Wet Wet Wet
Three nights of pouring rain is all it would take to produce a starving Barn Owl.Unlike our other Owls the Barn Owl is unable to hunt in prolonged periods of rain, which is all we seem to get nowadays. To compensate it is forced to go looking for prey at dusk and dawn or even during the day. Lots of people rejoice in seeing a hunting Barn Owl but in truth this is a bird on the point of starvation that is forced to find prey when it is not raining – that’s not very often in recent times! I have spent months this last winter waiting and filming my local pair of Barn Owls. It is always a delight when they use an appropriately placed old stump!! www.facebook.com/gordonyateswildlife
Every March for more than fifty years I have filmed Long Tailed Tits searching for feathers to line their nests. This year they started early and I had already found four nests by the 10th March which equals my record over all those years. Since then rain has delayed them but I did have one good session – enjoy what are delightful birds!
One of our commonest and most colourful winter visitors is the Brambling. In some years they arrive from Scandinavia in their thousands but this winter they have been very illusive. So the half dozen that we came across in North Wales were an absolute bonus especially in the six inches of rain that fell upon us! www.facebook.com/gordonyateswildlife
On any visit to Wales the target birds include Kites and Crossbills. Last weeks rain did not help the search but despite this we came across four Kites at Bala and one pair were collecting nesting material. Crossbills were a more difficult challenge as there are very few cones on the pine trees this year. However, deep in the mountains we came across a pair with a red plumaged male and the female collecting food for young in a nest somewhere in the forest – renown for being one of the most difficult nest to find of any British bird www.facebook.com/gordonyateswildlife
Last week we spent an extremely wet five days in the Dee valley at Rivercatcher. Six inches of rain fell in three days making it the wettest place in Britain. Remarkably instead of being a disaster for filming this extreme weather produced a bonus for Siskins. Normally they feed on seeds in the pine cones but this requires the sun to open the cones and make the seeds accessible. There was no chance of this so a bird feeder outside the cottage attracted over fifty Siskins on a daily basis – making watching them even more enjoyable from a hot-tub! www.facebook.com/gordonyateswildlife
This weeks photos are of a small group of Waxwings in Burnley a month ago.We were told that this winter was going to be a big waxwing Winter but while some parts of the country have had a lot , in Greater Manchester have had very few. For four months I have checked a berry laden Rowan tree in Middleton, every other day, only to have had every berry eaten by a pair of Mistle Thrushes. As I waited forty years to see my first Waxwing will I still be around when they return? I wish I was an optimist!! www.facebook.com/gordonyateswildlife