Owls In The Mist
This weeks photo is undoubtedly the worst photo I have ever taken. The significance is that I have spent a lifetime hoping to find young Long Eared Owls when they have just left the nest. It all came good last week when I found four young Owls perched together just as I had hoped for. […]
Hungry Young Kestrels
Finding a good nest site of a pair of Kestrels is never easy with this weeks site being one of the most photogenic I have ever seen. It is a hole in the gable end of an old stone barn and I should have filmed it last year when they had four young. Unfortunately last […]
Courting Kingfishers
Very rarely are you ever in a hide when the male Kingfisher alights and presents a fish to his female. If she accepts the fish then this is usually followed by copulation. I have only filmed this a handful of times in the last fifty years so last weeks action was most welcome even if […]
Sods Law
Over the last month I have spent many hours under a camouflage cloth hoping a hunting male Long Eared Owl would land on a post that I had placed on the forest edge. Some nights I never saw him at all but on other nights, just to rub it in, he would hunt all around […]
Nuthatch Success
After last weeks Wader disaster it is good to highlight one species that is going from strength to strength. The Nuthatches of this weeks blog were filmed in my local woodland and now their young are calling from all over the wood. Another pair are taking food from our garden and feeding young in a […]
Wader Disaster…
While we were all confined to our gardens enjoying almost unbroken sunshine our moorlands were drying out and providing little food for the young waders emerging from their eggs. Curlew numbers are already down 50% in the last ten years so this years weather will have added to their decline. Dunlin are the Pennines latest […]
Fledged Young
Each year at this time we would normally be on Islay filming Hen Harriers.It is no consolation that we are at home in exceptional weather! However, the only bonus is that we are now able to watch and film the local garden birds as they fledge their young, something that we normally miss. So this […]
Under Threat
For no obvious reason the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Willow Tit are the two most threatened woodland bird species in Britain. In the last fifty years I have only photographed breeding Willow Tits once – 20 years ago! It was a delight therefore, last weekend, to return to within a couple of hundred yards of […]
Gathering Feathers
The blog of the 4th April featured Long Tailed Tits using Woodcock feathers for their nests. More recently have had Wrens in the garden gathering moss to start a nest. The male builds several nests and the female choses one which she then lines with feathers before laying her clutch of eggs. So the bird […]
Lockdown Birds
Todays blog and photos have been taken in the garden during the last seven weeks. The irony has been the unprecedented sunny weather and as a result the wildlife part of the garden at the back was in deep shade – all day! We have never had seven weeks like it at this time of […]