Earlier today I was out on my bike and came across a couple of sand martins opposite their usual nesting site in the castle wall.
First I've seen this year, seems a bit late for them to be nesting if they are thinking about doing that. Never mind, whatever they are there for they can eat all the horrible midges for me.
Went for a run, and headed South down the cycle path. Lots of pretty blue and purple wildflowers about, and, lo! Some butterflies. A few Ringlets have made an appearance, and also there was a Small Skipper - or a Large one, I can't tell the damn things apart when I am running past them - a few Large Whites, and a flash of brown, if you can have such a thing as a flash of brown, which might have been a speckled wood.
The path to Cotham has attractive life in the verges, before you get to the rubbish tip at least. But I didn't go so far, I turned off at British Gypsum and ran along Bowbridge Lane. A single Kestrel flew up, as I ran alongside the dyke that always intrigues me, but as I rounded the corner where the substation is, three more seemed to be in the air! A couple of them went and sat on a pylon.
Wonder if that was a little Kestrel family I saw! "Ahhhh" say the sentimental types!
Showing posts with label falcons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label falcons. Show all posts
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Sunday, 21 August 2011
A Hobby - Today's Big Attraction
And what came out to feast on the dragonflies? While taking in the sun and scanning the trees behind the hide I noticed a falcon rising up from seemingly the farmers field - where there had been a lot of clanking and whirring from some sort of baler or harvester - and then disappear out of my view as it headed out behind the tall hedge onto the river end of the reed bed.
Ach, probably another Kestrel, I thought to myself.
But then looking out from the hide, it suddenly veered into view high from the right, not hovering like a kestrel and with I think a slimmer body shape with narrower tail and wings, sickle like wings in fact.
Very evidently it was hunting for prey on the water, until as it made its way round to where the RSPB hut was, it suddenly stooped, dropping like a stone almost onto the water, a process it repeated a couple of more times as it followed the water course away to the left.
I've read about it often enough, it would appear that finally I've seen the Langford Lowfields Hobby.
And not before time, it can't be long before it scuds off down south for the winter and was presumably stuffing itself with dragonflies by way of preparation, which are very numerous at the moment.
It wasn't done with me, as I cycled back up the path it was working over Lake 1 before heading into the wood. Excited, its a magnificent fast flier, it seems to be barely moving and then you realise its another hundred metres further away!
Ach, probably another Kestrel, I thought to myself.
But then looking out from the hide, it suddenly veered into view high from the right, not hovering like a kestrel and with I think a slimmer body shape with narrower tail and wings, sickle like wings in fact.
Very evidently it was hunting for prey on the water, until as it made its way round to where the RSPB hut was, it suddenly stooped, dropping like a stone almost onto the water, a process it repeated a couple of more times as it followed the water course away to the left.
I've read about it often enough, it would appear that finally I've seen the Langford Lowfields Hobby.
And not before time, it can't be long before it scuds off down south for the winter and was presumably stuffing itself with dragonflies by way of preparation, which are very numerous at the moment.
It wasn't done with me, as I cycled back up the path it was working over Lake 1 before heading into the wood. Excited, its a magnificent fast flier, it seems to be barely moving and then you realise its another hundred metres further away!
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
In which I display botanical ignorance - Willow Holt
Today's run was a real ambitious biggy, one to make me worry about my twingeing calf muscles and rickety achilles. As the sun came out and the wind dropped a bit, I headed out to Willow Holt, in Farndon, for a bit of a jolly old job along the river.
Sorry, no pics yet, all my running means my trackies end up round my ankles due to weight loss, and the emergency subsitute shorts are full of holes in the pocket area. I've lost too many sets of house keys this way, not losing my cameraphone!
The Holt, the entrance to which is down a winding lane at the pub end of Farndown, is an attractive area of marshy water meadow and willow tree plantation. Today, as I ran through, it was chock full of pink flowers in bloom, and catkin seed things from the willow trees filling the air with a cottom mist and covering the path on the path by the river.
I know, I'm not very good with the old plants and things that grow, am I? I can do Forget-me-nots. I can do Foxgloves, and thanks to my mum I know what the Hawthorns are, at least when in full bloom. But when I met David Bellamy at St Martins pond in 2006, well, it never rubbed off on me. If I ever have green fingers, it will because of gangrene, not gardening.
But I guess I'm out there to run, and so run I did so, on this cotton catkin carpet and past the tempting sight of three pubs, and on past the marina, where I saw my first banded demoiselle of the year.
That one I do know! This years challenge shall be getting better at dragon and damsel flies, I think.
And falcons too. Further round the river, past the power station where a couple of herons where striding around deliberately on the weir and past a meadow that was yellow with buttercups a falcon flew out of the tree on the far side of the river, used a thermal to gain a bit of height, and then coasted across the river to a tree on my side without a single beat of its beautifully sickle shaped wings.
As I've said before, I always get over excited about seeing things like this, and it was in almost total likelihood a kestrel. However it seemed larger than a kestrel somehow, with long pointed wings, a big wedge shaped tail like a raven, and seeming a very pale grey underneath with a lot of white on the underwing.
"It's a kestrel" yell my readers, no doubt correctly.
After this I got back into town, but the birds weren't done with me yet. By the town lock, I thought I was hallucinating with knackeredness when I saw a small bird apparently flying into the post holding up a set of traffic lights for boats. But as I got nearer, I saw a second bird, now identifiable as a great tit fly in, and the lock-keeper confirmed to me that they were nesting in there.
Oh yep, a dinky toad was waiting on my doorstep when I got back.
Sorry, no pics yet, all my running means my trackies end up round my ankles due to weight loss, and the emergency subsitute shorts are full of holes in the pocket area. I've lost too many sets of house keys this way, not losing my cameraphone!
The Holt, the entrance to which is down a winding lane at the pub end of Farndown, is an attractive area of marshy water meadow and willow tree plantation. Today, as I ran through, it was chock full of pink flowers in bloom, and catkin seed things from the willow trees filling the air with a cottom mist and covering the path on the path by the river.
I know, I'm not very good with the old plants and things that grow, am I? I can do Forget-me-nots. I can do Foxgloves, and thanks to my mum I know what the Hawthorns are, at least when in full bloom. But when I met David Bellamy at St Martins pond in 2006, well, it never rubbed off on me. If I ever have green fingers, it will because of gangrene, not gardening.
But I guess I'm out there to run, and so run I did so, on this cotton catkin carpet and past the tempting sight of three pubs, and on past the marina, where I saw my first banded demoiselle of the year.
That one I do know! This years challenge shall be getting better at dragon and damsel flies, I think.
And falcons too. Further round the river, past the power station where a couple of herons where striding around deliberately on the weir and past a meadow that was yellow with buttercups a falcon flew out of the tree on the far side of the river, used a thermal to gain a bit of height, and then coasted across the river to a tree on my side without a single beat of its beautifully sickle shaped wings.
As I've said before, I always get over excited about seeing things like this, and it was in almost total likelihood a kestrel. However it seemed larger than a kestrel somehow, with long pointed wings, a big wedge shaped tail like a raven, and seeming a very pale grey underneath with a lot of white on the underwing.
"It's a kestrel" yell my readers, no doubt correctly.
After this I got back into town, but the birds weren't done with me yet. By the town lock, I thought I was hallucinating with knackeredness when I saw a small bird apparently flying into the post holding up a set of traffic lights for boats. But as I got nearer, I saw a second bird, now identifiable as a great tit fly in, and the lock-keeper confirmed to me that they were nesting in there.
Oh yep, a dinky toad was waiting on my doorstep when I got back.
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