Wildlife Corner

[Stanley]

Or in Europe, that's where the problem lies...... Greece is only a symptom of the disease.

[Moh]

The swallows left the caravan park a week last Thursday and the ones from the farm went two days later- it is always sad to see them go. There have been many skeins of geese flying over on their way to winter here - they don't half make a din!!

[Stanley]

I love our resident Canada Geese, it never fails to give me a thrill when they fly over. A very big skein came over at about 20:00 one night last week as I was in the garden front with Jack. They were only just above roof level and I could hear the wind in their wing feathers as well as the honking. Impressive birds.....

[LizG]

I think your swallows have turned up here Moh. We opened the garage the other day and 2 swooped in. We don't often see them around here.

The other day we were on Phillip Island and stopped to look at the cutest family of Cape Barren geese on the side of the road. There was Mum and Dad and 5 goslings who were almost as big as their parents. They still had their baby feathers and were gorgeous. I hope they made it back into the paddocks.

[Stanley]

Did you know that if you hatch goose eggs out and you are present when they break out of the shell they bond to you? Evidently they are programmed to bond to the first live thing they see.

[Gloria]

The last of our swallows left a couple of weeks ago. We had loads of them this year, got a bit like bedlam in front of the stables.

[Stanley]

Brave little birds..... All that way on the wing....

[Stanley]

I watched a programme on Honey Badgers last night. Fascinating and intelligent little animals reputed to be the most aggressive species on earth. They'll face up to a lion! Footage of them doing this and also escaping from pens designed to make getting out impossible. You've got to admire them!

[Gloria]

About 50 Canada geese took off from the field next to ours this morning, right over my head, very majestic and all talking to each other, and probably me......"get out of the way or duck".

[Cathy]

With Spring is well and truly here, nature is on the move... in the last 48hours I have removed 2 spiders, a millipede or two and some ants from my place, not much but a sign of things to come. Last night my cat was very interested in something happening around my front door, I'd closed it and we both noticed a noise a bit like a very gentle tapping, she continued pacing side to side so I went to have a look and found a lovely gecko, then I lost it!!
Found it this morning under a basket next to the front door (all in tact) and popped it back outside. One lucky gecko

I often hear flocks of noisy birds flying over my place in the evenings but sadly because we have lots of trees and I don't have a large 'sky-scape' I miss getting a good look at them.

[Stanley]

We are lucky in Barlick because we have a large resident population of Canada Geese that divide their time between Whitemoor Reservoir and some low-lying land next to the canal behind Gill Brow. This means that their flight path is directly over the town centre and I love seeing them sweeping over at sometimes a very low height, honking at each other and if they are low enough you can hear the beat of their wings. Never fails to stir me. They are big fine birds.

[Cathy]

Just what we wanted to know... I heard today that for every 1 person on Earth there are 16million ants.
Really? How many ants would that add up to??
Anyway, thank goodness they are not all soldier ants...

[Tizer]

We found this young newt, about 1.5 inches long, climbing our yard wall the other evening. It eventually decided the 8 foot high wall was a bad idea and returned to the soil below. They're excellent climbers and can get into all sorts of unexpected places! (Excuse the blurry photo, the light wasn't good enough for the close up really.)

[Cathy]

My gecko was about 8-9cms long... Beat ya!
My cat alerted me today to a quite large spider that was on it's way inside. It was actually on the inside of a sliding flyscreen door and the glass sliding door was part open so I closed that and opened the flyscreen, waited a few minutes and the spider went on it's way back outside. It had 2 legs missing and might have had babies on it's back. I did a good spray around so hopefully it won't be back.

[Stanley]

Was it a Huntsman?



The one I saw at Janet's was in between the fly screen and the door as well...
I was outside in the front gardens last night in the dark and a large skein of geese came over at rooftop height, you couldn't see them but they were very low and loud! Lovely.....

[Tizer]

We were lucky yesterday to have a flock of about 30 crane flying on the moor in view from our house. You can always tell when they're around from the loud honking sound they make. The Vulcans of the bird world!

[Stanley]

I didn't know we had them in the UK. To my knowledge I have never seen them up here....
Nearest thing I suppose are Herons. Have you ever picked a dead Heron up? They weigh nothing, their bones are hollow. My dad had a saying 'As dry as a Heron' and I suppose this is where it originated. I used to see one regularly on a small beck above Cowan Bridge as I was going up to Scotland, they fly so slowly, must have the best anti-stall system ever!

[Tizer]

Cranes were once part of the British fauna but succumbed to hunters and to loss of wetland habitats. A few years ago they were introduced from somewhere like Poland by bringing eggs here, hatching them and raising the birds in a protected area of the Somerset Levels a mile or so from where we live. They've multiplied and it's thought some cranes have come in from elsewhere, found the local birds and decide to stay. Although they look a bit like big herons they move about in flocks and are vegetarian. When you see them from a distance, with their heads down eating, you could be fooled into thinking it was a flock of sheep!

[Stanley]

Interesting, I'm all for it!

[Tizer]

Beetle larva photographed in Somerset, October 2015

[PanBiker]

Sally snapped this Goldcrest in our front garden yesterday.





Beautiful little bird.

[Moh]

Lovely.

[Tizer]

A beautiful little bird. We sometimes get one flitting about in a pine tree. At present there is often a flock of tits in the pine, all dashing about, very busy!

[Stanley]

Lovely pics.....

[Moh]

We have a flock of long tailed tits which regularly appear and a couple of resident wrens. One wren has nested under our caravan for the past two years - they are such tiny birds.