Hi everyone :)
I thought it might be a nice idea to have a wildlife thread where we could post pictures and share.
Here are some pictures of one of my favourite birds.
The pheasant.
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Hi everyone :)
I thought it might be a nice idea to have a wildlife thread where we could post pictures and share.
Here are some pictures of one of my favourite birds.
The pheasant.
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We used to have a ‘resident’ pheasant. He used to run up our lane every morning after I put seed out for him. We called him Phil. One day we found him on the road…..I know it was him because he stopped coming for seed.
Mind you they are daft. We been driving along at 5 mph because they have been practically throwing themselves under the wheels.:scared15:
They are daft where danger is concerned.
Those two in the photos were residents of our previous place. They produced a big family of twelve!
They are partial to sweetcorn as well. I know because they ate all of my sweetcorn crop.
A lovely thread Carnation!! The call of a pheasant is a quintessential sound of our countryside I think, even though its not native originally.
While visiting my Mum's grave today with my sister, I'm pretty sure I spotted one of the Higham Ferrers peregrines. Fast, powerful and direct flight, I only saw it in silhouette but there's nothing else it could have been.
How lucky you should see that!
Did anyone watch Wild Isles with the ‘real’ David Attenborough? It was fascinating and lovely to watch. Badgers,
Dormice, Eagles. Beautiful Bluebells.
A gripping battle between a White Tailed Eagle and a Canada Goose. Puffins v Blackheaded Gulls. I sat totally absorbed with it.
My sons…..eldest, on spying Orca Whales…..I didn’t know we had Orcs in British Waters:ohmy:
Youngest…..on being told it was a kingfisher on screen…..No it’s an Orange Tit.:ohmy:
I do hope they were joking.
David Attenborough is one of my hero’s. A definite invite to my fantasy dinner party.
Hi Carnation :flowers:
Here is a pic taken on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria.
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Aww lola, so cute but in the middle of the road!!!
Darksky, David Attenborough is fab! I think he might have to be on my guest list too!
I didn't see the programme, not yet.
No pictures, sadly, but a tree at the end of our road is swarming with long-tailed tits. Cutest little birds.
Aww lovely BlueIris. Its not always easy to get a photo.
We’ve got Long Tailed Tits on our feeders Blue. I agree they are the cutest little things. Photos are hard aren’t they because they just scatter at the slightest movement.
Which reminds me, I’m getting low on bird food. I feel a trip to Wilko coming up. I find they have the best variety of bird food but I’ve noticed the sunflower hearts have gone up a lot this year. I used to buy the big bags but they are £25.00 now. I love my birds but that’s beyond my reach.:weep:
I saw a cute robin and took a pic, but it was on a dog poo bin, so I won't post lol . but thats my contribution :roflmao:
Lovely pics and anecdotes. Those Koalas are gorgeous.
Opposite us three ash trees have been felled. While they are on the property of a very big house/garden, its still a shame that trees are being cut down with so much already lost to development. David Attenborough was talking about only 13% of land in the UK being woodland.
Hope you don't mean the https://yoursmiles.org/tsmile/bad/t2101.gif:ohmy:
Long tailed tits are cute. Our RSPB calendar has one on for March.
Not seen any in our garden for a couple of years. We don't get many birds at all now. Prior to the cat invasion we had tons of birds, loads of sparrows nesting in our hedges. :weep:
I was fortunate with Sam. He had no interest in birds at all. Well he used to look but that’s as far as it got. He was a devil for mice and shrews. I spent many a time chasing him and a live mouse round the garden…sometimes the house too.
But if you get a cat that’s focussed on birds, the poor things don’t stand a chance.
I haven’t seen a sparrow for years. Or a starling for that matter. They must prefer towns. The blue tits are getting very flirty. I was watching them today, chasing each other along the fence. We will have babies soon. Once a baby was left on the feeder and it had no fear of me at all. I put my hand out slowly and it hopped on. I thought I was going to burst with joy. Then it realised, maybe it shouldn’t be being so forward with me and it flew off. But it’s a memory that I will always keep. It was just so new and perfect.❤️
We get a fair amount of birds here. It's a rural town so fields are never far away. There's a large area of land that used to be a brickyard, maybe 200 yards distant or less. It belongs to a farmer who for some reason hasn't cultivated it. All he does is cut down new Ash saplings once a year. But there's so many different species of grass and wildflowers. Lots of yellowhammers and reed buntings. There were even a few pairs of corn buntings up until a few years ago.
