What birds (are you/have you been) watching? What birds have been watching you?

[ardcarp]

For the past few months I've been ferrying one of my g-kids to do shifts at a local Tesco store. She graduated last year and is, sensibly, just 'filling in' until life and the job market gets back to something approaching normal. But I digress! Three nights a week I bring her home at around 11.15pm. The road is a country lane with hedgerows and a smattering of trees either side. Every so often (probably on average once a week) a barn owl is caught in my headlights as it slides silently across the road dipping up and over the hedges. It's usually in the same place along the road, so it must be resident nearby. We really love seeing this ghostly white apparition.

[Padraig]

Not owls, but magpies. Luckily there are always two, who come most days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6gSYHJhuCw

[jayne lee wilson]

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No its a hedgehog... first time out this Spring here, and it got its usual reward of a dish of cat food...(while the cats looked on...)...
Then a female pheasant approached.....such was its gentle curiosity, I wondered if this was a youngster from last year, who'd never seen such a strange ground-dwelling being before...

[Pulcinella]

Is anyone else mad enough to try to hold a conversation with a blackbird?
I love whistling back to one that frequents the back garden, who is so tuneful when he's not castigating me for being late with the mealy worms, and he (not sure if it's the same one each time!) seems to enjoy the exchange.
I just hope that I never 'say' anything rude or offensive.

[Serial_Apologist]

Is anyone else mad enough to try to hold a conversation with a blackbird?
I love whistling back to one that frequents the back garden, who is so tuneful when he's not castigating me for being late with the mealy worms, and he (not sure if it's the same one each time!) seems to enjoy the exchange.
I just hope that I never 'say' anything rude or offensive.

Maybe if you learned to play cello?

[jayne lee wilson]

Is anyone else mad enough to try to hold a conversation with a blackbird?
I love whistling back to one that frequents the back garden, who is so tuneful when he's not castigating me for being late with the mealy worms, and he (not sure if it's the same one each time!) seems to enjoy the exchange.
I just hope that I never 'say' anything rude or offensive.

I do try to talk to Hedgehogs.... but it is so difficult to get the babelfish into their ears...

[gradus]

For the last 3 weeks on a regular route through the countryside, I've noticed kestrels perched in trees and atop hedges far more than I've ever noticed before - just struck me as strange.

[cloughie]

Maybe if you learned to play cello?

I reckon if you played a woodwind instrument a conversation with a wood pigeon would be on!

[Serial_Apologist]

I reckon if you played a woodwind instrument a conversation with a wood pigeon would be on!

[oddoneout]

A buzzard pair cruising over the fields yesterday, probably the one that nests in the wood at work, so with luck there will be young later in the year again.

[jayne lee wilson]

I heard the telling "kew".... then the buzzard appeared soaring.... then another......

5 Buzzards and 2 Sparrowhawks in the thermal currents over the garden! It could almost be The Bosphorus.....
Higher and higher they rose into the haze....then a Sparrowhawk dashed low, to try and seize a passerine...

But then I found the Hedgehog, not especially thin or small, that I'd been feeding cat food the last few days..... dead, curled up in a tussock. No obvious sign of trauma or disease. Very sad.....I'll find some spot for it, deep in the shade...

Better get back out there....see whats new....

[ardcarp]

I'm sure you would have checked, Jayne, but was the hedgehog definitely dead? In winter months their respiration rate can at times approach zero when they are in a state of semi-hibernation.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm sure you would have checked, Jayne, but was the hedgehog definitely dead? In winter months their respiration rate can at times approach zero when they are in a state of semi-hibernation.

I picked it up with the garden gauntlets and it was not entirely stiff; its eyes were closed, but I couldn't see any sign of breathing........
I nestled it under one of the thick shrubs the Hogs always like here, so one can only hope....!

[Bryn]

In recent days, while relaxing in a little secluded clearing among the Rhododendron ponticum in a nearby Crown Estate commercial woodland area, I have noted a Red Kite landing in the top of one of the pines a few times. This particular pine has a bit of a kink in its trunk, a little below the top. I'm hoping the kite is sorting out a nesting site. Fingers crossed.

[cloughie]

Around 6.30pm on the lawn busily pecking for insects and worms were 4 starlings - their rainbow- effect plumage is lovely. Who’d have thought that a bird so commonplace not too many years ago would have achieved ‘cult’ status through murmurations and occasional visits to gardens?