Big Garden Birdwatch 2017

We took part in the RSPB's annual Big Garden Birdwatch this morning. The idea is that everybody spends an hour over the weekend counting the birds in their garden. You then log the results on the Big Garden Birdwatch website, providing the RSPB with data about how our back garden birds are faring. We chose to do our count early this morning before the rain started, so the kids were excited to be doing the count in their pyjamas!

 

We saw 28 birds of 12 species:

• 1 blackcap: We were thrilled to see a female blackcap hiding in the bushes, making an occasional brief trip to the bird table. I thought I saw her a few days ago, but wasn't sure.

Only the male blackcap has a black cap. The female has a ginger cap.

• 4 goldfinches: We are starting to see more and more goldfinches in the garden and they are often around. They love the teasel and evening primrose seeds, so I always leave them for them.

• 6 house sparrows: We love our cheeky house sparrow family. There are often a lot more than 6 of them, but that's all we saw this morning. 

• 2 dunnocks
• 1 robin
• 2 long-tailed tits
• 2 blackbirds

• 2 woodpigeons
• 2 starlings
• 2 blue tits

 

• 1 chaffinch
• 3 red kites: Whistlejacket was sat in his tree and there were two more kites sat in a tree nearby. He was quite cross that they were there and he was whistling at them (a lot). They were just ignoring him!

 

We'll enter our results on the website later today



An inadvertent twitch

There was a lot of excitement this morning as I walked around Weston Turville Reservoir. It was well below freezing and the sun wash shining, so I was there to enjoy the frost and the wonderful views across the water.

It seems everyone else was there to look for the bearded tit that was spotted there yesterday. I've never seen a bearded tit, other than on Springwatch, so I hung around for a while hoping it would appear right next to me and pose for a photo. There were some big cameras, scopes and binoculars on show and you could feel the excitement in the air. It seems I'd inadvertently become involved in a twitch! It was exciting, for about 10 minutes, then my fingers froze, my nose started to run and my eyes watered, so I left them to it and walked around the reservoir. I don't think I have the patience or the thermals for twitching!



Not a bad view while I waited for the bearded tit

Suddenly I heard a noise that sounded like a squealing pig at the waters edge. Then a brown blur skidded across the ice and disappeared into some reeds. I didn't get a very good look at it and I definitely didn't have time for a photo, but I think the noise was a giveaway. I'd seen my first water rail, or else there was a piglet sliding around on the ice.

I waited for a while to see if it would move or squeal again, but there was no sign of it. Then I jumped out of my skin when I realised I was stood very close to a heron. I only realised it was there at all because it moved it's head.

The walk around the edge of the water was beautiful, with the frost adding a bit of sparkle to everything.

I heard a woodpecker drumming in the woods and a little egret was sitting in a tree watching me.

Little egret

In the end the closest I got to a bearded tit was a family of long-tailed tits that were flitting through the bushes as I walked. Not as rare as a bearded tit, but still a lovely sight, and what a fabulous place to spend a frosty January morning.

 

Pine Hawkmoth

(Post from BMG)

Last year when I was out on a walk I found a Pine Hawk Moth caterpillar crawling around looking for somewhere to pupate. We took it home and soon after it pupated, so I decided to do a drawing and give you some information on these amazing moths.

You can read the post where we found the caterpillar here.

This is what the moth looks like and I drew a pencil sketch  (below)

Right now, the caterpillar has pupated and we have it safe with a collection of other chrysalises that we raised over the summer.  When it hatches in the spring, I'll post a picture of it, then release it into the wild.

My chrysalis collection

Fact file: Pine Hawk Moth

This Moth's Latin name is Hyloicus Pinastri. It has a wingspan of 65-80 mm, and it's wings usually have three or four black streaks in the centre. In the wild, it lives in a habitat where there are Pine trees (hence the name), where it lives from May up until August. It's larvae eat the Pine needles that grow on the trees. Although this species lives mainly in the West and South of Britain, it's common in Continental Europe as well.

#NewYearPlantHunt 2017

It was a beautiful frosty morning this morning as we set out on our New Year Plant Hunt. The hunt is an annual event organised by BSBI to record as many wild plants in flower as possible over the New Year period. Data is collected from all over the country so that it can be analysed to see how our wild plants are responding to changes in weather patterns.

Some of us were hunting for flowers harder than others!

We decided to go back to Pyrtle Spring, the place we hunted for flowers last New Years Day, so we could compare this years finds with last years. Last year we found 15 plants in flower, so we had quite a lot to live up to this year, especially as we've had some hard frosts recently. The chalk in the fields had a layer of ice on it and you could see where the water in the chalk had frozen and cracked it open.

At the start of our plant hunt we found very little, just a few rapeseed flowers growing on the edge of a field that had previously been planted and some ivy that had really gone past flowering.

Rapeseed in flower

Ivy

The spring had no water in it, but still looked lovely in the sunshine. We looked hard but couldn't find any violets or celandines this year. We couldn't even find a daisy, dandelion or dead nettle. Things weren't looking too good for this year's plant hunt.

A very friendly robin joined us as we hunted and seemed very curious about what we were doing.

Robin (bottom right) and BMG

We found lots of other cool things, including fungus growing up one of the huge trees in the spring and a tiny frosty toadstool growing on the edge of the field. There were plenty of buds starting to show, some beautiful lichen on the tree trunks and a large huddle of snails in one of the bushes.

A frosty fungus

 

Sticky buds

Elder buds

Lichen

A huddle of snails bedded down for the winter

Back to the plant hunt ... we cast a little spell to help us find some flowers and headed for home.

Three generation spell ... guess who's been watching Harry Potter over Christmas!

The magic seemed to work (or perhaps we no longer had the sun in our eyes) and found field pansy, groundsel, speedwell (could be either germander speedwell or common field-speedwell), hairy bittercress and grass in flower.

Field pansy

Groundsel

Grass flowers

 

Speedwell

Hairy bittercress

So not as many flowers as last year's hunt, but still a very enjoyable morning. We'll log our findings on the BSBI website later today.