staying near a friend in Suffolk who lost her husband last August and who is not in the best of health herself now. So the last few days have been taken up with helping her with various things as she's about to sell her house.
The area you were in certainly sounds very interesting, reading about the various birds you saw there is something we're also interested in; as for Giethoorn - well, that's always been a tourist trap.
Keep on pedalling WN! Hope you mostly have "wind mee" (wind behind you), and not "tegenwind" (wind against you)
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Good luck with your helping hands Ina.
Stayed local today so didn't see a great deal but did startle a Hare into a mad sprint down a field and also enjoyed looking at the Jacobs Sheep, which funnily enough we first encountered at the top of the Malverns last year (well not the same ones obviously).
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Ospreys for us today, at Threave. Nesting pair, some great views. Roe Deer as well.
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Although I’ve seen photos of buzzards on the coast I’ve never seen this until today and then three. Two circling over the sea and then one ripping at something washed up on the strand line. What next? Note to self, must take my camera everywhere with me!
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Coming back from Cockermouth the other day I thought I saw a Red Kite but there was nowhere to stop to confirm. I didn't know there were any in this area. Today I thought I saw and heard a Wood Warbler, but not being an expert and not good in identifying birds by there song, I couldn't be sure.
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Back on the bikes today and over to an island off the north coast of the Netherlands.
Lovely to finally get some extended views of waders as they've been sadly lacking in the places we've visited to date. Quite a lot obviously in Summer plumage, Dunlin with Black Bellies and Turnstones in their orange coats. There was a also a Little Stint in with the Ringed Plovers. A Wheatear in the sand dunes, several Marsh Harriers and a Hen Harrier plus Skylarks, which were sadly missing in the arable fields we have recently left.
Noticed some Large Speedwell, Broad Leafed Marsh Orchid and an Early Marsh Orchid in the sandy areas.
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Walking in Rock Park, Dumfries, when we noticed a group of school children peering into the River Nith, and what they were watching was a mother Goosander with 10 chicks, some riding on her back and the others in line astern behind her. When she dived under the water they of course dropped off, only to scramble back on when she surfaced.
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Well I thought it was going to be a quiet day today as we weren't doing a great deal.
This morning we were woken up at an ungodly hour by the drumming of a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and to top and tail the day we have found ourselves to be the neighbours of a newly installed Long Eared Owl which has caused mayhem amongst the local Blackbirds and Wrens. They've gone off and left us to a quiet "oooing" type of noise.
Fun eh?😂
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For the last two weeks, since we came back from holiday, we have been watching the bluetits in and out of the nest box every couple of minutes. (I have my scope trained on it). Yesterday I saw a rather sad event.
The nest box hole is the prescribed 25mm dia which is just big enough for the adults to get through so it was an impossible task that they were trying yesterday. One of the chicks, which must be close to fledging now, has died and the parents were trying to get the body out through the entrance hole. Unfortunately they didn't succeed so the remaining chicks have to live with a dead sibling. The parents are still in and out so, evidently, there is still at least one chick remaining alive .
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Accompanied along a canal today by a Kingfisher which stopped on a post some way ahead so we hopped off bikes and had a good long look at him. Whilst looking at him we heard a Bluethroat singing nearby and found him as well. To cap this temporary stop we then found a singing Marsh Warbler.
John, you do realise that the cleaning out of the birchbox is going to be your responsibility. Tough on the parents and chick.
Edit - Forgot to mention that we stopped at a small lake which had some waders in and we managed to see both Little Ringed Plovers and normal Ringed Plovers but most fascinating in its own way was to see the mating ritual of a Redshank. We didn't mean to be voyeurs but it just couldn't be avoided. Quite a revelation as we'd (fortunately) never seen it before!
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Perhaps a slightly different "What Have You Seen" story, this one. Yesterday I was delighted but very, very surprised by what I saw.
We have a garden pond which, unfortunately is a magnet for herons especially during the winter when there is very little surface cover of plant leaves. Because of this I put a net over the majority of the pond to keep the last remaining three goldfish safe from Mr Heron. Back in February a heron kept returning early morning but I thought I had foiled him. However, one day there was no sign of the fish. They have somewhere at the bottom of the pond where they can hide and I assumed that is where they were. Days went past, weeks went past and months went past with no sign of them so yesterday I bought some red and white sarasa comets to re-stock the pond. Later in the day, watching from my bedroom window I could see some of the new fish but then I saw a goldfish, then another and a third! I was absolutely amazed. The three were still there after all . I'd cleared out weed growth and moved some plants but had not seen anything of the three, even though the water is very clear. It took the new fish to entice them out from their hidey hole where they must have been for weeks without any food rations other than natural food. What a massive surprise.
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Nice story John.
We took the car and stopped at various points on the eastern side of the nearest big lake to us today. Once again we weren't disappointed, although the walk in the forest didn't produce any sightings we did later have a grand time at some reedbeds near the lake where we saw a White Tailed Eagle with a huge fish carting it off to the nest. These reedbeds also had breeding Bearded Tits which we were able to watch a pair bringing food back on several occasions to a nearby nest. The area also had the best sightings we have ever had of a pair of Bluethroats, which were patiently waiting for us to move on so they could access their nest.
A couple of Hobbies and 2 over-summering Bean Geese were new for us. The butterflies and dragonflies were out in number today to give us something to look at when there was nothing else around.
Another smashing day
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Here is an update of my bird box pictures.
I’m afraid that like JohnM20 we have had some losses of chicks.
One dead chick from the front garden box was removed by a parent but it was quite small with no feathers yet developed.Sadly, in the rear garden box there is one dead chick that the parents have not managed to remove as it is larger and more developed.
(You can see it in the foreground).Unfortunately I think that this is a natural situation if all the eggs hatch out, the adults can’t manage such a large brood. It’s just that we would not usually be able to witness this happening. Very sad but also very privileged to witness the development of the chicks.
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