Category Archives: Bird Watching

Nest boxes and planning…

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It’s a crisper day today, still nice and bright but with lower temperatures and higher winds than yesterday.

It’s National Nestbox Week this week – does the cornucopia of bird-based activity never end? The group has been helping out, resiting an old nestbox that was donated to us. If you look closely you can see one of last year’s boxes on the tree to the side. We have a couple more to put up, including one for the flycatcher that lives behind the recycled bus shelter, but they are in a box near my front door, where I forgot to pick them up this morning.

We now have a volunteer to build us two kestrel nest boxes, and along with the volunteers to put them up it’s looking good. One is going to be built into the statue where they roost and we’ll have to look for somewhere to put the second. I entered the kestrel I saw yesterday in the national kestrel count. They don’t really need it because the Midlands are thick with sightings, but you have to make the effort don’t you?

Meanwhile it’s full ahead on tidying up. We have a farm talk tonight and we just realised how much the grass has grown.

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Now that we’ve finished with the bird count we’re moving onto trees as a subject. They’re certainly easier to count as they don’t flit about and hide in hedges.We have the Woodland Trust coming down next month to give us some training on trees so we want to be properly prepared.

Finally – the list!

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Here, at last, is the list of birds we say in our half hour. Despite a great deal of excitement, which showed itself as chatter and rapid hand gestures, we managed to see 14 species.

Blue tit, Great tit, Long-tailed tit, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Robin, Wren, Dunnock, Rook, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Yellowhammer, Wood Pigeon and, finally, Buzzard.

Not very impressive, particularly after the list on Tuesday, but it’s another step forward for the people doing the census.

I’ll put some pictures up as soon as I can.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday

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A busy day today. Amongst other things, we got a decent bird count under our belts with a buzzard and a picture of long-tailed tits on the fat balls. I’ll write that up tomorrow.

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We also had a birthday party (with cake), wrote a few lines on each of our sausage varieties (I’m well on my way to becoming the Sausage Laureate), wrote a couple of emails relating to the rebuilding of Number Two son’s knee, did the admin and did the cleaning ready for the yoga group and kitchen visitors tomorrow. I’m good at cleaning, a fact that infuriates my wife, who thinks I ought to do it at home too. As if…

Finally I had to look up recipes for guinea fowl. There’s probably no easy way of breaking this to you, but there aren’t as many guinea fowl as there used to be in the barn. I like them, I even admire their indomitable spirit, but when it comes down to it I’ll eat pretty much anything apart from people and beetroot. I never have liked beetroot.

 

More birds

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I was feeling pretty downhearted when I returned to the farm this morning – what with an evening of admin balancing a laptop on my knee and the lack of birds yesterday there wasn’t much to enthuse me. And tghere it was!

In the hedge by the entrance we had a mixed tit and finch flock. Chaffinches, great tits, a greenfinch, coal tit…

It’s not easy peering out of the car into a hedge, but it was a good start. By the time I’d found the keys to the centre and put some more food out I’d added jackdaws, a robin and blackbirds to the list. A pair of mallard flew over as I started watching properly, a wood pigeon followed and dunnocks hopped around the base of the feeder.

To be honest I was a bit upset I hadn’t brought the camera, a feeling that increased when a reed bunting took up position in a bare branched apple tree by the vegetables, being joined moments later by a yellowhammer.

As I went back into the main room to use the telescope I noticed movement by the wilow arches – a goldfinch, followed by three more – a veritable charm of goldfinches on a grey day.

When I got to the telescope I couldn’t believe my eyes. A long-tailed tit on the fat balls, then another. In the end we had four at the same time. I’d heard them calling yesterday but hadn’t seen one.

What a turn round, but with no camera and no witnesses who will ever believe me after yesterdays grim showing?

This particularly true as after writing this I spent ten minutes straining to see any avaian movement at all, finally adding a blue tit, a pair of rooks and twenty five jackdaws to the list (the jackdaws were sitting on telephone wires – that’s how I managed to count them). The reed bunting came back and the dunnocks and blackbirds reappeared – with a white shoulder on the male, it’s easy to identify the blackbirds as the same pair. Several female chaffinches lurked in the hawthorn, pretending to be more interesting than they really are.

I’ve decided I like my job again…

 

 

Big Farmland Bird Count – part 1

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It’s been a frustrating day today, with our first crack at the Big Farmland Bird Count.

