After a slight delay..

Unfortunately nature activities have been suspended over the past month due to a bereavement followed by a loss of broadband connection, broken boiler and lengthy powercut in the wake of Storm Arwen.

As a result I've seen very little beyond what has turned up around the garden.  I only got out on one trip, a bike ride to Corbridge when, after seeing a single low-hovering kite early on, I spent some time peering into someone else's garden.  Apart from trying to transform a chaffinch into a brambling as someone once amusingly put it, there was nothing of any significance.  

There hasn't been that much in my garden anyway.  A couple of weeks back I glimpsed a queen wasp

Long-tailed tits

passing by the mahonia but no early bumblebees, which might have been a possibility.

I've spent some time thinking about the long-tailed tits and how gregarious and shy they are.  I moved the suet balls they obviously like onto the plum tree to see if they would come closer.  Apart from one occasion they didn't so I put them back near the fence and about six visited shortly afterwards.  It's a case of feast or famine though.

For a while a dunnock with no tail visited the bird table, moving uptypically slowly. The first time it even stayed there motionless for about an hour.  Presumably it had been attacked.

A wren has also visited on a couple of occasions.

My occasional visitors have sometimes noticed tawny owls calling from the trees by the stream.  I don't usually but there was one evening, quite early, when there was one calling from fairly close by.

A sighting of a furtive jay in the same area had me wondering if one would visit the garden again, but nothing so far.

Wednesday 27th February

Rain and wind held off long enough to enable a pleasant cycle ride to Crocketford via Glenkilns, if slightly hurried in the early stages.

It proved to be a day dominated by fleeting sightings, starting with a brief backend view of the male of a pair of siskins crossing the road just before Terregles and several other small birds that did not hang around long enough to offer a clear view.  In contrast a red kite obligingly turned and hovered East of Shawhead - more evidence that they are spreading further from the Loch Ken area.  There were several more over the Glenkilns as well as a good few buzzards.  I had my eyes skinned for hen harrier or merlin but nothing materialised apart from a couple of passable harrier imitations by a low
flying kite.

Splashing greylag

On a shaded lochan just over the highest spot, a series of determined splashes revealed a pair of greylags having fun.  A couple of jays on the edge of Craigadam Woodland were identified as much by their shrieking as by their retreating rumps.  Then on the way down to Bogle Bridge, there was one of those typical bird of prey experiences when a dark hawk wended its way hastily through the trees when I had stopped to look for red squirrels. I decided there was no reason to suspect that it was anything other than another buzzard.

On the return journey, a small brown bird of prey flew ahead of me at some speed along the road before finally detouring past a farmhouse away into the fields - probably a smallish kestrel rather than a merlin.

Only a few minutes after I stopped again after a very large-bodied, brown flecked bird rose from a tree and flew rather clumsily towrds a clump of trees, whose resident rooks complained considerably but were not sufficiently disturbed to take flight.

On wondering what on earth I had just seen it occurred to me that I had not gained a clear view of its head and that, if I had, I would have clearly seen that it was a tawny owl of the russet variety.  I have accidentally flushed out owls in daytime before but not for many years.

Following the hasty start and perhaps reflecting an upturn in my level of fitness, I maintained a lively pace almost throughout today's ride.  This has the advantage that you tend to catch birds unawares but the disadvantage that they tend to disappear as soon as you see them.