Migrants and hares

Can’t believe it is so long since I made an entry. We are now well into the gardening season and so the garden and work is keeping me busy. I think I need to do more frequent short blogs. So, thinking about migrants, having seen my first swallow and martin whilst walking in Yorkshire in April, there seemed to be quite a gap until I saw them again here. I didn’t see my first swallows here until the 25th April with the house martins arriving a few days later on the 28th (at least that is when I saw them). As we get few house martins around here in Newport I tend to see them when cycling past our lake at Willen. Then the swifts finally arrived on the 9th May. I was gardening when I heard a familiar screech and looked up to find 3 flying overhead. It's hard not to think that they enjoy their "fly-by"s enormously. There do seem to be fewer of all these birds, however. What I did not expect to see locally was a wheatear, seen in our local common on the 10th May. I always associate wheatears with high ground and see them when we are walking in more mountainous country: I remember seeing quite a few walking on walks in Weardale a few years ago. So I guess this one was on its way somewhere, though I think I also read that they are now being found in places they didn’t used to go…. A week earlier I had a lovely clear view of a pair of reed buntings perched in one of the hawthorn trees.

Though I look out for birds – as these are more often seen, seeing mammals is particularly exciting. On Saturday, the first day of the Bank Holiday weekend, I was walking on the common and decided to put the dog on the lead as I was heading for the edge of the cornfield where he is often tempted to go off hunting. The field attracts birds eating the grain but also has a copse at the back where there are foxes and we often see pheasants – and to make it more exciting (for a dog) there is a rabbit warren just near the field boundary. I was so pleased to have him on a lead as two hares started to run towards me and I thought they had gone to ground, but a few moments later they moved back across the field and I was able to watch them for quite a long time. I wondered if they were males – they were very large, and whilst they didn’t do box, one spent quite a long time standing on its hind legs. Wonderful.

In the afternoon we went to the Linford Lakes nature reserve. It was still hot at 5pm – and a bit early to hope to see the owls, but it was a lovely walk around the reserve which we seemed to have entirely to ourselves and was completely peaceful, just punctuated by birdsong. Many of the pathways have been planted with comfrey which has naturalised and was full of bees. The reserve itself (an ex gravel pit) is a mixture of small and larger pools and lakes, and a variety of woodland – and seems to be a very rich habitat. A cuckoo was calling from quite close and from one of the hides we watched the cormorants flying to their roost, one by one. The “near” hide has a good view of one of the owl nest boxes, so I imagine that on a visit earlier in the morning or later towards dusk there would be a good chance of watching the owls (assuming the next box is in use) taking food back to their young.