Weather

For the past week or so, perhaps a bit longer, the weather has been a mixture of wet, cold and windy and sometimes all three at once – with some breaks of cold sunny weather. One of the good things (and bad things...) of needing to walk the dog and opting to cycle to work is that I go out in weather I would no doubt avoid if I were not doing these activities. What I see and hear on rainy days seems to be a bit different from what is around on sunny days. So, in the last week whilst cycling to work I have seen a number of herons, some quite close that have opted not to fly off; the usual multitude of magpies (are they the world's most successful bird?), pigeons, crows, rooks and black headed gulls, etc (forgetting for the moment about the ducks on the lake), but, have not seen or heard the usual green woodpeckers.
There has been little to see on my walks down to the river. Woke up today to very heavy rain as predicted, but it did ease off and so I set off with my canine friend on a very muddy and claggy walk. As with the cycle rides, little to see, so more dependent on what can be heard. I have tried on various occasions to learn more bird songs, but using a CD, out of context, does not quite cut it (and gets very boring). However, I was aware of a lot of great tit song; coot cries and flocks of rooks were taking advantage of the very wet field to feed on. No herons; no egrets – not even any ducks.....
It occurred to me that if I were walking near the coast after bad weather I might see birds that had come or had been blown inland because of the weather. My first sighting of a chough was in a street (near the harbour wall) of my home town, Caernarfon, walking around on an outside window sill – and indeed was fairly tame. Here is a photo (not mine) that I found when I was musing that in Welsh they are called red legged crows

Owls and foxes

The idea of this blog is to record some of my (mainly) local wildlife sightings - which are usually when I am walking the dog - or occasionally cycling. But I may also comment on anything interesting seen elsewhere, away from home - or even mundane..........

2009 has got off to a good start. On a circular walk on New Year's Day which takes in the Linford Gravel pits not too far away from my house http://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/hanson_centre/home.asp Jim and I decided to stop and see if we could see one of the barn owls that are often sighted there. This was around 11am but Barn owls are often seen in the daytime, sometimes when the days are short as in winter and also when they need a lot of food to feed their young. No sooner had we said this than we spotted a barn owl flying low over the grass, hunting, and stopping to perch, every so often. See barn owl photos (not mine - next time perhaps! on http://www.birdguides.com/pictures/default.asp?f=189138 Just as we were watching the owl perched on a post, Jim asked me what the movement was below - was it a cat jumping? It turned out it was a fox, and both posed beautifully: the owl on the post and the fox below - not that we had a camera with us. On the next leg of the walk we also saw the little egrets that nest nearby. I looked up barn owl habitat when we got back and it turns out they need grass that contains litter - i.e. dead grass that builds up above the soil, thus creating ideal conditions for voles, which are their favourite prey. Grazed land and arable land is not good for voles - though farmers may strips near the edges. And owls need a considerable acerage of such land to hunt. But the land around the old gravel pits has been managed with nature in mind - and this seems to be working well.

I returned to the site yesterday afternoon around 3 - and again the owl was hunting. But I was in for another treat - flying just behind it was another owl, and talking to someone who was there taking photographs and also birdwatching, revealed that it was a short eared owl and that there are around 3 of them that are sighted there. Indeed we had seen a number of people with binocuolars and telescopes a few weeks back and wondered whhe at they were watching. I have seen short eared owls (I think!) years ago, in the peak district on the moors, but never round here. The guides suggest that they look very similar to long eared owls but the latter never hunt during the day. It was certainly a very attractive bird.

And to crown the day there was a third owl event, but this time not a sighting but a hearing. We have not had tawny owls around here for many years, but I heard some in the distance on Christmas night, and last night, heard them again much nearer.

It turns out that the tawny owls I heard are probably those nesting in a garden of a house on Wolverton Road, just round the corner from our house - I was talking to a fellow dog walker today on the common who has a house there with many mature trees and he told me that owls used the nesting boxes he put up for the first time last year.

I saw another fox today - walking through the stubble field beyond the common. I stopped to watch and even saw it hunting - jumping up and pouncing, though too far away to see if it caught anything. It was a very handsome russet colour with some yellowish patches on it. Also saw a flock of lapwings (flying overhead), herons and a kestrel.