Last of the Summer ......

My gardening efforts were interrupted yesterday morning by the noise of a flock of around 30 swallows flying around and landing on the television aerials and trees nearby. Down tools and up camera for a session with these wonderful birds presumably having their last feeds before undertaking the flight to Africa. It is more than 10 years since we had a nesting pair in our garage (image 3, 2007) - unfortunately we had to evict them when we needed to convert the garage to a bedroom as our family size increased. The last image shows one of the youngsters taking a nap - it is most likely it is a descendent of our swallow family.

Dorset - West Bay People and Birds (30/05/2023)

The strong late afternoon sun at West Bay last week created some great silhouettes and side lighting for the people and birds. 

 

Long-tailed Tits Nest Building

I spent an hour yesterday watching a pair of Long-tailed Tits building their nest in a bramble patch - impossible to get clear views but such a delight to see them bringing moss, lichen and cobwebs and weaving their nest. They are about halfway there as the final nest will be a complete ball with a single small entrance.

Toft Wagtail, Insects and Lichens

A  cold wind but warm sunshine brought out a few insects and helped photographing the lichens in the churchyard - an ongoing project. I include 4 that are distinctive enough to identify with good certainty. The Pied Wagtail was busy displaying on the Village Hall roof.

Toft Garden Wildlife

While pruning the conifer hedge, I found this old Goldcrest nest - a beautiful small cup completely lined with feathers and one very small (old) egg. The other images show what flowers are out at the moment, a couple of birds already setting up territories and the only insect (other than honey bees) active (Scathophaga stercoraria)

Toft Birds

I took Phil's Olympus camera for a walk today as my Fuji is quite hard to manage with a very stiff painful forefinger. Quite a bit of territorial behaviour getting going among the birds yet the trees by the old railway had a flock of more than 150 Redwings still here before departing north. Although it was quite cold there were obviously large numbers of gnats in the air by the stream.