Over a week in May

At the bottom of the garden we have a Laurel hedge, last year a blackbird made a nest in there but unfortunately the eggs got taken by a Magpie.
Yesterday I could hear lots of high pitched noise coming from the hedge and watched a Blackbird flying in and out with food.
It turns out that the old nest from last year has been used again. I can't tell whether it's the same Blackbirds but this years chicks seem to be doing well.
I asked on Twitter whether Blackbirds reuse nests and got the reply that it is not common but not unheard of. Thank you Dave Leech.
As we have lots of trees around us I'm hoping they reused the nest because it's a good site. The hedge does offer lots of cover and I wouldn't have known there was a nest there except for the noise that the chicks make.
This makes me wonder why the pigeons nest was raided as the baby pigeons didn't make any noise and the nest was well hidden.
Perhaps whatever raided the pigeons nest watched the parents go in and out of the fir tree. I hope it doesn't happen with the Blackbirds.

With all the rain and sunshine over the week there has been some pretty amazing weather fronts.

I wonder what these two are talking about!

These are all the local rooks before they settle down for the night.

Our bird feeder is very busy at the moment with fledgling blue tits.

I have just signed up to do the 30 days Wild with The Wildlife Trusts.

My sister and I have come up with a whole list of things we want to do over the month of June.

I'm looking forward to beginning it.

http://wtru.st/30DaysWild

Black-throated Diver

Firstly some good news, late last night, the pigeon that went missing from the nest, only to be found later was put back on the nest by my mum.

We checked on the nest this morning and the baby was happily sat there with one of its parents who was protecting it from the rain.

I was worried that if we put it back on the nest whatever attacked the nest in the first place would come back again, but we thought it was safer than spending the night on the ground.

After school we visited Farmoor reservoir to see if we could spot the Black-throated diver.

We could tell where it was on the lake due to the photographers taking photos.

Very envious of some of the cameras!

The bird looks very smart in its summer plumage with its different strips and black patches

It spent a lot of time disappearing under the water then rising out of the water, shaking and showing off its white belly.

We also spotted a group of Dunlins and watched the Grebes catching fish for a while.

It was incredibly windy at Farmoor and the poor ducks looked like they were struggling against the waves.

Black-throated diver in summer plumage

Dunlins

Good news for one pigeon

Around lunch time Mum was gardening and found the missing baby pigeon hiding under a rosebush

We left it where it was as the parents where hanging about on the wall nearby.
I put the trail camera down and you can just about see it flapping about behind the leaves.
Then at just after 5pm, according to the camera, it disappeared.
I was sure it couldn't have flown away, we hunted everywhere but couldn't find it.

Just before bed I could see one of the adults sat on the fence near the rose bush, cooing.
So we searched again and found it hiding underneath our bikes.
The dogs have been banned from going into the garden alone.

Around the garden over the weekend

There is a family of Jackdaws in our neighbours chimmey pot. Now the young have fledged we often get 3 or 4 Jackdaws on the feeders at a time.

There has been an ongoing battle between the Jackdaw parents and the pigeon parents about who has control of the feeder.

I took this photo of the two baby pigeons on Friday afternoon, unfortunately when I went down the garden this morning one pigeon was gone completely and the remains of the other one was in the flower bed.
I am quite annoyed as I have been following these since the parents started to build the nest, through the eggs being laid and the babies hatching.

Can anyone answer this question - Do the same pigeons come back to the same tree every year?

This is the third year we have had pigeons nest in the garden, I wondered if it's the same ones.

The poor parents are just sitting on the fence now.

I put the trail camera down to see if whoever took the pigeons would come back for the remains.
The camera took a lot of films with two main suspects, a Magpie and a Crow.
The crow is the same one that hangs around the garden most afternoons.
I have choosen the least gory.

Don't watch the films if you are squeamish

Silver Y moth

One a happy note, over the last week we have a new family of sparrows in the garden. Mum says she hasn't seen any sparrows in our garden for over 10 years.

They make a lot of noise.

A Raven flew over the garden yesterday afternoon, I only looked up because I heard it calling

Early evening badgers

As Scouts wasn't on last night and I didn't fancy going to watch my sister kayaking on the lake, I thought mum and I could walk down to see the badgers.

All day it had been raining but when we got down there it had just stopped. 

The wind was blowing our scent away from the sett meaning the Badgers coud not smell us. 

After about 5 minutes the first badger appeared and started to snuffle around to find the handful of peanuts we put down for them. Soon after another badger poked his head out of the hole and was too wary to come out while the other one was just more intrested in the peanuts. 

There are 3 main holes that are used most often in this sett and it is quite funny to see a head poke out of one hole, look around, disappear, then pop up out of another hole.

One of the badgers came a couple of meters away from us and slowly wandered over to the other badger and ate the peanuts too.  

This time we had mixed a few meal worms in with the peanuts which they seemed to enjoy.

I've put two short films here together to show the difference in size. The first badger to come out and go to the left is much smaller than the second badger that walks off to the right. I think the first badger is one of the cubs.

It was a extremely good badger watching night and we got to see many of the badgers we haven't seen for a few weeks.

Bluebell weekend

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time in my local wood. The Bluebells are now in full bloom and the whole of the wood is covered in a carpet of purple.

I spent about an hour and a half watching this male Roe deer. At first it was quite wary of us and did a full circle around us. We found a tree stump to sit on and waited for it to come back.

Eventually we could hear branches snapping as he worked his way closer and closer, nibbling as he did so.

You can still see the remains of his grey winter coat as the red summer coat takes over.

While we were watching the deer a Marsh tit hopped from twig to twig amongst the Bluebells, suddenly dropping down collecting food. Once it had a mouthful it flew past us into the Blackthorn bushes, reappearing again a few moments later.

We also watched a bundle of around 8 baby Long-tailed tits all huddled together. The parents were very busy trying to feed them all.

On one of the ponds in the wood there were 4 Tufted ducks, two male and 2 female.

The crops are now growing tall enough for the hares to take cover in.

Sunday afternoon we took the dogs for a walk around a lake we had never visited before. It took us a while to work out what type of bird this was, but because it flew very close to the water and walked along the water edges bobbing, I think it is a Common Sandpiper.

Clay pipe

A little while ago I found some Clay Pipes and Pottery in the field after the farmer had ploughed it up.

I just remembered they were in my coat pocket.

This type of pipe was a disposable clay pipe which were popular in the 17th century, this one was probably from 1660 to 1760, meaning it is around 300 to 400 years old. Later ones were decorated and had larger bowls.

They were made of Kaolin and broke very easily. 

People smoked them until they broke and then threw them away where they were standing.

In 1619 there were over 100 clay pipe companies in London mass producing these clay pipes. 

All these pieces probaly weren't from the same pipe but I put them together to show what it might have looked like complete.