Sunday 19 October 2014

Slipping in

Saturday morning and the unseasonably warm weather has not stopped the onward creep of winter with small flocks of Redwing arriving overnight and disturbed from their roosts in groups of three to forty as I walked up the bridleway. Unusually quiet with very little of their normal seep and kek contact calling but typically nervous for new arrivals with a approach distance of 30m the best before they took to the air and headed off south.
This pic is therefore from the archive the giveaway being the frost on the branches. One of the benefits of living on the edge of town is that despite the lack of frost the local mice (Wood not House) have decided to come indoors and having become lax over summer in replacing the lids on my bird feed I've now twice delved in only to find a nest being created. One particularly cocky individual took to sitting in front of the television whilst I watched of course making a hasty exit the moment I moved. Humane traps have been deployed and as usual I have not seen or heard a mouse since. A better benefit is that on four nights last week a very vocal female Tawny Owl has been hunting the paddock at the bottom of the garden being encourage by a hooting male on Thursday when the warm evening tempted me to do some mothing with two Angle Shades and a Pine Carpet recorded before the rain started. What do moths do when they get caught out in the rain?

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