SOME NESTS

My good friend and fellow bird conservationist Steve Carter came over a few days ago on a nest finding quest. He shared some of his photographs of this years nests that he's discovered with me. He's found some more less common birds nests this year and hopefully will remember to take his camera with him so I can share some of his finds with you (bit of a hint there me thinks).  Bad news about my Tree pipit nest was infact a Meadow pipit (Steve's the eggspert) but still a good find me thinks.

a house sparrow nest in a colony box (these birds are getting rarer each year ) I've put a colony box up that was kindly given to me by Steve and hope to put a couple more up to help towards these birds getting their numbers back up over the next few years.

nuthatch nest also in a box, notice how the birds cover thier eggs when not at the nest.

you can just make out this robin sat on her nest

here's a robin's nest.

and some robin chicks

a song thrush nest

song thrush

here's a tree pipit's nest that Steve has found the eggs are very chaffinchy and the photo very blurry.

meadow pipit for comparison

redstart nest , this was also in a nest box nice healthy clutch of 7 eggs

Steve has also noticed that Linnet numbers are down this year across the sites that he monitors. I've got one or two pair near the house but a couple of years ago there were a lot more of these stunning little finch's about the place. We think that the bad weather in the breeding season last year might have hit these birds quite hard. These are not very good pic's but this is what male and female Linnet look like.

female linnet

and the male

Like I said not very good pic's but you can roughly see what they look like lets hope that numbers of these birds pick up this year.