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)

Paxton Pits Snow, Ice and Birds

With the Pits themselves  frozen, the water birds have congregated by the river, while smaller birds are struggling to find food in the snow covered vegetation. Only the Heron remained on Hernonry South Lake. The Barn Owl was out quartering around midday while the Goldcrest was tirelessly hunting on the river bank. Bright sunny day so the views were magical with the ice patterns and frost on top of snow

Birds at Rye Meads RSPB Reserve

Some images from a RPS Nature Group outing to Rye Meads on a very cold frosty day with very limited light.  As usual, the coots were bust squabbling while the Robins followed us around hoping for some disturbed insect life under our feet.

Feeding Strategies at Lackford Lakes

 Food is obviously at a premium over the winter months. Gadwalls appear to be a gentle non-aggressive duck but they spend their time with coots eating what they bring up from the bottom and occasionally steal food directly from the coots – a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism. At the feeding station, the robin attacked anything that came at all close to feeding area - the tits managed to get some seed by flitting in very fast while the larger sized blackbirds risked the aggression. The low light levels meant I was shooting between 2000 and 12800 ISO so not great quality.

Territorial Birds

Yellow Hammer, Whitethroat and Blackbird were singing at full volume on my morning walk today. The light was excellent, only problem was quite a strong wind which made handholding the lens difficult.