Just had this beauty visit my garden ...

cracking photo!

If that photo is cracking these are dreadful - but it's the content that counts:

A siskin



Coal tit

Had the privilege of seeing a barn owl last week.

Was just driving out of town approaching a t-junction and saw the white underside of a bird take off from a field. Luckily it settled on a fence post near the edge of the road. I then crawled out of the junction and it just watched me as I slowly went past admiring its round, white face from about 5 yards away.

There has to be some compensation when working at night!

Very nice, murf!

I was looking after a friend's dog last week, so lots of walking in awful weather! I took some bird pics but the light was so poor I won't post any here. However, native or recently returned to the island are:

Whooper Swans, Tufted Ducks, Heron.
Stonechats, Rock Pippets, Meadow Pippets, Skylarks, Wheatears, Ravens, Hooded Crows, Redshanks (or Greenshanks?), Pied Wagtails, Lapwings, Fieldfares, Redwings.
Cormorant, Shags, Fulmars, Black Guillemots, Gannets & various Gulls.
Oyster Catchers, Turnstones.

Soon to leave - and my first sighting ever ..... the Snow Bunting!



I passed two young red deer stags yesterday right next to the road - not that common up in the north of Lewis - and saw three Common Seals the day before. They weren't next to the road, though ....

saw some swans flying over the other day - is the noise they make when they are flying from their beak or the sound of their wings

wings at a guess.

After my owl last week I just spotted (pretty sure) a Greater* Spotted Woodpecker while out walking my (not so) wee dog this morning. See plenty of green ones (often in field next to my house, garden at work and once actually in my garden hunting ants) but haven't seen a black and white one before other than a speck in the distance. Also had a mother blue tit feeding her (not so wee) baby on the bird feeeder just outside my kitchen window yesterday.

Not quite the range you get on Lewis but not bad for Essex! (I have heard rumours of kingfishers but they wouldn't hang around near any dog walking paths). Haven't seen the local Egrets for a few weeks but saw a heron on our travels on friday (in reeds on opposite bank - didn't move and was still there on the way back but it was a wide river) and my dog startled some deer a week or two ago.


(* EDIT - I initially said 'Lesser' but following a PM from 12345678 I now know better!)

Depends on the species - Mute Swans, unsurprisingly, are mute! Whooper Swans, unsurprisingly, ''Whoop!"
Berwick's Swan has a call "like the Whooper but more musical" acc. my Hamlyn's Guide.

murf wrote:
Yes, we're lucky in some respects, but you'll get a great range of Continental visitors which we never see up here. Also, we've no woodpeckers (no bloody wood!), no kingfishers, owls are very rare, egrets unknown ....
Interesting to hear that you already have fledglings - most of ours are still pairing off!
What kind of deer have you?

Muntjacs mostly but other 'normal' deer too (can't think of proper name - roe?).

We are really lucky as my neighbour owns the field behind our house which includes a small woodland, a lake and a section of the local river (more a stream with deep banks at this point). They have recently restored their overgrown lake and cleared up a protected area of marsh and Culm grass next to it with the help of the wildlife trust. We now regularly see Roe deer down there and a kingfisher has just started digging a nest in the bank of the stream that runs behind the lake. The wildlife trust warden who visited to oversee the work also spotted fresh Otter tracks and spraint along the banks of the stream. I can't take photos of the Kingfisher as you need a license to photograph them near or at their nest sites but here is one of the Roe deer taken two days ago.



I accidentally scared off a Heron from the field behind us yesterday as I opened the back gate and then later discovered another one of my ghost koi missing. It may be a coincidence but we've had the three largest fish (8" long) go missing in the last month with no sign of any carcass, so I've now put up deterrent wires around the pond just in case.

The Sparrowhawk was also back this morning. Mrs Eagle was alerted to a lot of scraping noises and commotion above our kitchen window and went out to see what was going on. The Sparrowhawk was trying to get to the Sparrows that have just built a nest under the eaves. It sat on the guttering for a few seconds before flying off - a lucky escape for the sparrows this time.

This reminded me that a few months back I was visiting some friends and saw this, probably a Long-Eared Owl (Asio Otus) sitting on the power cables above the street. Only had my video camera which takes lousy night shots, but I birghtened the picture electronically...

I've got an amazon, can I post his pic on here?

I have no idea if this is what the originator of the thread meant, but here's my Umbrella Cockatoo...

When he was a baby

Very nice, guys. For some reason Ironfist's bird reminds me of Eric Morecambe and TRSS .... I never had you down as a Sunday Mail reader!

A blue crested Amazon TRSS?

My old fella's got one (Marley).

Must have been someone else who put the newspaper out back then!

Yes, they seem to be the ones that talk the most out of all of them

Tories offer access to major deals its like a headline about the recent 'dinner with Cameron' scandal. Tories eh?

The silent assassin (they can do more than break your arm...)

From the garden ....

Redwing:



Wheatear (m):