I think when the farmer eventually passes away it will be 'developed'. An oxymoron if ever there was one. So much of the region has disappeared under concrete and tarmac.
On the way home from the food shop, I was listening to Jeremy Whine. He was talking about councils felling trees. I thought of your Ash, Fishman. In Plymouth there’s a bit of a standoff going on between the council and protesters. An injunction has been taken out but not before 100 of the trees were felled. Apparently they did it in the middle of the night. Safety reasons apparently .….rubbish.
Really the excuses the council gave were pathetic….the canopy blocked light…interfered with CCTV…they’d grown too big…the trees didn’t fit with the look the council wanted for their development. There were several others but I suspect the latter was the one that mattered to them.
Ok they weren’t ancient oaks or anything but they were mature trees. Another case of councils taking no notice of the people wishes :mad:
Developers won’t be happy until we have concrete as far as the eye can see.
Ooooh…that turned into a rant I wasn’t expecting.:D
I saw that darksky, don't get me started :mad:
My mom has a Tufted Titmouse that likes to visit. He likes to sit on their yard camera and stare into the lens; he also comes to the windows of their family room and will even bring pieces of food from the bird feeders over to the windows and eat while he's looking in the house. He's a very cute little bird.
I always see lots of robins when I'm out walking with Chisum. I always thought of robins as "town" birds but they apparently love to eat the berries off of the cedar trees so there are just bunches of them. Chisum's favorite birds are crows, geese, and turkey vultures - he likes to chase them as they fly across the sky. :D
That's a very cute bird, Poppy. He's obviously very friendly and adjusted to people.
We had a robin once that loved the mealworms we threw out each morning. One day we forgot so he came and sat on the washing line looking through the kitchen window at us. He had never done that before. So we left it again some time later and he did the same.
I love robins. Some will watch me digging the garden over and then come for the worms. One once stood on the ground 3 feet away from me as I approached him.
Dad once told me they stopped gardening work (he was a landscape gardener) for lunch and the robin that was watching them landed on the handle of the spade they left stuck in the ground. He sat watching them. Probably thinking "shift you lazy sods, I want my lunch". :biggrin:
Stupid councils removing trees annoy me too. They bang on about commitment to conservation and the rip trees out for no reason.
Near me they pulled down old trees for the mosque to put a car park on. The mosque had planning permission to build an underground one but never bothered. Years later they do this. Saves them money.
On my GFs street the local church are trying to remove all the trees in the street complaining about safety issues. It's nonsense and the residents are telling them no.
A tree lined street is a really nice thing to see. Councils and road authorities don't clear the drains as they used to so leaf build up can cause flooding and councils usr such excuses for cheap culling. They do the same to avoid maintenance costs where trees overhang roads.
Culling councillors would be a better cost saving measure :whistles:
Just Chatting....
Leading world twitching authority Nesta Twiggs recently gave a talk on identifying birds from their calls and song. After describing how the Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) has a song that sounds like ‘a-little-bit-of-bread-but-no-cheese’, she was asked how one could distinguish the various chats (Yackeridiae) by their calls. She had this to say on the subject....
The voice of the Chitchat (Yackeridiae droneonandonia), a regular of the urban landscape, has a droning, monotonous, often repetitive quality, with the warbled ‘iwuslike’ followed by a range of monosyllabic sounds and punctuated at the end of each phrasing with a single short ‘like!’ or more pronounced ‘like-yerno’.
The Idle Chitchat subspecies (Yackeridiae blah-blah), has a call very similar in structure to that of the Chitchat but with a slower, intermittent delivery, the phrasing much interspersed with ‘um’ and ‘er’ followed by increasingly long pauses.
The Backchat (Yackeridiae belligerentia) has an aggressive staccato delivery, most often heard when it feels it is in a confrontational situation. Its harsh ‘WOTCHOOLUKINAT!’, with rapid querulous interjections of ‘yeah? yeah? YEAH?’ rising in pitch and volume, is usually accompanied by a threatening posture.
The Stonedchat (Yackeridiae reeferusia) is far more numerous than it once was and is most likely found in weedy places and, whenever out of its tree, on grass. It has a laconic, almost comical voice, frequently preceded by a series of short, guttural cough-like noises, followed by a wheezy ‘hey-man-likewow-man’. When foraging, the voice becomes more urgent and the phrasing changes to ‘man-i-gorragetapeetza’ ending with an emphatic ‘likenow-man!’
The Livechat, sometimes known as the Callback Keystrike (Yackeridiae bytextus) is very elusive, never seen and rarely heard. One can wait hours or even days to make contact, and even then one’s patience often goes unrewarded. Proof of its actual existence relies entirely on the wonders of modern technology, leading some to believe it is a mythical creature.
