Your day's wildlife

[LeetleGreyCells]

Seen at Nostell Priory near Wakefield today.

 

[biggs682]

Some nature shots from our walk yesterday.

In 15 years of walking over this stream I have never seen it so high and flowing so fast before .

 

[biggs682]

A Big cat

At Bristol zoo

And some butterflies from the butterfly forest .

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

A rather domestic kind of wildlife encounter today. The magpie that has its nest in the grounds of St Thomas Hospital, over the road from the houses of parliament, landed on my handlebars and gave me a little warning caw just as I was unlocking it. And stayed there. I had to shout at it to get off my bike. Unflustered, it flew back up to its nest. Urban mags are plucky little things.

 

[biggs682]

A couple of lamb's from this morning's ride

 

[jongooligan]

Had a really good creature feature in Hamsterly Forest - a barn owl coming up out of a trackside ditch with a vole in its claws. Can't have been more than fifteen feet away from me. Right in the middle of the day too.
I know daylight owl sightings have been mentioned on here before but apparently it's not that unusual. https://britishbirds.co.uk/article/the-daylight-activity-of-barn-owls/

 

[Jenkins]

Picked up a hitch hiker during today's ride...

Also had to swerve round a toad and brake hard to avoid a suicidal squirrel at other points!

 

[slowmotion]

We've had a nest box about ten feet up our small cherry tree with a spy-cam for about four years. The first year, a pair of blue tits set up home, laid, hatched and nurtured the tiny chicks. We were transfixed by their development, but went away for a weekend. When we returned, there was no sign of life at all. They should have been in the nest for another week or so, but they were gone, like The Marie Celeste. A predator probably got the whole family, but I don't know how. The hole in the nest box is pretty small.

Anyway, we have two new visitors who are really busy. They started bringing in feathers today. Things might happen soon. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

 

[annedonnelly]

Picked up a hitch hiker during today's ride...
View attachment 404348
Also had to swerve round a toad and brake hard to avoid a suicidal squirrel at other points!

Is that a harlequin ladybird? One of the aliens!

 

[slowmotion]

Does anybody know about humans visiting nest boxes? There's something like a cobweb right up close to the lens of the spy-cam which sits in the roof of the nest box. It means that there's a large streak across the CCTV picture. The tiny camera is on a small tray that pulls out of the gable wall of the nest box, above the birds' entry hole. Do you think it would be OK for me to hop up a ladder, pull out the tray, clean the lens, and put it back? It would only take a couple of minutes and I wouldn't disturb the nest itself. The tits have not completed building it and have barely started lining it with feathers etc. All advice welcome. Thanks.

 

[rich p]

Does anybody know about humans visiting nest boxes? There's something like a cobweb right up close to the lens of the spy-cam which sits in the roof of the nest box. It means that there's a large streak across the CCTV picture. The tiny camera is on a small tray that pulls out of the gable wall of the nest box, above the birds' entry hole. Do you think it would be OK for me to hop up a ladder, pull out the tray, clean the lens, and put it back? It would only take a couple of minutes and I wouldn't disturb the nest itself. The tits have not completed building it and have barely started lining it with feathers etc. All advice welcome. Thanks.

I suspect it would be fine though I'm surprised you don't know the answer already being a member of the complete tit family yourself

 

[slowmotion]

I suspect it would be fine though I'm surprised you don't know the answer already being a member of the complete tit family yourself

Thank you for those kind words! BTW, have you had any luck with feathered visitors? We both had a drought for a while.

 

[rich p]

Thank you for those kind words! BTW, have you had any luck with feathered visitors? We both had a drought for a while.

Great tits successfully bred in the box with the camera last year, but I never got round to viewing them. They are nest building again now so I'll try to be less lazy this year.
I fear seeing them not succeed, although the surviving offspring definitely suck seed...

 

[nickyboy]

These little brown dots are actually kangaroos

On a ride last weekend near Adelaide. The following day I rode in the hills and the birdlife was fantastic. Big flocks of various parakeets, cockatoos etc. Multicoloured, amazing

 

[slowmotion]

Mrs Tit laid her first egg in the nest box earlier today. I've lost the video card that could store images on the PC so I'm reduced to taking photos of whatever pops up on the TV at any given instant. Here she was a couple of minutes ago.

Do I win the prize for Wildlife Photo of The Year?