As a mark of how poor the mothing has been, the only interesting stuff I've
enjoyed have been avian. A horse paddock not too far from home was home to a
passage Whinchat for a few days, and on the last day of April when I nipped
out to see it there had been a good passage of Wheatears too with at least
seven seen across four sites.
And then in the middle of the week two Black-winged Stilts turned up at
Cossington Meadows, so I nipped over in the early evening after work for good
views albeit not quite a close as I'd have hoped. Just as well I had a look as
they buggered off overnight.
I grabbed a snippet of video whilst there ....
I was sure they were a pair, with one distinctly blacker and the other with brownish tones. Later in the evening there were photos shared of them copulating so no doubt.
Today I headed to Croft Hill for a walk with Nichola, getting great views of a
Wood Warbler (though no attempt to point a camera at it). It was only doing
the 'spinning plate' part of the song though for the whole time.
Whilst out in Croft, I stopped to have a good look over a clump of Green
Alkanet and found a handful of Scarlet Tiger caterpillars.
Surely the garden trap can't continue to be generally quiet and low on numbers
and diversity for much longer!
Okay, a couple of days late for one reason or another.
Saturday was bright sunshine with warmth right from the off. I decided to head
down the lane with bins and camera - maybe something new in the hedgerows or
skies.
There was, albeit brief and silent - a Whitethroat skulking in the hedgerow
and quite likely fresh in and a bit knackered. Yellowhammers and Skylarks were
more evident though ....
Also along the lane, this intensively reared chicken was unphased by an
approaching human or passing cars.
Whilst out, I picked up a Tweet from Neil Hagley - a proper birder who lives on
the same estate but further over with better all-round aerial views from his garden and slightly
less motorway noise. He is far more likely to be out and about earlier in the
morning than me, and he'd picked up both Wheatear and Yellow Wagtail. I mis-read
the Tweet though and thought he meant he'd had them along the lane, which seemed
unlikely for Wheatear at least given the fields are all sprouting with
Autumn-sown crops - no nice bare ploughed fields or short grassy/weedy pasture.
I checked in with Neil, turns out he meant he'd walked down the lane and carried
on across the main A426 onto Whetstone Gorse Lane and past the PYO. Which was
good, as it meant my birding skills were not completely rubbish. By the time I
had that bit of news I'd already enjoyed Ravens flying over, along with several
Buzzards and Red Kite filling the sky and a pair of Swallows milling about
around the farm, and I'd headed back home.
But the enjoyable walk kind of made my mind up for what I might do for the
rest of the day - which was get back out with bins and avoid that televised
funeral! I grabbed something to eat, made up a coffee to take out and a couple
of bits of fruit. First off I headed back down to the PYO - I expected the
Wheatear to still be present, doubted the wagtail would be. I was right.
Quite possibly the worst Wheatear record shot I've ever taken - distance
wasn't the problem, it was the heat-haze rising up from the bare soil. It was
turning out to be quite a sun blast out there. Sadly this one is not in the
square, but of course is in the 5MR.
I then headed out to Barlestone, outside of the 5MR, but home to a trio of
Ring Ouzels for a couple of days. I've seen several Ring Ouzels in the county
over the years, and none have been particularly photographic when I've seen
them. These were no different - loitering right on the edge of a sheep field,
and watchable from the next sheep field only.
The two red arrows mark the rough position and range of two birds fairly close
together on the left, and a single bird on the right. When they first turned up,
they were on the almost adjacent football pitch giving some cracking views.
Apparently! This time distance and the heat really did make for some shocking
record shots. All appeared to be male, but I can't rule out a well-marked female
for the out-of-range more distance one (bins only, can't be arsed lugging a
scope around these days).
Other thrushes in the field were more obliging.
After that I headed back towards home and checked in to the balancing pool at
Grove Park and a quick walk around Jubilee Park on the patch. But nothing new
or exciting at either. The pool at Jubilee Park seems to be dropping in volume
very quickly. Still a handful of Wigeon loitering there but not a lot else.
Seeing how low the river is now and walking around the once flooded but now
parched grassy areas reminded me that it really it a fair while now since we
had any rain. We've had mild and sometimes warm sunny days, very clear cold
nights, but it's been bone dry.
In other bird news from Saturday, we were awoken by an almighty clucking from
a pair of Blackbirds loudly proclaiming their agitation. Had no idea what was
going on, but when I was home after the first walk down the lane, we realised there was a pathetic fledgling in
the garden which was barely able to get more than a couple of feet off of the
ground. It was almost like it had fledged too early; usually the first
fledglings I see in the garden have full tails and are almost bigger
(certainly fatter) than the parents - this was slightly smaller than the
adults and lacking much of a tail. It can't have flown into the garden, and I
surmised that it had launched itself from the nearest bramble on the
embankment onto the neighbours shed roof, and from there either flopped into
our garden or over to our shed roof before dropping in.
It wasn't happy, but at least the parents were feeding it regularly. But I
knew that it would not survive - if not from ours or another local cat (it may
as well have had a Nestle Purina logo on its crown) it was going to be another
cold night. Later in the afternoon I decided enough was enough and it needed some sort of rescue plan, but it wouldn't let me get anywhere near it to give it a hand up.
Eventually it was sat on the edge of a plant pot at the back of the shed, and
with some other junk I've got behind there including a pallet, I tried to make
a series of steps that it might be able to get up high enough to get back onto the shed roof and jump back into cover. I had no expectations that it would,
but after leaving it for half an hour I noticed the parents were not coming
onto our fence anymore. A quick check and there was no sign of the fledgling; either my
half-baked plan had worked or perhaps it had just hopped through the hedgehog
hole at the bottom of the fence line. I checked again after an hour and,
amazingly, quite close to the neighbours shed sat a very familiar looking
brown blob on the edge of the bramble. A happy ending
perhaps ....
