• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

What Birds Have You Seen Today

Hope you can make it out; Green Woody visits us about this time of year. It was motionless for ages on the trunk of the Lilac tree.

We've got two ant hills on the grass and I'm told that's their exclusive diet.

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It was there lone enough to get my phone to take this image and then video it hopping around the grass scooping up ants.

I've tried to load that video to YT this morning for you, but YT really doesn't like it and fails to load the video.
 
Sadly very few...

1 female blackbird
2 house sparrows
2 wood pigeons (in trees at a distance away)

There's been a pair of jackdaws nesting in a next but one neighbours roof space... raised about 5 youngsters but they now seem to have dispersed. It looks as though they disturbed a couple of the tiles as the nesting materials were/are visible...
 
Our tree and barn swallows are having a feast reducing the deer fly, horse fly and mosquito population.
More crows than previous years, Jenny watched a crow fly off with her favourite squirrel. :cry:
 
From my back terrace:
Pigeons
Collared Doves
Crows
Sparrow hawk
Blackbird
"Sparras"
Wrens
Swifts (feathered, not bipedal)
Magpies

Visited the Inner Farne on Monday:
Puffins (inevitably!)
Guillimots
Razorbills
Gannets
Gulls of all sizes
Kittiwakes (Yes, I know, strictly, a gull, but not as predaceous as Herring or either Black back)
Cormorants
Shags (yes, both)

Day trip to Derry, N.I., two weeks ago
White egrets - loads on the Foyle tidal flats
Herons ditto
All the common woodbudgies above.
Hen Harrier

I am NOT a "twitcher"
 
We've kept a list of sightings* since we moved here 12 years ago. There are 72 birds on the list, with a couple or three which we've only seen once. These include a hen harrier and a tree creeper. We had 8 red kites in one thermal after lunch today...but our record is 12. Our rule is it has to be seen from our land....otherwise the Merlin we saw last year at the end of the lane would be on the list. Sadly, today I can add a very stunned wren which flew into the sunroom, and knocked itself out on the glass trying to get out. I put it in one of our urns, and it wasn't there an hour later, so I assume it recovered and flew off.

*I'm not a twitcher either. Our daughter is, though, and started the list. We've simply kept it updated.
 
Thrasher is a beauty @duke and thanks for starting the thread. I spotted this today which I assume was a (well i forget the name
.. it was hovering... small bird of prey!!)

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Weve been trying to count the swifts, they go in the house roof and the barn roof at the back, this year we have 4 different places they go into, that we’ve seen, annoyingly, about a foot above the Zeist boxes I made for them.

But when on the wing it’s almost impossible to keep tabs on them, they swoop and loop around ours and through our back yard at a hell of a rate of knots, but I reckon were up to about 10 so far this year.

They do worry me the way they scrabble and clatter into the roof, I had to pick one up last week that had miss judged it and crash landed on the floor and had to give it a helping hand to get airborne.
 
Malc2098 said:
It's a European Green Woodpecker, the one with a red crown, and RSPB reliably inform me they eat ants, ants and more ants.
Click to expand...
No, I meant the pic I took was a kestrel. Lol. I wasn't trying to know more about the birds in your garden. Anyway, this one (kestrel) which I managed to picture. I was actually getting the camera out for something else and had I got it out for the hoverer, no doubt it would have shot off!! Always do...
 
Well... if talking about birds seen previous to *today*...

Red kites... lots over above Radstock... and we get some around Frome (and our house)
Common Buzzards - not as many over the last couple of years... possibly being pushed out by the Red Kites...

Sparrowhawks (now and again)

Kestrels

Even Goshawk going over - well up in the sky.

Peregrine... are in the area.

Blackbirds

Starlings (I refer to them as Bully Boys...)

Wood pigeons...

Also (winter time)...

Longtailed Tits
Blue Tits
Coal Tits
Very odd Greenfinch
Sparrow - different ones (House, Hedge...)

Only ever seen 1 Goldfinch 😞

About 30 years ago we used to get flocks of Redwings and Redstarts coming through... haven't seen any for maybe 30-32 years 😞

Quite a few gulls (various) as they seem to nest somewhere on the trading estate...

Oh! Hear the odd Tawny Owl now and again.
 
Best sighting today was a thrush, beak stuffed full of insects every few minutes, poking them into her very loud nest. Not sure if it is her second or third brood, but she is a busy mum. Her nest is about 3 meters from our bedroom window and they wake up VERY early.
 
Saw a seagull dragging a dead squirrel off the road this morning
Red kites are as rare as blackbirds around here
 
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