Lockdown Over!

After not checking the previous day, it suddenly occurred to me that I would soon lose any further opportunity to film them. Grabbing the camera, I wandered over to the trough, and was relieved to find the chicks still huddled in the nest. It has become quite an annoyance that since the first time I tried filming them, I haven't been able to get any decent footage. The torch fell off or the zoom was to high or the camera wasn't well framed or the focus was out.... if at first you succeed - never try again.

Maybe this time i'll get it right. maybe this time I'll record something worthwhile.

The camera records for ten minutes, and then shuts off, so after a while, I went back to turn the camera back on. And they were gone. Well - not all of them. The last one was huddled up to the camera, finding some comfort in the glove that I'd used to sit it on for stability. I picked him up and allowed him to scuttle off into the nearby hedge where the rest of the family was shouting encouragement.

Parus major Camera Obscura

For  while I was puzzling over the Great Tits. It seemed like only one parent was feeding them - you could tell because it was ringed. But after trawling through my recent footage, the obvious answer became obvious - they're both ringed. Both birds are fairly similar in features, with very little to tell them apart. The v short clip below is a mash-up for comparison. It's still not easy due to my poor placement of the camera, but you'll notice that one bird ( the male) is slightly brighter yellow, with a complete black neckring - and a right hind claw that is clipped for some reason.

Meanwhile, inside the trough, the nestlings have changed completely from the naked blind wrigglers seven days ago. Sadly, one hatchling had wandered out of the nest somehow, and lay dead on the earth. There is a chance that one of the adults had tried to remove this casualty and couldn't quite manage it, but either way the curious thing was that it had been dead for nearly a week, seemingly, but apart from being stone cold, it looked very fresh with no decomposition and just a slight 'sunken eyed' look to it. I suppose it may have been very late to emerge from the egg - there were two that hadn't hatched when I checked a week ago, but even so - very strange. It made me wonder if there's an evolutionary thing going on - because it would definitely be an advantage to not go rancid too quickly for the rest of the clutch.

With the adults showing no stress over my meddling, I thought it might be an idea to try to get some real close-up footage from inside the nest. It's not every nestbox you can just shove an SLR into, so it must be worth a try, I thought. Light being an obvious issue, I strapped on my headtorch but it didn't seem to have any effect. A-ha! put the torch on the camera instead. boom! Sorry. yeah - still didn't make much difference.

After that first attempt it was pretty obvious I was zoomed in too tight, and pulling back helped with the lighting issues as well. Wait for the call.......

Murderswans.

Look Mummy! Swans!

Ahhh, look at the pretty swans. There's mummy swan with all her cute fluffy ickle baby swans.

Isn't she beautiful William?

 And over there, that's daddy swan. Look how handsome he is.

 What is he doing Mummy?

Well, he's er..

I mean, he must be, that is, he's, um...

Do you know, I'm not sure William. Nigel, what do you think?

Oh dear, I say Nigel, is that swan doing what I think it's doing?

Oh my God! He is! He's brutally murdering that gosling to death!

Don't look William! Nigel! For Christ's sake cover his eyes! Don't let him see!

Make it stop Mummy! Make it stop! Why won't it stop? It's already dead!

Please make it stop! Mummy! I want to go home!

That's the last time I listen to you, Nigel. "Let's go for a walk in the countryside", "Let's get some fresh air", "It will be good for William to be out of the house". Now look at him! This sort of thing doesn't happen on Springwatch...

Asleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mF4pKSi2SU&app=desktop

We took a trip out to walk on the heath at night.  There may not be another time when both kids are saying they want to go out looking for Nightjars, so we broke cover and headed to Roydon last night.  On the sandy ridges a male Wheatear greeted us and Woodlark flutterbyed around.  The sun set gloriously and shortly after the churring began.  Hedging our bets on one likely looking horizontal bough in a low oak, the winnowing silhouette of a lone Nightjar flicked over the horizon, across us and up into the speculative bough.  Everyone happy, we walked back through the gathering gloom and into the darkness of night, a merry band.

Yellow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZnZIigwz7Q

Orchid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-6pAkC2T4

With some more scope for visits away from home I took the kids for a walk out to Chettisham Meadows just the other side of Ely, where many hundreds of Green-winged Orchids were still in flower.  Lots of variety to enjoy.

trough tits

At just over a week old, the Great Tit chicks have grown fast, and all five are showing the pins that sheathe their first flight feathers.

Visits have been fairly frequent - about once every ten minutes or so recorded under video surveillance. Listen out for the call as the adult approaches....

As the Sun Climbs

Unexpected Asio

May already. How did that happen? The past couple of weeks have sped past in a blur of great crested newt monitoring and breeding bird surveys, and now bat survey season is hoving into view in a most unwelcome manner.

Fortunately, when I have had the time to get out the birding within my Sanctioned Lockdown Exercise Radius has been good, with a steady trickle of birds of (relative) interest in these parts as April has dissolved into May.

Unlike the fleeting visit of the male, the female ring ouzel lingered for the best part of a week in April, and small numbers of wheatears continue to grace the fence posts of their chosen field.

A group of whimbrel flew low over Tubney Fen, and a single turtle dove pitched and rolled its way north through Burwell Fen, where the cuckoos and terns have returned and bar-tailed godwit, great white egret and garganey have put in appearances. The garden was graced with its first lesser whitethroat, rattling away enthusiastically from the hedges for one day only, and on the Dyke the scratchy mimicry of my first sedge warbler for the site provided a welcome interruption to the ubiquitous babbling of common whitethroats. Swifts are now beginning to arrive en masse in the skies above Burwell and Reach, and the spectral presence of a barn owl enlivened an otherwise dull morning (both ornithologically and meteorologically) earlier in the week.

More unexpected, however, was the short-eared owl I found floating erratically over arable fields a stone's throw from the house yesterday. It eventually became tired of the elusiveness of the local skylarks and gave up its ineffectual flouncing about over the wheat, retiring to a perch on a nearby fence post to daydream about a nice fat vole, an expression of thunderous disgruntlement on its coupon.

MayMeadow and memorie