Seen today

[mrcharly-YHT]

They are distinctively bulky, aren't they?

I saw one on the banks of the Ouse many years ago.

[Pingu]

Deer, buzzards & a red squirrel.

[bumper]

I've just been watching a male Blackcap in the garden. It's the first one I've ever seen here.

When my wife and I moved here 20 years ago, the garden/street was wildlife wasteland. I'd never lived anywhere that had no birdlife. The RSPB advert is correct, build it and they will come. My garden is now like a little UK wildlife safari. Highlights this year include a barn owl and a short eared owl in the field across from the house, crossbills and Green woodpeckers eating ants off my wall.

The really good bit, others in the street have been watching the birds in my garden and started feeding birds too over the past few months

[DDCyclist]

We usually don't feed birds during the summer. There's plenty of sources of wild food for them. Over the last week, or so, I've seen many tits and finches checking out the bird feeders in the garden so we've started the winter feeding. Give it a week or two and they'll be eating more of the household income than we do.

[Peter]

@ bumper

Lovely success story, bumper!  We are urban here, though not far from the moors, and we get most of the commoner tits and finches in our tiny garden.  I love it when we hear the "teetle-teetle" of a flock of long-tailed tits coming through.  We hear both barn and tawny owls from time to time and I have seen a short-eared one over on the industrial estate.  No green woodpecker, though!

[bumper]

I love it when we hear the "teetle-teetle" of a flock of long-tailed tits coming through. 

They'll be in the gardens picking at fat balls and nuts soon enough, once winter actually arrives. It amazes me how things that are so tiny survive a hard winter.

[Wowbagger]

I love it when we hear the "teetle-teetle" of a flock of long-tailed tits coming through. 

They'll be in the gardens picking at fat balls and nuts soon enough, once winter actually arrives. It amazes me how things that are so tiny survive a hard winter.

In the spring of 1963 we found a ltt's nest with babies in it. Amazing. They became exceedingly rare after 30-odd days of unbroken frost.

[Kim]

Pheasant.  Waddling around next to the right hand traffic bollard here

The only thing more puzzling than how it got there is how it was still alive.   

[ElyDave]

Pheasant.  Waddling around next to the right hand traffic bollard here

The only thing more puzzling than how it got there is how it was still alive.   

The pheasants round here are too stupid to get hit by anything.

On two separate runs this week - Run 1 had pheasants and kestrels, on run 2 I ran into a brown hare (almost literally as I was off road and it was almost dark)

[Pingu]

Red kite 

[Peter]

Sorry, Pingu: yesterday, dozens of red-kites in the Bramham to Wetherby A1(M) fly-zone but this is topped by:-

Yesteryesterday, a woolly bear (tiger moth) caterpillar trundling across a pavement in Rochdale - two days before Midwinter......

[DDCyclist]

Yesterday: about 15 guinea fowl which had strayed onto the road between Blandford Forum and Salisbury.

Mrs C was driving so stopped further on than strictly necessary. By the time I'd walked back to them someone, who looked suspiciously like a farmer, in a Land Rover had stopped and herded them back through the hedge and into the field (so no photographs). He told me they were living wild in the field and he couldn't find the gap they kept escaping through. Not the sharpest scythe in the tool shed, then.

Fortunately, no guinea fowl pizza.

Unfortunately, no guinea fowl road kill for Christmas Dinner.

[ElyDave]

2 hours in the Fens yesterday and bereft of anything more interesting than a crow or a flock of pigeons.

Best was a gaggle of migratory geese grazing in a field near the Ouse Washes.

[Otto]

A muntjac dear on my patio this morning eating the Cyclamen from the pots… Grrrrrrrrr

[Pingu]

Sorry, Pingu: yesterday, dozens of red-kites in the Bramham to Wetherby A1(M) fly-zone...

No worries Peter. Up here, seeing dozens of red kites would be major news. It's not been long since they were reintroduced.

[Mr Larrington]

A muntjac dear on my patio this morning eating the Cyclamen from the pots… Grrrrrrrrr

Could be worse.  Imagine if it had been a caribou nibbling the croquet hoops.

(Exit, pursued by the Python Police)

[jamesld8]

Red kite 

Was it a `real one` ie part indigenous Welsh Kite population, (now numbering probably in excess of 500, sometimes 2-300 at Gilfach, Rhayader feeding site ) ---which is now spreading rapidly across into Herefordshire and Shropshire, or was it an incomer introduced one though???

[Pingu]

https://therspbwebsiteatwww.rspb.org.uk/whatwedo/projects/details/274636-aberdeen-red-kites

[Crumbling Nick]

A muntjac dear on my patio this morning eating the Cyclamen from the pots… Grrrrrrrrr

Muntjac are just as edible as other species of deer & they've bcome a pest. Culling has to focus on bucks. The does are usually pregnant, but usually with a fawn, possibly still suckling, in attendance, but in cover.

OTOH invasive species, foreign... cyclamen   And yes I do have cyclamen in the back garden & the American tree rats prefer Mr's N's winter pansies .

[jamesld8]

https://therspbwebsiteatwww.rspb.org.uk/whatwedo/projects/details/274636-aberdeen-red-kites

 

[red marley]

Ring necked parakeets. They've been around in N and W London for decades and have gradually been moving east. I've made the odd sighting of them in my bit of East London, but they now feel properly established. Saw the first one in our garden last week and on my walk into work this morning I saw three separate flocks of 20+ birds and heard couple more. They may be a bit of a pest but they are beautiful in flight.

[ElyDave]

Ring necked parakeets. They've been around in N and W London for decades and have gradually been moving east. I've made the odd sighting of them in my bit of East London, but they now feel properly established. Saw the first one in our garden last week and on my walk into work this morning I saw three separate flocks of 20+ birds and heard couple more. They may be a bit of a pest but they are beautiful in flight.

There's a flock of green and blue parrots fly around Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria, if your sat outside pubs on the high street you can see them flying around at fairly low level.

Alas, for me nothing more than a pair of herons in a field seen from the Ely to Cambridge train this morning.

[menthel]

Ring necked parakeets. They've been around in N and W London for decades and have gradually been moving east. I've made the odd sighting of them in my bit of East London, but they now feel properly established. Saw the first one in our garden last week and on my walk into work this morning I saw three separate flocks of 20+ birds and heard couple more. They may be a bit of a pest but they are beautiful in flight.

Bloody things. They tend to make a right racket at sunrise- less of an issue at the moment but a right pain in the summer.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

A crow, having a bath in a puddle in a field.

[Wowbagger]

Two different woodpecker species in the park this morning. Also, a goldfinch.

In addition, on looking in the pool just where the orange pipe drains water out of the lake, a relatively large fish zoomed past where I normally only see roach. I glimpsed its rear half and some mottling. I suspect some joker has caught a smallish (about 4lb) specimen of esox lucius and taken it out of the main lake and bunged it in the pool.