Great Tits

[Balderdasha]

Apologies for the derail. I'd asked him months ago for a photo of them. Yesterday Master HORN finally delivered.

How is that a derail? Totally appropriate for the thread and fantastic photo!

[Nocturnal Submission]

Wonderful photo.

Penguins always have that air of broken down commuters milling around a mainline station concourse that has "Cancelled" & "Delayed" all over the information board.

If someone could edit in a few little briefcases on the ends of wings it would be perfect.

[HORN]

Great! Where is that?

That'll be somewhere on Islas Malvinas.

[Sits]

That'll be somewhere on Islas Malvinas.

Thanks.

[Balderdasha]

Some more unexpected finds from extended garden recordings today. A kestrel, a redwing (on two separate occasions), a grey wagtail (again twice. It looks more yellow than grey, why wouldn't you mention that in the name?), a kingfisher (they do live at the river at the bottom of the hill but not sure if they usually stray this far from water), and a little owl (bit sceptical of that one. Would it have been awake at 8:45am? Why doesn't the map show it being present in the UK but according to Google it is?)

[Balderdasha]

So 31 species recorded without leaving my house / garden so far.

[ad hoc]

This is why it's called the grey wagtail

[Third rate Leszno]

Been watching Eider ducks bobbing about in the harbour (in Fife) this afternoon. The air temperature is 5 degrees c, feels like 1 degree with the wind chill and I bet the water is even colder, but I swear they looked smug and warm in their layers of feathers.

[Sits]

Some more unexpected finds from extended garden recordings today. A kestrel, a redwing (on two separate occasions), a grey wagtail (again twice. It looks more yellow than grey, why wouldn't you mention that in the name?), a kingfisher (they do live at the river at the bottom of the hill but not sure if they usually stray this far from water), and a little owl (bit sceptical of that one. Would it have been awake at 8:45am? Why doesn't the map show it being present in the UK but according to Google it is?)

I believe Little Owls predominantly hunt at dawn(dusk rather than night, and are widespread in England.

[Sits]

Apologies for the quality as I attempt to convey the drama of the local cockatoos trying to see off one of a pair of kites.

[Felicity, I guess so]

A Dumfries and Galloway wildlife group on Facebook I'm in has recently featured lots of sightings of a pair of kookaburras, in Kirkcudbright...

[ad hoc]

Three times today I've heard this. And you'd think it would be easy to see. But so far, no luck

[Jobi1]

Had a lovely couple of hours wandering around Waters' Edge Country Park at Barton upon Humber yesterday. It's a former chemical works that's been brilliantly transformed into a nature reserve, and being right on the banks of the estuary is very popular with water fowl of varying types. Nothing wildly unusual in evidence yesterday, although a very large number of tufted ducks. Husband's review of them: "They're very 80s, aren't they?" Sure.

[S. aureus]

I suppose here’s where I put in the obligatory crack about whether the bird itself is easy to see, or the image that you appear to have posted.
edit: to ad hoc

[Sits]

It's difficult to get a photo of a Currawong, even though their call is distinctive and heard very regularly. This is a bit silhouetted so the lovely yellow eye doesn't show. Great birds.

[Balderdasha]

Menacing Scottish swans.

[Artificial Hipster]

I'd mentioned in passing to my eldest recently that the Crown owns all the swans (just Mutes apparently) in England and Wales, giving greed as the short answer to her question, why?

The actual answer, I discovered, is more interesting than that. It's that unlike most other wildfowl that our ancestors tried to tame these beautiful, but charmlessly aggressive creatures proved to be wholly resistant to domestication, necessitating their ownership to be defined by statute.

This led to me expounding on one of the themes common to some of Jared Diamond's books, namely that the presence of animals that could be domesticated was one of the prerequisites for societies we define as advanced to develop.

I forget what her response to this was, probably to ask did I know that two of the vault songs on 1989: Taylor's Version were written about her cats, that's usually where our conversations end up. I was pleased to come away from this one with a new found respect for swans though.

[Discordant Resonance]

Eek, a giant rat is after climbing down our wall and hanging off our bird feeder!

[Third rate Leszno]

Agile buggers, rats. They can get onto bird tables that have a substantial overhang.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Something a little bit different for the thread: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...shire-68785461

[Balderdasha]

Nesting pigeon. In the same alley as Semolina Pilchard.

[Discordant Resonance]

Very suspicious glint in his eye!

[Jobi1]

We have a pair of jays that are occasional visitors to our garden. Hadn't seen them for a while so thought they may have sadly moved (or indeed passed) on, but one of them popped up on our trail cam last week.

[Sits]

Fantastic. I miss jays.

[Artificial Hipster]

I left Merlin running on the shed while hanging the washing out earlier. Eleven species recorded over ten minutes from a back yard in Old Trafford is pretty impressive I think, although to be fair ours is one of four streets which enclose our own 'secret' wildlife haven-cum-football pitch with mature trees for goal posts. Two of the recorded species came with red circles. Siskins I see and hear from time to time in nearby parks so they came as no surprise but a long eared owl certainly did.