Seen today

[Cudzoziemiec]

Yesterday, a rather beautiful bullfinch in the rowan tree, pecking at the berries which are just turning yellowy-orange.

[Peter]

NN, that's an adder, isn't it?  How did you pick it up and was there much resentment?

It's a grass snake and it didn't seem to mind much.

Oops!

[spesh]

A common toad, in my back yard. Could do with a few more, to control the mollusc population.

[BrianI]

I saw a red squirrel while out riding my mtb in Blairadam Forest today!   

[Pingu]

Yesterday - 13 seals at Bridge of Don, a trio of kestrels, a fawn quite unconcerned by us on the road near Newmachar, loadsa buzzards & yellowhammers. An unidentified mustelid was spotted, but I didn't see it.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

As I was going out this morning a window cleaner asked me to let him into our back green so he could clean the windows of the flats up the side road. As I was opening the door he pointed out that wandering around the green (which isn't, it's just tarmac with nothing green at all) was a hedgehog! God knows how it got there, it must have fallen in because there are quite high walls on all sides, and god knows how long the poor thing had been there. As I opened the door it came towards us and didn't seem scared at all, so he scooped it into his bucket and I took it for a little walk up the lane to the banking at the back and let it out. It didn't seem to want to leave me so I poked it to make it scurry into the undergrowth. I don't think it was very bright.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I'm rescuing animals left right and centre today. I've just been out to top up the bird feeders in the car park. Last time I topped them up I had to remove a snail which was clinging to the inside of the lid. I put it into the undergrowth. Today I've removed two from inside the lid. Are they hiding from the birds inside the bird feeder? I salute their audacity.

[spesh]

I'm rescuing animals left right and centre today. I've just been out to top up the bird feeders in the car park. Last time I topped them up I had to remove a snail which was clinging to the inside of the lid. I put it into the undergrowth. Today I've removed two from inside the lid. Are they hiding from the birds inside the bird feeder? I salute their audacity.

Ah yes, the Peregrin Took gambit  :

Pippin: The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm. It's the last thing he'll expect.
 
Merry: Are you mad? We will be caught for sure.

Pippin: Not this time.

[Bledlow]

Flying ants!

[Tail End Charlie]

I'm rescuing animals left right and centre today. I've just been out to top up the bird feeders in the car park. Last time I topped them up I had to remove a snail which was clinging to the inside of the lid. I put it into the undergrowth. Today I've removed two from inside the lid. Are they hiding from the birds inside the bird feeder? I salute their audacity.

Slugs and snails should be killed. They are the bane of every gardener's life. I hunt them at night, I dream up different ways to trap and kill them. I discuss this with others and together we try to out-wit them. So far our brain capacity has been out-matched by theirs, there's millions of them.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Not so much an issue in an office car park in the middle of an industrial estate.

[Feanor]

Not today, but on Saturday:

Cycling round a local loop, near Auchleven, past fields of cerial crops which have grown to a height of 2 to 3 feet.
The wind was sending waves through the field.
As I cycled past, I disturbed a tiny fawn, which had been completely hidden in the crops.
It leapt up in a great bound to see where it could go, and ran off in giant leaps up into the air in order to see where it was going.
After a few leaps, it stopped, and once again was totally invisible in the field.

R

[Rig of Jarkness]

Just seen a cuckoo perched in the garden.  Not something you see every day !

[Wobbly John]

(Sorry for the crap phone pic.)

Not entirely wild - seen on my ride today a few miles North of Sandringham.

[SteveC]

Fairly certain I heard a yellowhammer on my extended commute home.
I did see a rat.  Thought it was a piece of mud in the road, or possibly road kill squirrel or similar.  When I got to within a foot or two, it moved! 
Never been that close to a wild one before.

S

[Wowbagger]

On this morning's walk we had a very good view of a green woodpecker, which shot out o the bushes to our left and was probably about 4 feet in front of us at the time. There were also some reasonably sized fish sploshing around near the edge of the park lake, and I suspect that they were tench. This is good because I haven't seen ay tench in the lake for a while. Some years ago it was reputed to hold tench of British Record proportions. We also saw our resident moorhen chicks amongst the great reedmace.

Before I went away last weekend the mother moorhen was sitting on the 4 chicks on a nest in the middle of the (very slow moving) stream. When I came back she was on a nest about a metre away. Jan told me in the intervening period that she saw a duck on the original nest and no moorhens, and that the nest had sunk. I can only imagine that the moorhens had build another nest pretty quickly for the youngsters - unless they somehow resurrected the old one.

I have observed what seems to me to be some pretty surprising behaviour amongst moorhens - including what I take to be older siblings (spring brood) helping with the upbringing of younger ones. I was about to say that I had never read any material suggesting that this happens, but then I found this page. So adolescent moorhens babysit for their younger brothers & sisters. They have just gone to the top of my list of my favourite British bird! 

[Pingu]

A partridge, several red grouse & a small-scuttly-rodent-type-thing.

[fuzzy]

At dusk this evening we were treated to one of the bats doing the routine aerobatics in the garden. After about a minute however, this turned into Top Gun dogfight mode as a largeish bird started chasing it around the sky. I suddenly realised I must be watching a Sparrowhawk trying to chase the bat down. They stayed in sight for about 15 seconds, doing loops and switchbacks before dissapearing from view. About 20 seconds later, the probable Sparrowhawk shot past the patio doors. I hope it didn't get the bat. Spectacular!

[Cudzoziemiec]

On Saturday somewhere round Thame I saw a stoat hopping up and down under a gate. I wasn't sure at the time if it was a stoat or a weasel but it had a black tip to its tail and I've checked that means it was a stoat.

[Basil]

@Fuzzy.  Cool!  We have loads of bats and the occasional visiting sparrow hawk, but I've never seen that.
Must have been pretty spectacular.

[fuzzy]

It was very tense!

[Pingu]

On Saturday somewhere round Thame I saw a stoat hopping up and down under a gate. I wasn't sure at the time if it was a stoat or a weasel but it had a black tip to its tail and I've checked that means it was a stoat.

It was weasely identified.


</oldjoke>

[Mrs Pingu]

My first urban fox!

[clarion]

[Morrisette]

A deer of some sort standing in the road. It ran off when it saw me.

Lots of squashed slugs and snails on the cycle path (must have been a snail party last night with all the rain) - and also the biggest (alive) slugs I have ever seen - some absolute beasts, about mouse-size - that seem to be eating the dead ones  pretty gross.

Is there a size limit on slugs? They are huge this year!