Seen today

[Adrian]

30 Red Kites.

Can you guess which motorway I was on today?

Yes

[Tim Hall]

Thought as much.

[Snakehips]

On Sunday I looked up in to the clear sky above my garden and  saw what I thought was a Cormorant , except that it was higher than you would expect and just cruising about on the air currents in a most un-Cormorant like manner.
As I watched the bird soared even higher , became a speck in the sky , then disappeared completely.
Can anybody think what bird might look like a Cormorant from below and behave like this.
I assume Cormorants could not fly like this and would have no reason to do so.

Snake

My Library

[RJ]

Heron?

[andrew_s]

Soaring doesn't sound like a heron.
Crane?

[Snakehips]

Heron and Crane (that would be great to see) have large wide wings and legs that stick out the back in flight. I didn't see legs , but the tail looked slightly fan-like .

Snake

[longers]

Sitting on a fingernail shows just how tiny they were:

Very tiny! Great photo's. Did you have wet hands for picking it up?

There's a reservoir near where I used to live and I came across a kilometre* long trail of toadlets along the reservoir wall and heading into the woods. They were slightly bigger than yours, nose to tail and three or four wide in some places. Thousands of em.

*checked on OS map at home.

[Tourist Tony]

Unlikely to be a raven in this area, and cormorants DO get quite high up. Was it soaring with still wings, or beating them at all? How were the wing beats? Did they look as if they were flicking back from the wrist?
One possibility is white stork. At height, it canlook very black and thus changes shape. I have seen them over Kent. The predominant whiteness can let them "disappear" when at the right angle to the light.

[Auntie Helen]

Dead tortoise in the road 10ish miles south of Norwich. Very sad as my folks have a tortoise, Daisy, that they've had for 35ish years, and this one looked a similar size (i.e. very adult - Daisy is about 90 as far as we know).

[Snakehips]

Unlikely to be a raven in this area, and cormorants DO get quite high up. Was it soaring with still wings, or beating them at all? How were the wing beats? Did they look as if they were flicking back from the wrist?
One possibility is white stork. At height, it canlook very black and thus changes shape. I have seen them over Kent. The predominant whiteness can let them "disappear" when at the right angle to the light.

Thanks for the replies chaps.

TT , I did see a few wing beats at first but at that time I was convinced I was watching a cormorant. As it got higher the wing beats ceased.

It has occurred to me that it might just have been a largish gull , we get Herring and Lesser Blackbacked on the Thames near here , with its whiteness obscured by its distance from me.

I will keep my eyes aloft.

Snake

[JStone]

Sitting on a fingernail shows just how tiny they were:

...

Very tiny! Great photo's. Did you have wet hands for picking it up?

...

Thanks - Canon Digital Ixus 75 in digital macro mode. I just put a finger down in front of one & it obediently hopped straight on, so no special handling required

[Chris S]

A grass snake wot the cat dragged in:



Bloody cats 

[Tourist Tony]

Call that a snake?
THIS was a snake!

Road kill 200 yards from my front door. Glove in for scale






She was pregnant.

[JStone]

A Sparrow Hawk on the back lawn, with a young Starling dinner.

Another sparrowhawk sighting - sitting in the top of the pyracantha at the bottom of the garden, in urban Bristol, for about 30s before flying off.

[Tim Hall]

Another Red Kite. Yeah, yeah.

But this was over the M25, about 1 mile Heathrow-wards of J12.  Never seen them so close to London before.

[Chris N]

I saw a cormorant this morning.  In the midlands, 70 miles from the sea.

[pcolbeck]

They come up rivers in summer quite often. We get them at Kirkham which is about 25 miles from the sea regularly.

[itsbruce]

Seen while in Soho Square Gardens: a raptor (looked like a falcon) hovering over Centre Point.  Stooped and killed.  Awesome.

[Crumbling Nick]

I saw a cormorant this morning.  In the midlands, 70 miles from the sea.

I've seen one recently within 10 miles of Meriden. It was before the pubs had opened . One of my fellow wildlife volunteers (a birder with a better eye for fauna than I can ever aspire to) has seen one or more at Draycote Water.

[CountrySickness]

That's a very good list for a single visit, it must be one of those rare country parks that is managed for nice habitat rather than dog walkers.

From my own eyes 200+ km around the hills of S Wales covering many habitats yesterday yielded only about 20 bird species (raven, redstart and wheatear being about the most exciting), are our feathered friends moulting already?

[Dinamo]

[Mrs Pingu]

[Crumbling Nick]

A young badger (cub?) sort of fell out of a roadside hedgebank as we were riding through deepest Worcestershire this morning. It seemed a bit dazed, but obviously not too badly, since by the time we had stopped to look back it had disappeared. The hole that was presumably a sett entrance was thigh high, so it is presumably pretty good at climbing near-vertical banks

[Crumbling Nick]

Spear thistle?

Surely water lilies, but the amphibian in the foreground makes identification a bit difficult .

Superb photos btw. I've been told the name of the bumble bee this week, but have already forgotten.

[nicknack]

Just been clearing out the pond a bit. This little chap came up with a pile of weed.