Seen today

[Jaded]

A ladybird which had alighted on my bosom. I let it walk onto my finger and over my hand for a while and then I shook it off into some flowers.

This post is useless without being filmed in soft focus with a backing of gentle music and then used to advertise some feminine hygiene products.

Indeed. A walking bosom being shaken onto some flowers would be a great subject. 

[hellymedic]

Brown, furry rodents with thick tails and no sense of shame have been photograhed by David whilst he's been collecting tomatoes.
Will probably upload pics to Flickr when I get a tuit.
Looks like more observatory cables have been chomped  .

[nicknack]

Brown, furry rodents with thick tails and no sense of shame

I've got one of those too:

Not exactly unusual but it's only the 3rd time in 15 years that I've seen one in our garden.

[hbunnet]

I'm in Norway; it's a lemming year and there are squashed ones every 10m or so along some roads. Here is an unsquashed one from the weekend.

This year they can be seen all the way down to sea level.  No stories of them jumping off cliffs though.

Lemmings have a curious defence behaviour, when you are about to step on one it holds its ground and squeaks at you. They say that it will die with rage if you torment it, but I haven't tried that.

[border-rider]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/36VjxTG6CEk&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/36VjxTG6CEk&rel=1</a>

Housemartins this morning, taken from our bedroom window

[Peter]

Gathering for the off, do you think?

I love house martins.  Where we stay in The Lakes, we saw what can only be described as a flying school of them lining their young up on a roof and watching bthem do short spins - wonderful.

[border-rider]

Breakfast, I think

They've been doing that every fine morning this summer.  There's a couple of nests under the eaves.

However, they may be plotting something along the lines of what you suggest:

[Wowbagger]

I wouldn't have thought there were enough houses in your neck of the woods to support that number of house martins!

[border-rider]

I wouldn't have thought there were enough houses in your neck of the woods to support that number of house martins!

The seem to jam into the nests under our eaves, but I think they live in the barns & old sheds around the place.  We lost one nest in the recent rain though.

[Bledlow]

Last night: an owl (species unidentified) which flew low along the road ahead of us, then perched on some wires. A few bats, also of unidentified species.

[Edit]Probably a Tawny Owl.

[Cudzoziemiec]

A sparrowhawk that flew right over my head on the outskirts of Chepstow this afternoon.

It could have been a kestrel, but I don't think so - it wasn't doing any windjamming and it looked more of a grey colour, as far as I could tell.

[Wobbly John]

On the way back from watching the Tour of Britain at Sandringham, a hare, so big that I thought it was a muntjac deer until I got close and it pricked up it's ears and hopped away.

[Riggers]

Millions of House Martins swirling around above Glynde yesterday (18th Sep). Red dots signify a House Martin.

[Butterfly]

Bats in our garden

[Pingu]

Dead housemartin on the road near Inverurie 

Live red kite near Skene 

[Snakehips]

Bellowing noises coming at you from all directions from the male deer in Bushy Park.

[Pingu]

Skein of geese heading south.

[RJ]

Pink-footed geese from the train between Larbert and Stirling.

[Chris S]

A herd of deer (real ones, not the ratty Muntjac wannabes) standing in the middle of a misty ploughed field.

A Heron, skimming effortlessly over the shallow fog near the river. Presumably trying to find a gap in the fog so it could land.

A long eared (or some other Strigidae member) owl. Watching me intently from his/her perch atop the swings in Market Weston.

[Bledlow]

Reported by Mrs B: a collision (which resolved after discussion into it brushing against her hair) with a bat, in the grounds or Reading University while she was running there last night. She was not able to give a description.

[Cudzoziemiec]

A crow mobbing a buzzard, yesterday at the top of Cheddar Gorge. Can it be a mob if it's singlehanded? Can it be singlehanded if it has wings? Then the buzzard got above the crow and attacked it! It dodged, but then a few more buzzards and several more crows appeared from somewhere and they were all wheeling around in the sky. Looking at their wings, it occurred to me that perhaps the crows were actually ravens, but I don't know if they're found in the Gorge? It was so fascinating I stopped and watched - time limits be blowed!

Later I rode under a telegraph* wire from which a kestrel flew off. I mentioned the previous scene to another rider and he said, "Yes, I saw lots of blackbirds." Ok, maybe he meant "black birds" but he definitely said "blackbirds".

*Why do we still call them telegraph wires? When did anybody last send a telegraph?

[Wowbagger]

A large skein of brent geese on the sea front in Westcliff. They were flying the wrong way (west to east): they spend the summer in Siberia and turn up on the Thames estuary at this time of year, leaving again in the spring. I wondered whether this lot thought "Bugger this for a game of soldiers!" as they  seemed to be going back to where it's nice and cold.

[Bledlow]

*Why do we still call them telegraph wires? When did anybody last send a telegraph?

You don't send telegraphs, any more than you send telephones. You send telegrams via a telegraph.

Mrs B & I saw an ex-badger this morning. I think it had been very unlucky or remarkably incompetent, since it had managed to get run over on a track where the motor traffic consists of the four wheel drive vehicle(s) owned by the occupants of a single house, & the occasional farm vehicle. Dead long enough to get very smelly.

[Cudzoziemiec]

A jay and a magpie squabbling over berrying rights to the rowan tree. The jay won.

[Pingu]

Skein of geese heading south.

Another yesterday evening & three skeins this morning.