UKH

Great to see lots of young fledglings: long tailed, great and blue tits, family of whitethroats giving great close ups, sparrows a plenty in the garden. Lots of roe deer, no fawns yet.  Large groups of goldfinches. Been a good year so far, mild winter and a perfect spring (and dryer would have been bad, lucky the rain came when it did).

Roe deer this morning. 

First UK Spoonbill for me today. Avocet too. In Cheshire.

Excellent.  Dee Marshes?

Spoonbills used to be a rarity, now common as (well not exactly but pretty easy to see if you go to the right place).

The other one that pops up in all sorts of estuaries nowadays is the little egret.

Even if there aren't many of them, "big white birds" tend to be quite noticeable 😁, it's good that not all rarities are difficult to see.

Twp birdstrikes this morning - a woodpidgeon on its first solo, survived but is clearly confused what to do now, and a great spotted woodpecker which died almost immediately. Such a shame. Three young blackbirds have crashed recently and looked as if they were at death's door but two recovered after a few minutes. It's not as though we don't have bird silhouette stickers on the windows to warn them...

Bird shilouettes do not work. This has been established long ago, no idea why people still use them. What does help is foil panels that are transparent to our eyes but visible to birds in the UV. They can be a pain to fix to old windows, though.

Our animal event of the week was a nest of mallards that had bred on our grass roof, only a couple of meters from the children's bedroom window. We saw the adults at our garden pond and at the bird feeder throughout spring, but had no idea they were breeding right above my bed!

After the ducklings hatched, they were unable to scale the raised edge of the grass roof, so ran around beeping while the female flew up and down quacking like mad.

Eventually the children caught all nine ducklings, put them into a cardboard box and carried them down to the garden. When the female reappeared they toppled the box, and the entire family disappeared, stopping traffic by walking 200m through the neighbourhood to our local stream.

CB

Actually, even better in many ways. It’s on Neumann flash in Anderton nature park which is old (very) industrial land which has been ‘redeveloped’ into a fantastic wildlife area. It’s on the outskirts of Northwich. To give you an idea if you combine the np with the adjacent Marbury park species in the past few years include Hawfinch, lesser spotted woodpecker (breeding), Avocet, Marsh Harrier, Black tailed Godwit, Bittern(breeding), Little Ringed Plover, Little Egret, summer Green Sandpiper. Also most of the more common waders and woodland birds. A success story really.

It is better. I was one of the first ever volunteers at Pennington Flash in Leigh where I grew up and learned about birds (did my duke of Edinburgh’s there in the early 80s) and it’s amazing now.

I bet your children really liked that adventure. And mallard ducklings really are cute!!

Absolutely, even though the children in question are 17 and 23! I missed the whole action by about half an hour due to being stuck in traffick.

CB

Fin Whale in the Dee Estuary at Flint.

Unfortunately it may not survive.

Really! Any tips re sighting?

Oh! Just googled, not looking good.

Sadly it’s not.

The harbinger of doom, AKA my Mrs, started to tell me about it this morning before I walked off.

Had a great experience with a fox Thursday night though. Did my local walk up the woods with my dog. Sat in the middle of an old beech tree where I have a fag, perfectly camouflaged in green and grey with my hood up against the rain and the wind blowing over my shoulder. Up the path 20 feet away walked a young vixen. Lovely orange colour with a black back. It stopped and sniffed around before seemingly heading towards me and the dog who was sat just down the hill with her ball. 
I doubt it would have ended well if it tried to get ‘Wilson’ off our mutt so I stood up.

Foxy slinked off down the hill around the back of our mutt and all ended well

i've been hoping the best for the nesting pigeons in my wisteria after blackbirds got massacred by a cat just before fledging last year and a failed attempt at nesting in the elder when their eggs blew off in freak winds;( 

it looked like they were getting ready to go yesterday -only 3 weeks after hatching and reviewing the footage today, the last squab left the frame at about 8:30pm. the next motion detection was a cat only an hour later! pretty lucky eh?

ps nice to hear an ode to the wood pigeon on tweet of the day just as i was writing this..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000k1bw

I've been looking after this little fella for a couple of weeks (rescued from a nearby house, at risk of being taken by one of the many local cats). I'm taking him out to the garden a couple of times a day to get him used to being outside and trying to get him to forage on his own. Sadly, I think I'm stuck with him. 

Has anyone else managed to re-wild a baby pigeon?

Not wildlife, but I took a seldom-trodden footpath the other day that led me through a field with an interesting little collection of livestock.  There were a few ordinary sheep, a couple of donkeys and some of these unusual horny beasts. 

I looked them up - they're Jacob Sheep.  Rams and ewes usually have four horns, but can have two or even six.

I was cycling in the Preselis yesterday and saw a red kite having a go at a crow - it wasn't being mobbed, it was just a single crow. I was going too fast to see the denouement, but it wasn't looking great for the crow.

hmm, are you sure you did the right thing? what happened to the parents?

Surprising. Even 1 on 1 every case I have seen has been the kite backing any from the crow.

Muntjac deer and very tiny and unstabe offspring spotted in Warwickshire yesterday.