It's been a while again!

 With our daughters wedding, catching covid and lots of other things going on, I've had very little time to sort out our photos and do any posts here. Yesterday I managed to go through a months worth of photos, not just wildlife a lot of other stuff too.

I'll start with a few photos from the garden, whilst we were isolating in the second week of June. We should have been going to Lesvos, but went down with covid 4 days before we were due to go and took 11 days before we were clear. We were so looking forward to it, two weeks of Greek food and birding too, it would have been fantastic. Hey ho!

So back to the garden; A family of Blue tits stayed with us for a quite a while:

There's alwats a Woodpigen about and

we had quite a few Starlings visit.

In addition we had Siskin, Coal Tit and House Sparrow. In addition there was always the ever present Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Rook, Jackdaw, Crow and Magpie flying around and the occasional Swifts too!

There are more posts to come of post covid afternoons out.

A bit Foxy in the Garden

After 30 odd years, had our first foxes in the garden, well that we have seen anyway! Then two turn up at the same time!

Garden Visitor!

A nice garden visitor yesterday. He made it difficult to take a photo hidden behind the tree, mind you he probably wouldn't have noticed me, he was too busy tearing a Blackbird to bits!!

 Sparrowhawk

New Species for Our Garden

The other morning as went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea I had a real surprise, with a new visitor to our garden, not a rare species by any means, but considering our pond is only about 5 foot by 4 foot and a 2 foot deep, it will hold meager pickings for this Grey Heron:

It gave me time to dash upstairs and get my camera, before it spotted my movement in the kitchen and flew off, much to the relief of our resident frogs!

Just a few pics from the garden!

Spent half an hour messing with the camera this week,

It's been a while

I haven't posted for over a week things have been a bit hectic with work so just haven't had time!

Last weekend we did a Saturday afternoon National Trust visit to Hanbury Hall not far from Upton. We had a coffee to set us up then wandered around the estate, highlight being a flock of Redwings down in a copse on the edge of the estate, didn't get any decent photos as they were well in the trees and in the shade, but very enjoyable none the less. Plenty of Blackbird, Blue & Great Tit, Chaffinch, Crows, Wood pigeons etc. A flight of 5 Teal flew over us heading towards the masts, so I guess they were on the way to Upton.

There were also some Pheasant wandering around, it was a very pleasant couple of hours. We walked on up the hill to the Church, first time we had done this in all the times we have been there, the views are brilliant, well worth it. The walk up there took us through the a field full of Sheep with Lambs, so an obligatory cute photo is required:

So back to the car, where we saw more Redwing and a Jay. So pleased with that. We hadn't left ourselves a lot of time, but we sneaked in 45 minutes at Upton the way home. We went to the Moors and chose the wrong hide as the sun was shining directly at us, didn't think, so only one photo of note: 'Makin BHGs':

So, the usual culprits:
Great Crested and Little Grebe, Teal, Wigeon, Shoveler, Gadwall, Tufted Duck, mallard, Canada Goose, Cormorant, BHG, LBBG, Herring Gull, Snipe (just the one), Coot, Cormorant, Kestrel, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Chaffinch and Long Tailed Tit.

The Garden has been more interesting this week, with rare visits for us of Chaffinch, Greenfinch and Long Tailed Tit and a first for the garden a very brief visit by a  Goldcrest. We also now have a pair of Magpie building a nest in the Leylandii at the bottom of the Garden, but sadly our 3 bird boxes, whilst being checked out are at the moment empty!

The pond has burst into life, its a frog orgy down there, it's rapidly filling up with frog spawn, so interesting times ahead!

Don't know yet what we are doing this weekend, depends on the weather!  But we do have a trip coming up to the Attenborough NR in Nottinghamshire to meet some friends and the at the end of the a month a long awaited return to Mull, cant wait to see the Eagles again and this time hopefully get some better views of Otters.

TTFN

One for the Garden and Elsewhere

Well it's been a very quiet time on the birding front, with wedding anniversary, Tina's birthday (I won't mention the age, but she's caught me up again!) and the Children coming home, plus the recent weather has been awful, but sitting here looking at the rain and waiting for my works laptop to re-boot, I thought I'd add a few lines to the blog!

So since Upton we haven't been birding at all, although we took advantage of the late sunshine last Sunday (after a very late Saturday night!) to pop down to our favourite National Trust property; Charlcote Park.

It's always rewarding and is a great place to relax and go for a stroll amongst the Deer. Plus there's always a chance of  a bird or two and we weren't disappointed.

A Redwing taking berries from a Holly Tree by the Cafe was a good start. (Whilst we were having a coffee of course.) The usual small birds were around as well, Robin, Tits, Chaffinch etc.

So we then took ourselves off for a stroll. The Deer were close to the house which was nice and let us get quite close, we continued on a circular walk around the estate coming back via the pond. We were then surprised by a Sparrowhawk zooming after some small bird (Couldn't make out what as they were zipping around like a WWII dogfight) the Sparrowhawk gave up though as the littll'un fled for the trees.

We then arrived at the pond, not much about, Mallard and Moorhen, but then a flash of blue and our first Kingfisher at Charlcote. It stayed for a few minutes perched on a branch on the small island before disappearing in the fading light.

So to today, I just went down to the kitchen from my 'office' to make a drink and was happily watching a Coal Tit on the feeders in the Garden when I saw a movement in one of the trees, it was tiny... a Goldcrest, brilliant, a first for the Garden! I rushed to get Tina who is home today, but sadly to late, it had gone.

That's it.. we are off to Norfolk on Saturday for a week, staying on the coast, so hopefully might get a few firsts and add to our year list, you never know. I have been monitoring the forums and there's a lot of interesting stuff about, but I'm sure never where we will be or the usual when when we get somewhere, "oh you should have been here 10 minutes ago......"

So next blog will be when we get back!