Hilarious Pain:roflmao:
Ive said this before but you really do make me laugh.
I agree Darksky. This is one of your best Pain. Are you sure you're not a bird watcher? :yesyes: The 'Stonedchat' used to be me once.
I'm getting seriously fed up with all the tree felling going on this year. Have I missed something? Is it international 'Let's Wipe Out Trees' year? Ash trees disappear across the road. On the other side of town, fields and hedges are now lunar landscaped. A town further afield has scheduled felling of 50 lime trees paused.
The iron maw of mankind, sap drenched.
Here's one I prepared earlier...
Building Sights
The grass cries seeds,
entombed at birth
in concrete seas,
her flowing hair,
root ripped and scalped.
Hungry beasts, garish yellow,
jaws sap-drenched
and bleeding life,
tear the rich dark flesh,
of this weeping earth's
unmothered womb.
The destroying seed of man
now falls upon this land,
birthing straight lines,
and a newer wilderness
of shackled sterility.
A hum of no longer bees,
but chains of saws
and petrol fumes,
scattering songbirds
in frantic mute dismay.
Save the wild geese,
caressing the sad wind
with mournful pipes.
May 2013
I never know what to say any more Fishman. You’ve heard it all. Speechless.
Isn't it amazing how fast things can get done and all those coppers we don't have to turn up when you are a victim suddenly appear as if they've been sitting about waiting...or maybe it was all pre planned for some time? :winks:
Follow the trail of brown envelopes...:whistles:
In China things just get done. Over here, not so much. Trying to get the council to deal with anything is not a rewarding experience.
All that displaced wildlife for some more properties.
At the back of my GFs house there was an old builders yard than turned into a mini wood. One neighbour kept complaining about trees overhanging her fence. Council action? Chainsaw it all into a grassy area now doubling as a fly tipping zone.
Councils will strip an area and "replant" :rolleyes: rather than maintain. Nothing to do with the environment and all to do with cost.
Great Post pain :yesyes:
And another great poem fishman :hugs:
I feel some neighbours are as much to blame as the council selling off land.
I've got a few neighbours that have had trees removed around their homes. Literally just an ugly stump remains. Don't they realise trees are oxygen!!!
Did anyone see the episode in Tales of the Unexpected about the trees screaming when it was cut? Apparently this is not too far from the truth. Yeah, cut the dead branches and spruce up like we have a haircut but I could never bring myself to cut into the heart and soul of a tree.
Not forgetting the birds. I have what you call a natural garden. As I look along the row of other gardens in my neighbourhood which originally was meadowland what do I see? Fencing and concrete. No shade in the heat of the summer days, no visitors of wildlife, nothing to look at while they burn themselves sitting in the roaring sun. I just don't get it. :shrug:
Another good offering from Sir David tonight. Red Squirrels, Golden Eagles nesting, Stags rutting and horrible, murderous armies of Wood Ants and starling murmurations being attacked by peregrines and eagles. Barn owls hunting them at roost. Who’d be a Starling?
We can hear rutting stags in the Autumn over the water here. It’s an odd noise until you know what it is.
No rutting stags here. Probably some dogging though :whistles:
We have deer at Trentham Gardens. You may seem them in the deer wood or fields near the dual carriageway.
Did anyone see the huge herd of deer running across the road on someone's car cam?
I’m really enjoying Sir David Attencoat’s new blockbuster series. So our woodland is actually increasing but only via commercially grown spruce.
Having spent time walking through those plantations it’s easy to see they are ecologically barren wastelands. Planted so no light can reach the ground, they support very little native species.
We need more native broadleaf woodland.
Three ravens flew over the garden this morning. They were chasing each other, characteristic prominent head in flight and 'pruk pruk' call. As recently as 10 years ago you'd never have seen a raven this far east. Its great to see. There's something otherworldly about ravens, probably Poe's poem.
I remember my brother and me walking the mountain peaks in the Lake District, a pair of ravens were nesting in the crags. One of them followed us, flying from rock to rock then turned back. It felt like it was seeing us off the property.
Quoth the raven..nevermore…
One of my absolute favourite poems.:D
Well, it is ‘me’….isn’t it?:roflmao:
Cross this morning….the council decided to deeply cut the roadside hedges by us. I know it’s early but it is nearly April, surely nesting birds would have been disturbed, with possibly calamitous results. No one seems to think, at all.
Yes!!! They are nesting darksky. I saw a baby robin this morning.