At 9.10 am I had the telescope set up on a buzzard sitting in the big tree across the field. Although we’ve often seen it go there, this was the first time it had given us such a clear view.

Of course, at 9.55 am it decided to move on, never to be seen again. After that people arrived and we were kept busy for a couple of hours before we could settle down for the count.

What had been skies full of birds abruptly emptied and we found ourselves staring out on a birdless prairie. I really don’t know how they do it. One day you can be sitting in the car waiting to go, or just looking idly out of the window and you’ll see a barn owl, a great spotted woodpecker or a charm of goldfinches, but the next (when you are deliberately looking), there’s nothing.

Well, next to nothing. We saw chaffinches, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds, wood pigeons, a blue tit, a wren and a starling. I’d seen most of them yesterday when I spent an hour cleaning up in my back garden in Nottingham. The only bright spot in the half hour was when three yellowhammers turned up. You don’t see them in Nottingham.

We’ve seen some good stuff from here – a kestrel chasing a buzzard (twice), a buzzard chasing a barn owl and a sparrowhawk struggling to gain altitude with a pigeon clutched in its talons. And before you ask, no, I don’t know why they do it, apart from the sparrowhawk. Anyone who has seen me struggling home with a large pie will recognise that behaviour. What we haven’t seen is crows or rooks mobbing a sparrowhawk, which you would expect to see as we have plenty of sparrowhawks and plenty of corvids. However, when it comes down to it, we’ve probably spent less than 24 hours watching interesting birds out of the last three years, so the chances of seeing something notable are about one in a thousand.

We’re counting again on Wednesday with the full group – here’s hoping we’ll see something interesting.

Busy week

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Sorry – been a bit busy this week.

Main news of the last few days is that, as prophesied, the guinea fowl fought back – they found a loose flap at the back of the coop and half a dozen made a brak for freedom. The rest stayed next to the food hopper: frankly I’m beginning to lose faith in them. I had hoped for more.

Julia took the Wednesday group out for a walk to practice for the Big Farm Bird Count. They had a great view of a buzzard quartering it’s hunting ground, and heard the mewing cries distinctly.

And finally, 4,000 sausages arrived. Have you any idea how long it takes to weigh, bag and label 4,000 sausage of seven varieties? I do.

Twenty six hours.

Not all in one go, of course, and not all by myself. Two of us did it and we spread it over two days.

When I close my eyes all I can see are sausages…

 

Drowning in paper

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Great day today, if you have the soul of an accountant. I hope I don’t.

We had a couple of teachers to show round today. They are really very nice people it was a pleasure to see them. They will be reading this shortly so I’m not going to say anything else, am I? They’ve been bringing groups for a few years now so they must think we do a reasonable job. They did look a bit nonplussed when I suggested feeding the class a plate of weeds but they soon picked up when I revealed nobody has died from it. Yet.

That was the start of the paperwork – checking food allergies and risk assessment. None of this actually stops us killing a child on a visit, it just means that if we do we can escape most of the consequences by pointing out all the paperwork is in order.

Obviously the parents would be unhappy and it wouldn’t gain me any friends at the school if I sent one of their pupils home in a box. To be fair, I have never killed anyone on a visit yet, and don’t intend to: have you seen the paperwork that sort of thing generates?

I’ve now moved on to sending out booking forms and entering new bookings on the calendar. I don’t know where the time goes, but by the time it’s all checked, cross-referenced and explained that five-minute job seems to take an age.

It’s a tough choice – drowning in paperwork, ten feet from a kettle and warm. Or cold, in the middle of a field, picking up kestrel pellets from the base of the neighbours statues. According to the weather station it’s now 4 degrees Celsius outside and there’s a moderate breeze.

Those kestrel pellets can wait.

Students again

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We were greeted by the increasing guineafowl flock this morning, including the whites and the lavenders. They all seem to have left the shelter of the poultry field and be roaming round as a 30 strong pack making permanant alarm calls. We’ve now had several complaints from the farmer’s mum so Something Must Be Done. Just before lunch he reminded the lads they needed to catch a dozen to send to market with the pigs tomorrow.

You know what?

I can still hear them but I can’t see a single one of them. I know they can’t understand us so there must have been something in the body language that alerted them. Smart birds, guineafowl.

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Apprentices 0 Guineafowl 1.

