Seen today

[Crumbling Nick]

Over the last 2 days...
A buzzard mobbed by a couple of ravens. I though they were crows until they gave voice. Do buzzards & ravens compete for food?

First Willow Warbler I've seen/heard this year.

Quite a lot of goldfinches - they seem to be more common that a few years ago.

A kestrel, perched on the same pole on Weds & Thurs - on the latter occasion he flew off with something in his talons.

A hen blackbird bathing in a wet ditch. It was in front of a house where the grass had been cut very recently. Lots of the cuttings were floating on the water surface, and the bird's activity had created a ring of clear water, surrounded by the grass.

A total absence of yellowhammers singing or perching on the roadside hedges. Has anyone else had shortages of these (previously common) birds?

And botanically, a very rich display of wild flowers : -
Primrose
Cowslip
Wood Anemone
Lesser Celandine
Bluebell
Greater Stitchwort
Sweet Violet
Dog violet (of some sort)
White deadnettle
Red deadnettle
Yellow Archangel
Bugle
Ground Ivy
Daisy
Dandlelion
Coltsfoot
Red Campion - distinctly early
Garlic Mustard
Hairy bittercress (I think)
Forget-me-not
Wild Arum
A white umbellifer that I haven't idetified.
A blue flower, which I think is Alkanet, but it has become very common, so might be a garden escape.
Daffodils - definitely garden escape
Periwinkle - probably garden escape
Honesty - definitely garden escape

It's definitely a good spring.

[nobby]

I've noticed that the buzzards I see are often accompanied by a crow that seems to usher them away by flying with them and forcing changes in the buzzard's path. Not mobbing, but a more subtle interference like a guiding of the buzzard.
Is that bird behaviour or am imagining it?

[border-rider]

The crows etc  here def.  move the buzzards along.  If the buzzards can't be persuaded nicely then the crows play rough.

At Former Volio Towers we had kites over the garden quite often, and the corvids used to mob them mercilessly.  The kites mostly ignored them

[border-rider]

Quite a lot of goldfinches - they seem to be more common that a few years ago.

Yes, there seem to be loads about

It's definitely a good spring.

There do seem to be an awful lot of very good shows of hedgerow flowers this year.  The primroses are as amazing as I've ever seen. 

Spring has sprung

[Chris N]

Saturday evening, after the Cambrian 200: a barn owl clutching dinner in its claws, flying along in front of me, just below the tree canopy.

[Pingu]

A buzzard mobbed by a couple of ravens.

Which reminds me: a buzzard getting mobbed by a lapwing on Sunday. Lapwings seem willing to have a go at anything.

[clarion]

By a roundabout route (pleasing wingshapes, as it happens), that reminds me that I saw a heron flying directly overhead as I cycled across Mitcham Common to work yesterday, and I noticed how, at the end of each long, lazy stroke, as if the bird were rowing through the air, the wing narrows to a sleek pointed shape.

[Crumbling Nick]

Quite a lot of goldfinches - they seem to be more common that a few years ago.

Yes, there seem to be loads about

It's definitely a good spring.

There do seem to be an awful lot of very good shows of hedgerow flowers this year.  The primroses are as amazing as I've ever seen. 

Spring has sprung

Ta for that link - I'd missed the thread, since it's a part of the forum that I don't normally frequent.
Agree totally about the primroses - they're just reaching their best around here and there aren't usually a lot about in the Warwickshire verges.

[border-rider]

There's been a male kestrel hunting around our drive the last few months

Today we were watching him while we were coming home, and he flew over the pond and landed on another kestrel sitting on a branch.  It was very quick.

[pcolbeck]

Saw a long eared owl the other day sat on a hedge. Not such an uncommon bird I know but the first one I have seem. We get plenty of barn owls and little owls and I hear tawny owls all the time but that's my first vulcan owl.

[slowfen]

Yesterday hares boxing just south of wilburton, and today a buzzard by Coveny

[Tim Hall]

Scads of herons at Bough Beech. A grey wagtail last weekend at Hathersage. For a grey bird, it isn't half yellow.  Three wallabies down the FNRTTC lane in Horley yesterday.

