Monday 4 July 2016

Jackdaws, Wood Pigeons and Spotted Flycatchers (and a moth)


The pair of jackdaws are still going in and out of the hole in our eaves and I managed to get a photo of one just coming out, you can see the silhouette against the cream colour, and its wings are pinned back within the hole.  Its mate watches from the end of the roof.  The youngsters have finally fledged after days of encouragement from the parents - lots of cawing and demonstrations of how to do it, and a baby's head would appear at the hole, as if to say "You've got to be joking...jump out of here? No way!" but they did it in the end.


Three days ago I spotted a large Poop in the middle of our yard.  Closer inspection could not identify the culprit - it was big enough to have been done by our dog but entirely the wrong colour and anyway he always discreetly backs into the flower beds.  It was black and white with a squiggle at the end and a blob underneath (yes how sad am I) and looked more poultry-like than anything, not fox, we thought pheasant maybe.  Paul cleared it up, but we were very surprised to see another in the same place, almost identical, yesterday morning.  A trawl of the Internet suggested Wood Pigeon - somebody else describing a similar scat, deposited in roughly the same place over several days, and they had actually witnessed the crime!  Very odd, and today there is ANOTHER ONE!  Not quite so big this time!
(Monday update - no poop today).


This is the nest of a pair of Spotted Flycatchers in the ivy on our old wall.  The parents are very actively zooming around the garden in a distinctive fashion, often returning to the same perch, collecting flies.  They are quite plain little birds with pale fronts and a few freckles . We have had them there before; I found a nestling once that I thought had fallen out - I picked it up with a leaf (so as not to put my smell on it) and returned it to the nest, and watched, and the parent came and threw it out again.  It didn't survive.  Sometimes it's OK to interfere; sometimes not.  Some people say you should never interfere.  Well, I do.  Sometimes.  There was a little moth motionless in the dog's water this morning.  I scooped it out - it was still alive and quickly walked around, drying, and I left it on a leaf outside.  The flycatcher probably got it.

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