One final post from today’s trip to Edinburgh Zoo. On the way into the Budongo Trail (the chimpanzee enclosure) I spotted this family of moorhens.
I’ve never seen moorhen chicks before. This is what they look like:
The mother was very attentive, moving away only a little and then coming back to feed them.
There was also a male, although I didn’t manage to get a photo of him. It was a whole family gathering! I guess the chicks must have just fledged.
After seeing my first whitethroat during my last visit to Leadburn Community Woodland, I was determined to come back and explore some more. I knew that there was a wide area of heathland that I hadn’t seen yet and I’d also heard there was a pond.
It was a clear, bright morning on Monday so I seized my opportunity.
I headed straight for the heathland. The views across Midlothian and the Pentlands Hills were spectacular. But the first thing that caught my attention was a derelict building – it looked like the type of place birds might use for nesting.
I poked my head in and was immediately greeted by the most incredible encounter. A barn owl flew down from the rafters and perched on a beam only a few feet from my head. It stared straight at me, and then took off silently out of a window. I hurried out and managed to get this distant photo before it settled in some woodland.
I’d twice before suspected I’ve seen a barn owl on my way to work (see here and here) but this is the first time I can be certain. I don’t know whether the owl was just using the building for roosting or whether there was a nest. I wouldn’t want to disturb a nest site so I won’t be entering the building again next time I visit.
I carried on walking and saw these birds, which were making a tsi-tsi! type of call and taking short looping flights from perch to perch. Here are some photos:
And here is a video:
I think they were meadow pipits as the description and their call seems to match and also the habitat, although tree pipits are apparently very similar. I did post the images on iSpot but haven’t got a response.
At the far end of the site, I saw some birds amongst the reeds. I was pretty sure they were warblers, but it took a while before they came out of the reeds enough for me to see them properly.
According the ID guide on my phone, the flat forehead and dark ‘cap’ means they are likely to be sedge warblers and iSpot agrees. I did get a very short video of them too:
By this point I was feeling very satisfied. Barn owls, meadow pipits and sedge warblers are all life ticks for me so the morning couldn’t really have gone any better.
I did find the pond that I’d heard about. There was no bird-life although it was surrounded in this cotton grass which looked beautiful in the dawn sun.
I did catch sight of a distant roe deer bounding away and there were a number of deer tracks in the mud.
I was just about to head back to the car, but there was one more surprise to come.
At of the corner of my eye I saw a bird landing on the ground about a hundred yards away. I thought it looked largish so crept closer to see what it was. To my total amazement I discovered that it was a green woodpecker.
I’d seen this on BBC Springwatch the previous week and never imagined I’d see one in the flesh so soon. It spent a minute or so foraging on the ground before I lost sight of it. I had managed to get one (very distant) photo of it perched on a post:
The green woodpecker is yet another life tick for me and a very special one at that.
Caught my imagination for some reason. On a recent trip to Cardrona Forest, a shaft of sunlight through the conifers lit up the myriad flying insects in the air.
One morning last week I made a short visit to Portmore Loch. It’s a fairly small loch in the northern Scottish Borders which is operated by Scottish Water as a reservoir of drinking water and used by anglers in the Portmore Fishing Syndicate. It looks like this:
I’d never been before however I had a hunch it would also be a good place to spot wildlife.
I wasn’t wrong!
After parking up my car in a small lay-by about half a mile from the loch itself, I saw this pied wagtail. It didn’t seem too concerned by my presence so I could observe it making its morning chirps for a time.
On reaching the loch, I then saw a fantastic spectacle – a gaggle of wild greylag geese feeding on the grassland near to the water. There were several adults and a whole host of goslings.
Unfortunately they became nervous as soon as I came into sight and quickly waddled back to the loch, where I was able to watch them for a while longer.
On the way back to the car, however, my day got even better. I got fleeting glimpses of two species I haven’t seen before – two life ticks.
The first was a great crested grebe, which was floating on its own right in the middle of the loch. This is the best image I could get:
And the other was this lovely brown hare. So pleased to have seen one of these!
I’ll definitely be coming back to Portmore Loch in the future!
On Monday morning I stopped briefly at Leadburn Community Woodland for a short stroll. I heard a bird singing in a tree near the path, looked up and saw this:
At first, from a distance, I thought it might be a blackcap. But on closer inspection I was sure it wasn’t and instead guessed it might be a whitethroat because of, well, its white throat! And indeed, I’ve since had this confirmed on iSpot. This is my first ever sighting of a whitethroat.
It didn’t let me get too close, but didn’t take fright either, choosing to flit between the branches of a few nearby trees.
It settled regularly on a prominent perch and sang. The song was attractive, rapid, urgent. I captured a short video:
I was very excited at the weekend to discover this jackdaw nest, on the track to Gypsy Glen in Peebles.
How do I know it’s specifically a jackdaw nest? Because of this:
I saw two adult jackdaws fly into the hole. One stayed inside, but the other soon re-emerged, allowing me to get the above shot before it flew away.
It looks like they’ve made the nest nice and cosy, as they’ve even found some wool which you can see hanging out a little untidily.
I remember Chris Packham saying on SpringWatch that the most dominant pairs of jackdaws get the best nest sites, with hollows in trees being a preferred option. So I guess this could be a dominant local pair.
Mallards may seem commonplace, but they’re actually beautiful birds. Yesterday we saw a male and female mallard on the Cuddy.
The male was looking very proud, and dare I say it a little vain.
But I think the female looked just as good…
… and just in case anyone thought she was a bit plain, she had a flash of colour at the ready, tucked under her wing!
Hot on the tail of the mountain bumble bee into our garden, was this:
It’s a White-tailed Bumble Bee (Bombus lucorum), or so says iSpot, due to it having two yellow bands and a white tail.
According to The Wildlife Trusts, the white-tailed bumble bee is a very common species but is difficult to tell apart from a number of other similar species. The buff-tailed bumble bee, for example, also has black and yellow bands but has a buff-coloured tail rather than a white one.
Find out more about the white-tailed bumble bee at Arkive, The Wildlife Trusts and Wikipedia.
What an unexpected surprise while visiting my Mum, but to discover these two little beauties while cleaning out the garden pond!
They’re newts! It just goes to show that if you provide habitat, however small, wildlife will come and find it. The newts were sharing the pond with a goldfish and four frogs (with many many tadpoles).
We tried to identify the newts using a reference book. We thought they might be palmate newts on account of the dark stripes on their faces. However, on iSpot they were identified as smooth newts (Lissotriton vulgaris) because of “the brown spotted body and wavy crest”.
According to herpetofauna.co.uk, palmate newts can be very difficult to distinguish from smooth newts, so I guess the jury may still be out on this one.
It’s a soggy, horrible day today so I’m afraid this week’s species is pretty soggy-looking too.
It’s a woodpigeon (Columba palumbus), the largest of the UK’s pigeons and doves and also the most common.
They are common visitors to our garden at all times of the year. They like to collect the seeds dropped by other birds from the feeder. Now, with spring approaching, they are starting to exhibit courting behaviour, with the males chasing the females around, bowing and fanning out their tail feathers in an effort to impress.
According to British Garden Birds, woodpigeons drink a lot, which may explain why the one in the above picture had alighted on the puddle on the top of our sand pit that the house sparrows normally use to have a wash.
You can read more about the woodpigeon at British Garden Birds, Wikipedia, the BTO and Arkive.
My Nature Diary 