This Morning (and a few from the last two weeks)

 This morning was dry, sunny and very windy. I walked to the hide and the walk there wasn't too bad as I was sheltered from the wind by hedges and trees for most of the way, but once on the viewing gallery it was horrendous. The wind made my eyes water, and holding the bins and camera still was difficult to impossible.

 

I took a few photos of three Marsh Harriers but wasn't happy with the quality. I tried a bit of video which was a little better but the wind just drowned out any other sound 😂😂

 

Other than that it was a good morning:

Kestrel over Southorpe

Treecreeper in Wassand wood

 

Song Thrush, Southorpe Road

Song Thrush as above

Brown Hare in freshly tilled field

Brown Hare with Mere as a nice background

Chiff Chaff at Weatherhill

Chiff Chaff as above

View to the West from the hide 

View to the East from the hide

We had a few misty, moody mornings a while ago that were more like autumn mornings than spring. Cool and poor visibility but lovely to walk in. 

A few more plants are growing through now but everything seems pretty slow for some reason - is it just me that thinks things should be a bit further on than they are?

Ground Ivy in flower 

Reeds coming through in the wood

The local mammals have been scarce (apart from deer of course). A couple of Otter sightings were very distant, mid-Mere, so pics were next to useless - but that doesn't prevent me from publishing one here 😉

Otter mid-Mere

Hare sightings have been curtailed by the ploughing activity over the last 10 days or so.

Brown Hare this morning, very few seen due to ploughing

Our garden hedgehogs have been seen every night, they activate the security lights as they toddle down the path past the patio doors so we get a nice view for a short while - the trail cam gets them though.

 

Hedgehog on trail cam

While on the subject of ploughing, over the past 10 or so years I have got used to winter crops being planted as soon as the year's crops have been harvested, so come spring the crops start to grow and provide cover for early nesting ground-nesting birds like Lapwing and Skylark. Yes, the wintering farmland birds like Linnet and Yellowhammer miss out on the seeds in stubble fields, but we can't have it both ways. 

 

This year we have had a change. After the crops were harvested last year the fields were ploughed, but they were planted with what looked like rape seed. This started to grow and got quite tall before the ravages of winter set in and killed it off. Not enough though because the fields were then sprayed with weed killer (which killed the surrounding grass as well). Ploughing has since commenced and nearly finished, followed by tilling and planting, but during the ploughing the tractors have disturbed the Lapwings that have taken to nesting in the local fields.

Lapwings disturbed by ploughing (distinguishing marks obscurred as the driver is not to blame)

 I noticed this morning that a strip of land has been left unploughed, but whether this is still to be done or is for the bird's benefit remains to be seen. Three pairs were in the fields but only one pair was present this morning.

 

to be continued - my dinner is ready! 

Let It Rain, Let It Rain, Let It Rain

 Since my previous post we have had copious amounts of rain. Last Monday everything was drying out nicely, but a downpour overnight put paid to that and the fields were once again under water. Here we are on Sunday and more rain has fallen to swell the steadily growing puddles.

 

At the end of February, Yorkshire Water's reservoirs were at 99% capacity and I can't imagine that they've reduced much in the 15 days since that figure was published. I'm still not putting any money on there not being a shortage come August 😉

 

I said we had lots of Roe Deer sightings in the previous update, and things have moved onwards and upwards since that. I saw 12 yesterday morning in groups of 8 and 4.

Eight Roe Deer

Four Roe Deer

Roe Deer in Heslop's, but what is the bird in the background?

With longer days the  local flora is growing in abundance and we are getting a bit more colour with the bursting open of Blackthorn flowers. We should have more hedges in blossom than we do given the hundreds of yards of hedgerow we have hereabouts.  Most trees and shrubs in hedges only produce flowers, nuts and berries (such as haws and sloes) on year-old twigs, so cutting hedges every year means that they provide little food for insects, birds and mammals. Research suggests that a three year cycle of cutting works best.

 

Blackthorn blossom appears before the leaves (leaves before blossom on Hawthorn)

Bird song is now heard each morning (volume and numbers very much weather-dependent) and Yellowhammers are joining Dunnock, Robin, Chaffinch, Song Thrush, Great and Blue Tits plus  (latterly) Wren. Their song comes in at number two in my chart of hit makers, with Song Thrush number one of the early Spring singers.

 

Yellowhammer

We still have the long-staying good numbers of Scaup at the Mere with 12 or 13 seen most days. Even without a scope I had six yesterday morning just off first field.

 

Six Scaup off first field

I was watching a Treecreeper feeding on a tree trunk the other day and clearly saw how it put its head on one side to get its bill under the bark leaves to extract insects. It adaps its feeding style depending on what species of tree it is feeding on.

Treecreeper with head on one side to get its bill under the bark

We had a clear blue sky today and it makes the views so much more beautiful than the usual steely grey. 

Spring, plus Red-necked Grebe and Smew

 Time rolls on and spring is gradually uncoiling itself. It's beautiful to watch each day as plants slowly emerge and birds wake up to start their breeding cycle. Gradually, very gradually, green expands to overtake the dominant brown, "softly, softly, catchee monkey" as Lord Baden-Powell quoted from the Ashanti origins of the phrase.

 

Nettles

Lords and Ladies

Hogweed

Cleavers

Lesser Celandine providing much needed colour

 All these plants and more will grow into the greenery that provides so much of the back drop and support for spring and summer, without which the main player's roles would be severely diminished - and in some cases they would disappear altogether.

 

All well and good, but has anything exciting been seen? Well, not exactly exciting, but certainly expected and welcomed with open arms when they did appear.

 

A Red-necked Grebe dropped in last Saturday and drew several birders to visit the Mere to see it once word got out. As usual these days the light was poor but a few shots from distance were taken:

This and three below - Red-necked Grebe on the Mere

 

 A red-head Smew has also been seen since Saturday (although a sighting was also recorded on Wednesday but no follow ups). I got it this morning at the hide in mist and grim light, but I'll take what I can get right now.

 

Red-head Smew at the hide today

As noted above

Siskins are still being sighted and heard in small numbers around the Mere - this one was with a few others in Heslop's copse last week.

Siskin

As you can probably tell from the photo I had to over-expose the image by a lot (+2 stops) to get anything at all apart from a silhouette as the bird was back-lit. It wasn't sunny (surprise surprise) but it was bright enough to cause problems - I like a challenge every now and again, but every day is getting a bit wearing 😂😂

 

Common Buzzards are joining the other birds in getting together with potential partners, and last Tuesday when the sun was out there were five of them soaring above Wassand.

One of five Common Buzzards (note the blue sky!)

Common Buzzard

A personal favourite bird, the Treecreeper, has become less and less common around my local patch. Three years ago I found three Treecreeper nests in spring and followed each one to the end of the breeding season. Two were succesful but one failed as the dead tree it was in fell down (after the nest had been predated by a Woodpecker). The host tree of one of the other nests also fell down a few months later. Subsequently I have seen far fewer Treecreepers through each year. 

 

These photos are of a bird found near Weatherhill last week. 

Treecreeper

Roe deer are being seen more and more and I had eight the other day along the south side of the Mere.

Six of eight Roe deer

One of the other two

I'm hoping for better weather and light in the coming weeks and I know it will arrive, it just seems a distant light at the end of the tunnel right now 😉