TAKING A BATH

Took these sequence of pictures of a Willow warbler taking a bath. Not great quality photo's but still an interesting bit of behaviour. The bird was a fair distance from me so had to crop the pic's quite a bit.

Here's a Meadow pipit that was flying around me, must have been a nest close by.

When I'm out taking pictures Jack looks at me sometimes like I'm off my trolley.

I think this pic was taken just before he rolled in sheep shite.

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.

A BIT OF FENCING

The oldest Thomas and myself built a couple of small chicken wire fences today to keep them hungry sheep and their lambs out of the one side of the house and the back wildlife garden so we can grow a few things in there (the wife loves gardening). Not a bad job overall and the weather was kind to us.

Not a bad job at all and now them sheep can eat grass instead of our tree blossoms, flowers, and the bird food I put out for my avian friends.

Here's the culprits

eat the grass you fluffy sheep



I know they're cute but they eat everything.......BAHH STEWARDS!

When we were looking in the shed for some wood we came across this blackbirds nest so I took a quick photo got our wood and left her in peace. There were also 2 swallows nest's in there.

up close blackbirds nest

same nest but a bit further back

the 2 swallow nests, might be a bit early for eggs yet but you never know!

Right who's up for some bird pic's then? well tough your having them anyway:-

Here's a selection of corvids not everyone's cup of rosey but I think they got a certain charm about them and through persecution one of the most skittish group of birds to photograph.

Hope you enjoyed that selection and lets hope that the sheep stay out of the gardens, so my lovely green fingered wife can grow some botanic beauties.

A BIT OF NETTING

Bought myself some camouflage netting to put over the bedroom window or over me so I can get a bit closer to my avian friends. I was hoping to be able to keep the window open because they say by shooting through glass the quality of the pictures drops off quite markedly. The thing is the weather has changed over the last couple of days and it's been blowing a gale up here so no windows were open but still had to try out the camo net. The shyer species were still a bit skittish so don't know whether it'll work or not but I did get some decent photographs out of an hours session. By the way the wife thinks I'm bonkers, thought she would have worked that out by now after all these years.

camo net

looking out onto the feeders

greenfinch

chaffinch

this jay was nearly at full frame

G S Woodpecker

pied wagtail

this magpie was at full frame

great tit

Redpoll still coming in

these next two pic's of this jay showing it's having a bad hair day

sort them feathers out!

Let's hope for some decent weather so I can open my windows and hopefully get some even sharper shots, having said that I'm not disappointed with these.