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

[Richard Tarleton]

Amusing behaviour under the squirrel-proof seed feeder - when squirrel and collared doves are both present, feeding on the seeds which fall to earth, the squirrels are dominant but the collared doves try to look intimidating by turning sideways on and raising one wing, as it were giving the squirrel the armpit. Doesn't have any effect.

[Serial_Apologist]

Amusing behaviour under the squirrel-proof seed feeder - when squirrel and collared doves are both present, feeding on the seeds which fall to earth, the squirrels are dominant but the collared doves try to look intimidating by turning sideways on and raising one wing, as it were giving the squirrel the armpit. Doesn't have any effect.

A bit of armpit theatre, then.

I found this in next week's Radio Times:

Thursday 14 March - Radio 4
11.30am - The Turtle Dove Pilgrimage
Folk singer Sam Lee and William Parsons of the British Pilgrimage Trust lead 11 pilgrims on a journey across Sussex tracing the origins of the iconic folk song The Turtle Dove, which Vaughan Williams heard and captured on Edwardian recording equipment at the Plough Inn more than 100 years ago.

It's sort-of related to the thread topic.

[oddoneout]

I can't remember when I last saw a grey partridge in the UK. They seem to be in decline everywhere, whereas large no's of red-legged are reared and released for shooting. There is no evidence that red-legged drive out greys, where both are present the greys do well....but greys entirely dependent on wild reproduction, and habitat.

The instinct of a pheasant when disturbed or alarmed is to run for cover and hide, not to fly - they can only be persuaded to do something so against their nature by using beaters, and trip wires.

They try that as I walk towards them, but the bits of cover they head for are on the other side of chain link fences which I assume they can't see, and it takes a while for them to process the problem and implement Plan B - takeoff. Unlike the ducks which very quickly learnt to keep away from the pond in a previous garden as a result of me repeatedly walking towards them, the pheasants keep returning and more often than not make the same mistake with their escape. It's not as if they haven't other territory options in the immediate vicinity.

[kernelbogey]

Crows
Since last summer, there has been what I assume to be a young crow around with an unusual call. The rhythm - cark, cark, cark - is clearly crow, but the pitch is high, so the bird sounds like a teenager whose voice is breaking!

Anyone come across this?

[cloughie]

Blackcap - in the garden not seen one for a couple of years but in the last two weeks have see a male on two occasions.

[ardcarp]

Crows
Since last summer, there has been what I assume to be a young crow around with an unusual call. The rhythm - cark, cark, cark - is clearly crow, but the pitch is high, so the bird sounds like a teenager whose voice is breaking!

It's clearly just a rookie. Or raven mad.

I'll get me coat.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's clearly just a rookie. Or raven mad.

I'll get me coat.

Jackdaws depart from their familiar repertoire when they make high pitched caws as alarm calls.

[HighlandDougie]

Blackcap - in the garden not seen one for a couple of years but in the last two weeks have see a male on two occasions.

Hope that you have been hearing him as well. I’m not sure if it’s the same pair but blackcaps are pretty much a constant presence in my garden, winter and summer. Yesterday afternoon’s blitzkrieg on a thicket of brambles was accompanied by a male singing his heart out - glorious, like the finest coloratura.

[Richard Tarleton]

Hope that you have been hearing him as well. I’m not sure if it’s the same pair but blackcaps are pretty much a constant presence in my garden, winter and summer. Yesterday afternoon’s blitzkrieg on a thicket of brambles was accompanied by a male singing his heart out - glorious, like the finest coloratura.

Are you speaking with your French or Scottish hat on here, Dougie? Still a bit early for blackcaps to be singing in the UK just yet, even though some things are singing unseasonably early this year - chiffchaffs (over-wintering ones) in February . Cloughie's Cornish blackcaps likely to be over-wintering ones, spring migrants not till April. Though people are seeing the likes of sand martins, and even the odd hoopoe is turning up in Pembrokeshire......

But yes, blackcap one of my very favourite songsters, along with his close cousin the garden warbler - mellow contralto without the "scratch" in the song. Blackcaps get here first in spring and do their best to exclude garden warblers from their patch.

[HighlandDougie]

France - even in this unseasonably mild Scottish winter (everything seemed to be about a month ahead of usual when I left last week), just a bit early for summer migrants to be arriving. The Scottish garden now seems to host garden warblers every year, rather than blackcaps, although they are also to be seen and heard, along with the usual suspects (willow warblers, chiffchaffs, whitethroats - with wood warblers nearby). I’m sure that there were never as many garden warblers in years past, not, though, that I’m complaining as their song is indeed a delight. The other species which I commonly see from both gardens are golden eagles, of which it seems that there are six pairs in our valley here in France. Just a bit bigger than the blackcaps!

[greenilex]

Now you are making me envious. Hope to see bald headed eagles in August, perhaps.

[Serial_Apologist]

Now you are making me envious. Hope to see bald headed eagles in August, perhaps.

Only retired male ones in Southampton, I would think, Holly...

[greenilex]

Ah, I always hope to share family birthday celebrations across the Pond.

[Padraig]

Not the birds, though the usual residents are thankfully present, but the bees.

Yesterday I spotted a bumblebee working a border of pulmonaria. Is this early?

[Bryn]

Not the birds, though the usual residents are thankfully present, but the bees.

Yesterday I spotted a bumblebee working a border of pulmonaria. Is this early?

It depends very much on the species. See https://www.bumblebeeconservation.or...ve-bumblebees/ . I have seen the odd one or two throughout the winter.