Sunny afternoon at Otmoor

Otmoor was very busy this afternoon with people hoping to see the starlings.
There were lots of other things worth looking at as well as the starlings.
Our first stop was at the main hide where we spotted Stonechats, Herons, a Red kite and a young Swan.

As dusk and the tempearture dropped we headed to where the Starlings coud be seen.
The hide was very busy and the Starlings soon began to gather into a murmuration, unfortunately even though there were thousands and thousands of Starlings they didn't put on a great display but just sank quickly into the reeds.

This Kingfisher flew by.

Stonechat

Red kite

Jack snipe

Blue tits in the garden

Today I had the day off school because I was ill.
I sat in the in the kitchen wrapped up in a blanket with a hot chocolate taking photos of the Blue tits as they flew onto the feeders. 

I was trying to get a photo of a Blue tit in flight, but it's harder than it looks.

When the Blue tits are on the feeders they are very wary about preditors and always looking upwards. Nothing was around today except the Great tits who bullied the blue tits off the feeder.

These are my best.

First cold evening

This evening was the first time it has really felt cold.
There were large groups of fieldfares in the bushes and Long tailed tits making a lot of noise.
The Rooks were crossing the sky on their way home and the gulls were heading to the reservoir where thousands of them roost at night.
As the sun set it turned the whole sky orange and the mist began to appear.
Hiding in amongst the trees, were five Roe deer. Two of this years young as well as 3 older ones further back.

Fieldfare

 I couldn't resist taking loads of photos of the sun as it went down

Left over from Halloween

I was clearing off the old films from my trail camera when I found these.

Firstly, after Halloween we left the pumpkin out on the ground. One of the rats was determined that the other one wasn't getting close to his pumpkin.

Secondly, I was wrong when I said we don't get any cats around here because my trail camera caught this one. Perhaps it was a cat that killed, but then left, the rats.

Mission Impossible - Common Buzzards

I took this photo a few weeks ago, the Buzzard has two green rings on it's legs. 

Someone suggested that the Buzzard could have been ringed in the Highlands

We checked out the European colour ring birding website, at their list of colours and the only one that matched said:-

Dark Green ring with a white 3 alpha-numeric code (on left leg) and metal ring (on right leg).

note 1 : birds ringed in United Kingdom, Highland Region.

note 2 : ring code starts with letter "A".

The ring looks more light green to me but there was no listing for Buzzards with light green rings.
Does anyone know whether this is a male or female?

This is another photo of the Buzzard with the two rings

There are normally two of them, the one with the rings and this one below, which is smaller and paler.
The one with rings is bolder and often sits on the pylon, while it's mate normally sits in the tree line but occasionally sits on the fence post.

This is it's mate

I haven't yet managed to take a close enough photo to read the letters on the rings. When it's sunny the Buzzards fly too high, when it's raining they sit hunched down so their leg feather cover the ring.
If it's cloudy they sit and let me get quite close.

Flew away before I got close enough

Sunday Fungi

 We have discovered where we think a barn owl has been nesting. The ground was littered with pellets and barn owl feathers. Today we set up a trail camera nearby and sat about 500m away hoping to spot it. Unfortunately after it started to get dark we hadn't seen anything, so we thought we would leave it for another day.

Here are some of the photos I took on the way.

Kestrel and Crow at the end of the day

 Rooks gathering for the evening

Always in the same patch of grass, this deer watches us as we walk passed

 The whole wood is orange, red or yellow.

 Almost as big as my mum's hand