Wildlife early 2009

[Anthony Darby]

Yesterday I found my first frog spawn of 2009 in a small pool on the Dykedale Farm road just below Sheriffmuir, less than a couple of miles from my house.

[gote]

Yesterday the sun was out of the clouds again.  We saw a pair of cranes Grus grus in the ski. A couple of swans cygnus cygnus were looking for open water where they usually rest on their way north (but did not find any) and two green woodpeckers picus viridis were trying to "outshout" each others. Friday I had a visit by a raven. Corvus corax There are tracks of roe deer Capreolus capreolus everywhere in the snow. It is said that the lynx is back on a permanent basis in the woods 5km north of us and that they press the deer down towards us. I have never seen any wild lynx myself (only tracks) but one had dined on a hare lepus europeus (good riddance) in our garden last winter.
Göte 

[Paddy Tobin]

Taken at one of the bird feeders in the garden.

Paddy

[Paddy Tobin]

And the Long-tailed tit which is another of the regular feeders.

Paddy

[David Nicholson]

Cracking pictures Paddy.

[Carlo]

Nice...don't know that I've seen the long-tailed...

Love those little birds!

[Lesley Cox]

They are delightful We don't have either among the introduced species.

[ranunculus]

Your images are beautiful, Paddy.

[Maggi Young]

Two of my most favourite birds, Paddy, beautifully photographed.

We have only been getting the Long Tails in to the garden fairly recently... one of our great delights to welcome them.... they do like the peanuts.

[Lori S.]

On a sad note, I was just outside looking around at what the melting snow has uncovered, and found a dead northern shrike (Lanius excubitor).   

(I did take a photo, as I've never seen one so close before, but I'll spare your sensibilities, LOL!)

[cohan]

very cute birds, paddy! we dont have anything quite like them...
here are my most common visitors to the feeders:
Redpolls, and Chickadees--the Black Caps are most common, Boreal Chickadees not rare, but not so numerous....

and a ruffed grouse, these are not fed, its just sitting under a spruce tree..

we recently had moose pass through the yard--evidenced by their very widely spaced footprints in the snow, a trail of pruned bushes (up to around the 8 foot mark! those critters are tall!!) and a couple of piles of poops....

[gote]

And the Long-tailed tit which is another of the regular feeders.

Paddy

They never stop to feed in our place always on the move. Do yours also come in flocks.
Göte

[Paddy Tobin]

Gote,

Long-tailed tits usually travel in family groups along the boundaries of fields and generally are heard before being seen. They come to the feeders in small groups and are surprisingly tolerant of people standing close to the feeders while they are there.

Cohan, Lovely selection of birds. Redpolls have become so very scarce here and I never see them at the feeders. Your Chickadees are very like our tits and the Blackcap comes to the feeders here also but when it does it hunts every other bird away.

Paddy

[cohan]

Cohan, Lovely selection of birds. Redpolls have become so very scarce here and I never see them at the feeders. Your Chickadees are very like our tits and the Blackcap comes to the feeders here also but when it does it hunts every other bird away.
Paddy

tks, paddy--the redpolls are very common here--2 species, i think, but not totally sure, as the amount of red seems variable anyway;
i havent 'noticed' the chickadees being aggressive at the feeders--the redpolls and 2 kinds of  nuthatches feed with them...
oddly, though the chickadees like the sock feeders as well, when i moved the feeders due to squirrels, the chickadees never found the sock feeder after--the redpolls were there in minutes, it seemed, and the chickadees found the sunflower feeder (a different place) right away...

[Stephenb]

The first migrants have arrived here over the past week. Always fantastic to hear the spring's first Robins singing in the woods around here. Yesterday I heard the first, in fact three different birds on my regular 20 minute walk to get the train to work. A bonus was a Wren in full song. Starlings are also back in force as are Oystercatchers and Lapwings along the shore.

However, it's a bit worrying that I'm now hearing my first Robins (and Wrens) 3-4 weeks earlier than when I first started noting this. In the 1980s, around 10th April was normal, nowadays mid-March. Increasingly a few are overwintering and I think that within a few years these species along with Blackbirds, Bramblings and Chaffinches and a few others will be common here in winter.

Common birds on my bird feeder are Redpolls, Siskins, Bullfinches, Greenfinch, Great, Blue, Marsh and Coal Tits, Nuthatch and House Sparrow.