Waxwing Surprise

  With the first morning sun for some time I could not resist the temptation to visit Blackburn to see the four Waxwings that have been present for nearly a month. All four birds were roosting in four tall trees at the rear of the car park so I waited for them to feed on the rowans surrounding the car park . The four birds comprised of a least one adult bird and two young birds from last year. What happened next was a complete surprise. One of last year’s young appeared to pluck a yellow berry still on the roost tree and pass this to the other young. This was repeated many times over a ten minute period with the receiving bird always accepting and eating the offering. When I returned home and inspected closely the photos I had taken I found that  the yellow food was not a berry but a yellow Spring bud. It was not possible to identify the type of trees that were springing into life and producing the buds. The interesting fact though is that as both birds involved were born last year neither of them would have seen a Spring bud before. Click here. The continuation of the wet weather this week has resulted in more filming of the garden Long Tailed Tits with at least a dozen feeding on a daily basis. On Hopwood some Winter Thrushes are still present and the first fungi of Spring has appeared in the form of the Scarlet Elf Cup. A Kingfiser was still present on the local canal on 1st February.