Except that yesterday there was very little noise coming from the embankment,
not as much calling and squeaking as you might expect. Cut to this morning,
and just whilst I made a cuppa the adult pair were making the same raucous
agitated racket again. I nipped into the garden just in time to see a Magpie
fly out of the scrub with a brown feathery blob dangling from its beak. I
knew they would predate nests, but I always assumed it was much younger naked
chicks that they'd be after. It must have taken some effort to fly off with
this sized breakfast. I'm assuming that on Saturday it raided the nest causing
the remaining chicks that were not quite ready to fledge to scatter. Likely that the
Magpie has been coming back and searching them out ever since. Still that's
life (or death) but at least it's early enough for another brood in perhaps a
better nest location.
Sunday was a little more overcast though still with some good sunny spells. But it was a day of sport for me, with the F1 and FA Cup sandwiching a return trip to
Croft Pasture with the suction sampler - which I'll cover separately.
Today was, perhaps, my last chemo session - the drug I have on IV is very
neurotoxic and some of the side-effects are now lingering beyond the cycle so
it is likely to be knocked on the head after this one. They'd already dropped
the dose to 75% . Overall since the dose dropped, the side-effects are less
intense and more bearable, but they shouldn't be lasting like they are. I can
feel my finger tips tingling as I type and there is a chance this will be long-lasting or even permanent.
I was determined to get out though whilst I feel okay as it was an absolutely lovely warm early evening with clear skies and more sun. Whilst I was either preoccupied yesterday or
incapacitated this morning, there had been another Ring Ouzel but this one was
at a regular but difficult to watch area generally referred to as King's Lock
Paddocks on Aylestone Meadows - just outside the patch boundary but within the
5MR. Despite giving the scrubby field and adjacent fields a good grilling for
a couple of hours I had no joy - but given that Ring Ouzels generally migrate
at night, and it was there this morning, it is possibly that it was still
around and just elusive with the extensive scrub and viewing from across the
canal. Still, it was very refreshing to be out - even if the inside of my
nostrils did start to tingle thanks to the chemo.
We've had a cracking week down in Devon with some superb sunshine and warm weather. Amongst our days out enjoying the weather, on Thursday we headed out for a walk around Northam Burrows Country Park. This site is a mainly dry grazed grassland (there are a couple of more marshy bits) and coastal dune system around a links golf course on the north-west coast, right at the mouth of the Taw/Torridge estuary. And very good it turned out to be for my beetle list too! Whilst I had gone prepared to pot up a few bits if anything caught my eye, I wasn't really expecting too much. Skylarks were in full swing as we set off, a pair of Stonechats were near the car park and there were a few Linnets and Meadow Pipts flitting about.
As soon was we'd reached the ridge of stones and boulders that separate the grassland from the estuary, I found a couple of Wheatears.
I'd already potted up a couple of beetles up to that point, with the best being an 11-spot Ladybird. Lots of Amara aenea. Harpalus affinis and Aphodius prodromus were actively scuttling about, and also lots of Staphylinids that I studiously ignored.
11-spot Ladybird
Further along, more onto the sea-ward side rather than the estuary, the dunes became more substantial and it was then that the beetle activity really took off. I noticed that on the 'face' of every dune there where loads of beetles - no idea why, most looked to be actively trying to get away rather than being in the ideal place.
I set about potting anything that looked slightly different, and ended up with a good variety to check out. But with my family and nephews in tow I was a bit constrained, plus we were all starting to feel in need of our picnic so we headed off across the golf course back to the car. By then it was pretty warm, so hot in fact that the sheep had taken to the shade of other peoples cars.
I was so enthused by the amount of beetles though that I nipped back for another look on my own the next day and promptly potted up a few more interesting looking individuals, plus a couple of spiders. Some of the highlights from all this were these:
Mecinus circulatus
Melanimon tibialis
Phylan gibbus
Otiorhynchus rugifrons ovatus
Pardosa nigriceps
Pirata piraticus
Overall I ended up with 8 new beetles, with the three not pictured here being Agonum marginatum, Pterostichus nigrita and Amara lucida.
Today was almost unbelievably different to Sunday - sunshine, warmth, dry. Just in time to get back into work .... At lunchtime I nipped over to Grove Park, still a few Wheatears knocking about.
Difficult to count accurately with all of the usual weekday disturbances as the birds were constantly moving about. I counted a definite 10 and assumed that at least the 12 from yesterday were still around. Back again this evening, and eventually I made a couple of counts of 15 - brilliant. I found that a small group were milling about immediately next to the builder's portacabins - in fact at one point four flew in and settled underneath one of them for a few minutes. Much better light earlier today though again the birds were always distant for photos. Light this evening still mainly good but with a bit of on/off cloud. To put this Wheatear-fest into context - this is not some reknowned migrant hot-spot, hilly high point, or vast grassland. This is a pathetic remnant bit of rough ground slap bang in the middle of a business park and within spitting distance of both the M1 and the Fosse Park retail center.
Meanwhile, whilst it was dry today the torrential rain yesterday ensured that the River Soar properly overflowed - flooding a sizeable area around Jubilee Park. In fact it is pretty much inaccessible now as the River course is hidden. The pool is now impossible to make out. Jubilee Lake would be a better description. I parked up anyway and had a walk along the main road taking a few snaps and checking the flooded areas for anything interesting - a Common Sand, a nice Little Egret and a skanky juv Grey Heron were all I could muster. Apart from a couple of Tufted Ducks well away from where I think the pool is.
The only other thing I noted was this smashed up Woodpigeon corpse at head-height in a bush - I reckon it has hit and bounced off a lorry .......
