Review of a year as a Local patch reporter for BBC Wildlife Magazine

On the 17th February 2014 I had the amazing news that I had been choosen as a Local Patch reporter for BBC Wildlife Magazine. Through the year I have had great encouragment and support from Ben, Matt and Jo at the magazine and was lucky enough to meet them during the summer.

This year has been quite mad with newspaper interviews and appearing on the radio to do a live article.

During the year I have been fortunate to meet some of the people who inspire me such as Chris Packham, Simon King, Ben Garrod, Wildlife Kate, Jo Cartmell, Stephen de Vere. All of which have been helpful and supportive.

Appleton Wildlife Diary joined Twitter and facebook this year. I want to say a big thank you to all those who have followed me, RT, favoured. liked, given advice and generally encourage me.

The wildlife highlights of the year were getting closer to the badgers, finding the one eyed hare, fallow deer, peregrine falcons, getting my first photo of a fox, dolphins, puffins and finding out there are Otters on my local patch.

In the past couple of weeks, the best ending to the year was finding out I'd won 1st and 3rd in the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust 8-11 years photo competition as well as coming first in the people's choice section.

Here are some of my favourite photos from the past year.

(In no particular order)

Hare

Heron in the garden

Kestrel

One eyed hare

Two peregrines fighting over a pigeon

Puffin

Red necked grebe

Reed bunting

Rook drinking

Seal

Sedge warbler

Baby squirrels

Tree creeper

Grey wagtail

Water Lily

Great spotted woodpecker

More of my favourite photos of the year to follow tomorrow

Otmoor in December

Whilst at Otmoor we saw many things such as Squirrels, Pintails, Herons, Shovelers, Wagtails and Starlings.

 The most interesting thing I have learnt over the weekend is why Shoveler ducks spins around in circles; to get its food aa well as how to count a murmuration of Starlings by using particle counting software or take a photo and simply count in sections. (Thanks Twitter)

Don't think I'd like to count that many.

We also saw two hares chasing each other around the field and huge numbers of lapwings

Lapwings

Under the bird feeders.

Pintail

Lapwings

Cormorant

Shoveler duck getting food

Pied wagtail

Heron

Pellet on the windowsill of the hide.

Thousands of Starlings

 This afternoon we went over to Otmoor with Ben from bensbirdsandbeastlybugs.blogspot.com  to have another go at watching the Starling murmurations. The weather was windy, cold and very overcast so we were not expecting too much.
Firstly small groups of about 20 - 50 Starlings flew over then the whole sky seemed to be covered in black dots.
I don't know how people begin to estimate how many there are, but some body had written 30,000 on the notice board.

Once the Starlings settled down, the reeds turned black with Starlings, the noise was overwhelming

Owners of the bird table

Inspired by the article in the BBC Wildlife Magazine - Understand Your Garden Birds, I spent some time in my garden.
It was obvious that the Robin was in charge today, it takes a particular dislike to the Dunnocks.
However the Blackbirds seem to do their own thing down the bottom of the garden.
The Blue tits and Great tits wait for the all clear, take what is in sight then retreat back to the hazel tree for safety.
The Crows sit on the pylon or the silver birch tree then swoop down, grab what they want, then fly off.
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is around the garden but will only come to the feeder in January to March when they can't find food elsewhere.
The Long Tailed Tits prefer to stay on the hedges but will come in ocassionaly late afternoon.
We have a wren but it doesn't feed from the bird feeders.
The wood pigeons who spend a lot of time in the garden during the spring and summer have joined the large flocks in the farmers fields and the fieldfares edge around the garden but are more interested in the hedgerow berries and the orchard.

Blue tit

Dunnock

Fieldfare

Bossy Robin

Great tot

Blue tit using claws to hold food

Fieldfares

On todays dog walk we saw a Kestrel, Redwings and a large group of Fieldfares. 

The weather was heavy rain and wind until it started to clear up 

The Kestrel was find it very difficult to hunt because of the rain.

These birds were all hunched up together, can anyone help identify them?

There is at least one female chaffinch but are they all chaffinches or could some be female Bramblings?

There are 16 on this one branch

The Fieldfares were moving from tree to tree in groups along with some Redwing. At the moment the whole sky seems to be full of a 'chack' and 'chuck' noises and they are very quickly stripping all the local hawthorn bushes of their berries and well as picking something, probably worms, off the fields.

Deer v milkman

I put my trail camera by our garden fence hoping to see the badgers. It was quite a surprise to see what the camera captured.

Ignore the date stamp, I keep forgetting it resets after I change the batteries.