There’s a good coating of ice today and the group of students we have visiting find the first job of the day is breaking ice on the outside water troughs. I think it’s the first time that many of them have experienced the idea that water can’t be guaranteed. It’s more of a shock than the cold. To be fair to them they have all brought the right clothes for the day (unlike the Monday course) so the cold isn’t that bad. There is, as we always say, no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing.

We won a prize for championing farming as a career two years ago. Not sure the weather is helping us today.

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I’m currently wearing a short-sleeved shirt despite the ice, and I’m trying to look like I’m enjoying it. That’s what happens when you have several black and white checked shirts, middle-aged eyes and get dressed in the half-light without turning the lights on.

We treated ourselves to an extra hour in bed because we’ve been waking each other up with the coughs that refuse to go. That meant we had to rush out with no breakfast though we did find time to stop and buy some to eat in the car. You always do, don’t you?

That’s the 21st century – rush, profligate spending on poor nutrition and a general feeling that I could do better. I’ll have to do better on Monday – it’s National Breakfast Week! OF course, in line with modern marketing techniques it’s know as Shake up your Wake up!. It doesn’t even make sense. Grumble, grumble…better in my day…

On the positive side we saw goldcrests in the conifers by the chicken field yesterday. They are surprisingly common according to the figures but you don’t often see one. Normally you hear the high-pitched squeak they make but, likethe somg of the skylark the ability to hear goldcrests declines with age. I haven’t heard a skylark for ages, or a bat for 30 years,  and am now worried I may have reached the age where I can’t hear goldcrests.

However, it could just be that the skylark is down to a tenth of the population it had 30 years ago. That’s probably sadder than my toughts of deafness. And to round off with a strange coincidence – I’ve just had an email on my phone “Alzheimer’s Disease is now following you on Twitter”.

Not sure what to make of that.

😉

 

 

New Arrivals

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Arrived at the farm to find that, unlike Nottingham, there was no snow here and no sign that it had snowed overnight. That was a blow as I’d been hoping that more birds would be forced to use our food. As it turned out there was a flock of tits, finches and buntings feeding in the hedge and on the bird feeder. I actually had a long-tailed tit stand on the fence and watch me from no more than six feet away. Of course, my camera was in the car.

There was some sleet as we planned out the jobs for the day and went through a technical session on pigs designed by one of the group. It was mainly on terminology and I now know I should call a group of small pigs a litter rather than “sausages” and that a stag is not just a male deer or male turkey but a male pig that was castrated later in life. Seems a strange word to use in this context but farmers are a strange bunch.

One of the sows farrowed this morning. She’s called Ginger because she has a lot of Tamworth in her, though you can’t tell . The nine piglets are a strange spotted mixture – some ginger with a few spots and some black and white with lots of spots.

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In the other half of the barn the new goats are settling in. A couple of them are pregnant, so with piglets and lambing and goats we’re going to be in for a lively time.

 

Birdwatching, students and politics (that’s in order of preference!)

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Last Friday we had reed buntings at the bird table, which was a first for us as we haven’t seen any here in all the time we’ve been coming. They are a somewhat portly bird, as are most buntings, and radiate a feeling of cheery domesticity, so it was a surprise to read that they are apparently the most adulterous of all bird species, with over 50% of chicks in a brood being fathered by males who are not the male in the pair. I’d never thought of adultery in birds until I read this bit so it just shows what you can learn, and it will certainly come to mind every time a see a reed bunting from now on.

Things moved on today with a mixed group of buntings coming to feed – nine reed buntings and  three yellowhammers. With low temperatures overnight and light covering of snow on the fields they are probably finding natural food hard to come by, which is why we come into play. This is certainly the opinion of the BTO and they tend to know these things.

Apart from the birds we have a group of students from a local college visiting to gain experience for their animal health course. They are currently finding out how to put ear tags into pigs (we have some going to market tomorrow). You can tell this from the protests of the pigs – they aren’t keen on ear tags. Our normal Monday group is assisting, as they have now done this several times. It’s good for their self-confidence to be able to show their skills to the students. It’s good for the students too, because it shows them that people with learning difficulties are actually more skilled at some things than they are.

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Johno will be giving a couple of presentations to the college later today but he’s fitting in an interview with the local press at the moment because he’s standing for the local council in the May elections.

Got to go – politics is making me lose the will to live…