I need to relate the final part of the great tit story. All seven chicks left the nestbox on Wednesday when I was on a business trip to Munich.

 

Mrs Oregano saw the family flying together and perching on the fence or walnut tree. So a successful brood!

I took a look in the nesting box again today

 

 

I had earlier posted a picture of our nest box from last Saturday with some tiny great tit chicks.

 

We were blessed with good weather last weekend and thought it would be a good time to look for bluebells. For round who are not in the UK this is a spectacular event lasting for about 2+ weeks around the beginning of May. This time we went to Upping Copse and were not disappointed.

 

Bluebells seem to need a critical mass of shade to thrive. We had earlier been in another deciduous wood which was sparser and where virtually no bluebells were visible but instead brambles and bracken.

 

Other plants that grow well in similar conditions are wild garlic and dog's mercury.

 

Fallen trees in varying stages of decay also made the walk interesting.

 

We also saw a fair number of woodland ferns unfolding and a few butterflies. We saw brimstones, small whites, peacocks (like the one above) and a large white.

 

It is strange to think that a week or so ago this scene would have looked mainly green and that it will revert to green again in a few weeks.

We have had a nesting box on the side of our house for about 5 years. The design was supposed to encourage house sparrows - ironically something that I recall the RSPB nestboxes of the late 1960s sought to avoid! - but has been inhabited by tits. On three occasions blue tits have nested but with only one successful brood. Last year a pair of great tits nested successfully.

 

We try to avoid peeking in - the last thing we want is for the parents to panic and abandon their brood - but last Saturday we saw that they brood has hatched. Both parents are working hard to bring in food.

Having previously seen evidence of previous visits on our decking, we got a glipse of this visitor at nightfall yesterday.

 

I am fed up with the number of wood pigeons and collared doves we have in our town. They are constantly trying to build nests on window sills and other unsuitable locations and in winter hoover up large quantities of bird food when we put out. An elderly neighbour even claimed that with a warmer climate they are breeding three times a year! A probelm of course is the absence of predators. OK, I have seen the odd one being eaten by a sparrowhawk but a wood pigeon is stretching things a bit even for a female.

Two weekends ago when we were on our way to church one of my sons said "that screeching sounds like a peregrine". He was right, there was one perched on the church roof. I have never seen one in this area of England before. Hopefully, it will be not short of prey here!

We have a little garden pond about 3 metres long and one metre wide. About five weeks ago there was a large gathering of frogs for spawning and the shallow end of the pond was full of frogspawn. Last weekend we noticed that there was very little frogspawn left and suspected it was ducks that had eaten it.

At this time of the year large numbers of mallards wander off in pairs from our local river and seem to explore parts of the town where they never normally go. Yesterday I found a male and female settled on my pond. The spawn has disappeared completely and the water has gone from clear to muddy.... so no little frogs this year.

When we lived in the Munich area we saw many different sorts of birds of prey. They were mainly buzzards, sparrow hawks and kestrels but there were interesting summer and winter visitors. The first time I recognised a hen harrier was in January 1995 when out to a favourite raptor-watching area SE of Munich with my son.

 

He said "Dad, there is a gull over there", but from the low flight over the ground (which I knew had plenty of voles and mice as the buzzards and kestrels hunted them I did not think it was a gull. Also the bird had a long tail quite unlike a gull. I had a long lens with me so took the photo above - which sadly is not sharp - but you see the long grey wings with black wingtips, a white band at the base of the tail and a long grey tail.

I concluded that it was a male hen harrier but was surprised as Germany has very few breeding pairs. On getting home and reading a book on raptors I realised that it was probably a bird that was wintering from Sweden or Finland. Quite a few migrate southward to Germany for the winter. In subsequent winters we would see harriers from late October to about mid March.

 

The hen harrier has a wingspan similar to that of a common buzzard - just over a metre - but is more slimly built and has a much longer tail. The female (like that above) is a similar brown to a buzzard but has the white band at the base of the tail like the male.

While buzzards hunt from soaring or from a perch, hen harriers tend to fly low over the ground alternating between flapping and gliding. Occasionally they will strike something on the ground showing their long legs.

This weekend I found an old video recording (analog I'm afraid) from November 2005 showing a male then a female hen harrier hunting. I was with a friend and our boys were very excited to see the harriers!

Note that the male harrier strikes something on the ground at around 0:18 and 0:39. Unusually the male gains height and hovers 2:49-2:53 before rapidly dropping and resuming his hunt at ground level.

At 2:15 the male poos. Note that like buzzards and hawks, harriers squirt their poo while falcons let it drop!

Enjoy...

Well, the wind has been howling for the last two days and there have been a number of sleet showers. Nevertheless there are a few signs of Spring. Yesterday on a walk by local ponds we saw our first house martin. We also saw a little egret which while exotic a decade ago now seems firmly established in this country. Also in our garden pond the first king cup is in flower.