Counting Chickens

After predicting in last week’s blog that the Kingfishers would fledge their third brood of young on the 11th August guess what happens, it rains. Torrential rain overnight on Thursday resulted in a three foot rise in the water level of their stream and the drowning of their young that had just hatched. It was the last straw in a season that has had the worst weather in forty years including the most severe gale ever recorded in the breeding season in Scotland. Now that I am unable to film Kingfishers for the next three weeks I turn my attention to the thankless task of searching for Hobbies. A Sand Martin colony was watched closely but only a Sparrowhawk tried its luck, the Sand Martins being much too quick for it. A search on the moorland at an old breeding site once again produced nothing. Will I ever manage to film a Hobby? A field close to home, that had been sprayed with pig swill, produced more than sixty feeding Wood Pigeons. In the garden there has never been as many young birds as there are this year. It is especially pleasing to see a male Bullfinch feeding two juveniles.