[Wowbagger]

An evening jaunt to one of my favourite places, Two Tree Island, to see if there were any cuckoos about.

There was an almighty ruckus amongst some oystercatchers, which was quite amusing. There were quite a lot of the other usual waders - loads of avocets, sitting on eggs now by the look of them.

We saw an owl, which I assumed to be a short-eared. Then we met a few ornitho-types with binoculars and stuff and had a chat with one of them.

The owl, apparently is a long eared. I'd never seen one before. Then a nightingale started to sing and we listened to it for quite some time. I was able to phone three people up and they could hear it too. A wonderful, romantic, evocative sound. I'll have to listen to some Beethoven in a minute. It's the first nightingale I've heard since Annie and I rode the tandem across Ditchling Common on the May FNRttC last year.

Then, as we walked towards the eastern end of the island, a pair of owls settled in a clump of stunted oaks to our left. They were so close we could hear their wing-beats (owls are amongst the most silent of fliers, for obvious reasons) and their mewing. I reckon they've got a nest in there.

Didn't hear any cuckoos, but apparently one was seen there on Saturday and another ornitho-type we chatted to said he'd heard one today at Wakering Stairs, where Mrs. Wow and I went yesterday.

[nobby]

Saw a stoat up a Norfolk lane on Saturday. It came right up close until it heard my brake squeak, sat bolt upright and then shot down a hole in the bank. Lovely sight and only the third I have ever seen. I've always been on a bike when I've seen one.

[border-rider]

A stoat for me too - in the garden

It was just bouncing across the grass by the oil tank when I looked out

[nobby]

A stoat for me too - in the garden

It was just bouncing across the grass by the oil tank when I looked out

All the stoats in Wolverhampton are waving guns and dealing drugs, or is it scrotes? 

[Wowbagger]

A mallard in Priory Park has no fewer than 17 (may have been more) very young ducklings following her about. I've never seen so many in a brood. Wiki reckons that 13 is usually the upper limit of eggs in a clutch. I wonder whether they could be foster-ducklings from another brood, but they are all a very similar size.

[andrew_s]

Some other duck making like a cuckoo?

[Regulator]

A mallard in Priory Park has no fewer than 17 (may have been more) very young ducklings following her about. I've never seen so many in a brood. Wiki reckons that 13 is usually the upper limit of eggs in a clutch. I wonder whether they could be foster-ducklings from another brood, but they are all a very similar size.

[Right Wing Hat ON]

Probably has a council nest and gets a shed load in bread benefits...

[/Right Wing Hat OFF]

[Adrian]

[/Right Wing Hat OFF]

It's removable?

[FatBloke]

I saw a hare on Tuesday 

[TheLurker]

 A very small and _very_ stupid young rabbit, about 6" off my front wheel on the way in today.  It was very nearly (a very small) rabbit pie.

[Wascally Weasel]

Today (and for much of this week) I have had my first sighting of the Baby Rabbits of Spring in Richmond Park (a sight that usually shortly precedes the first sighting of a Baby Rabbit of Spring in Richmond Park Being Pecked To Death By Crows).

As well as the tiny little rabbits (which it must be admitted are massively cute) there are the occasional bigger adult rabbit among the small ones - I'm guessing that they are the Richmond Park Owsla policing evening Silflay.

*peruses bookshelves in search of Watership Down*

[Tewdric]

A stoat for me too - in the garden

It was just bouncing across the grass by the oil tank when I looked out

Are you sure it was a stoat and not a weasel?

A weasel is normally weaselly recognised, but a stoat is stoatally different..

[border-rider]

We seem to have acquired a racing pigeon

I saw a trailerload parked a few miles away on Tuesday, ready to be released, and when i got home there was a fine chap with one blue, one green leg ring boggling at me at eating bird food.  He seems very tame and I suspect I could probably catch him.

I may call him Speckled Jim