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Posted
On 29/12/2024 at 11:52, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

Not me I should add....

 

I presume the writer of this piece lives on the North Yorkshire coast - to be precise, Ravenscar...!

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Posted

Don`t know about where you live but West Cumbria is awash with Buzzards and Little Egrets seem to be more common than usual .

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Posted
6 hours ago, ivans82 said:

Don`t know about where you live but West Cumbria is awash with Buzzards and Little Egrets seem to be more common than usual .

Thanks for that interesting observation, ivans82.  

I gave up watching programmes like Springwatch when I got a bit fed up with what seemed to me to be a constant doom-and-gloom wildlife theme running through them.  Of course I understand that climate change is affecting some species badly.  However, individual species of birds and other wildlife have always come and gone.  It would be nice to reflect, just once in while, on species that seem to be doing well.

That brings me to buzzards and little egrets.  When I was a kid in the 1950s, we lived in rural Gloucestershire, a few miles outside Bristol.  Every other year, we made the long, three-day journey to holiday in Aberdeen, where all my four grandparents were still alive and living, as were many family friends of my mum and dad.  I was already becoming a keen birdwatcher, and two species told me we had really got to the Highlands, as we climbed out of Dumbartonshire into Argyll.  One was the hooded crow; the other was the buzzard.  Why the buzzard?  Well, we never saw them in England, certainly not in rural Gloucestershire.  I think their becoming commonplace throughout, I think, all England is a phenomenon of the last fifty years - a real success story.

The little egret's spectacular drive north from Meditarranean France is even more noteworthy, in terms of speed.  I think that you will find that the levels of them (and buzzards) that you are seeing now, ivans82, is, in reality, your new 'normal'.

Coming next are red kites (albeit with the RSPB's helping hand a few years ago, initially in the Chilterns) and others of the egret and related families.  Look out for - probably in this chronological order - great white egrets and cattle egrets with maybe the glossy ibis not too far behind that.  Then, I think (and again with a helping hand), it will be white storks.

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Posted

Strangely enough Red Kites are non existant in West Cumbria certainly around the fells/woods near the western lakes . I think the RSPB released some birds around the Penrith area and the NE but non nearer home . Might take a few years to spread out my way .

  • 1 month later...
Posted

In the past 5 days, I've seen

- A barn owl, in our field.

- A (great spotted) woodpecker, hammering away on the pole which carries the electricity cable to the house.

- A black grouse, above Swaledale (looks quite different to the much more common red grouse reared for shooting).

- A hedgehog. I was tidying up leaves, dead stuff from plants, weeds etc. in the garden and the pile of stuff I picked up turned out to be the nest of a hibernating hedgehog. Always had them in previous gardens, hadn't seen one here, so very pleased to know it's there. Covered it back up and added some extra straw for insulation. It's survived being covered in snow for over a week (and temperatures below 0 for a week). It seemed a pretty decent size, so I think it'll be OK.

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Posted
3 hours ago, JonM said:

In the past 5 days, I've seen

- A barn owl, in our field.

- A (great spotted) woodpecker, hammering away on the pole which carries the electricity cable to the house.

- A black grouse, above Swaledale (looks quite different to the much more common red grouse reared for shooting).

- A hedgehog. I was tidying up leaves, dead stuff from plants, weeds etc. in the garden and the pile of stuff I picked up turned out to be the nest of a hibernating hedgehog. Always had them in previous gardens, hadn't seen one here, so very pleased to know it's there. Covered it back up and added some extra straw for insulation. It's survived being covered in snow for over a week (and temperatures below 0 for a week). It seemed a pretty decent size, so I think it'll be OK.

Three summers ago we had a family holiday back on our old stamping ground of the Craven part of the Dales (Mrs WWD is Skipton born and raised and I worked there for many years)  One evening, we met up with old friends from the 'other' Ingleton, where we used to live after leaving Craven; it's in lower Teesdale.  We met at a pub on Leyburn market square and had an enjoyable meal and conversation.  

As Mrs WWD and I headed south, at dusk, to our holiday cottage near Skipton, we were amazed and delighted by the number of barn owls we saw in Upper Wharfedale; I think it was six in total.

More recently, in fact two weeks ago, I was reminded that bird-watching can occur at any time.  One evening, I was travelling to play in an away table tennis match in the Chalke Valley near Salisbury and a barn owl flew along the road in front of me.  Two days later, I had the same experience when fetching my daughter home from Winchester to spend the weekend with us.

Black grouse males meet in the spring for mating displays; the activity is called 'lekking'; maybe your black grouse will be taking part in one of those near where you saw it, Jon M.  I was once lucky enough to be taken to one of those, soon after dawn, as I recall in Littondale.  It was a great sight, with the females (greyhens) hanging around at the periphery of the 'lek' site, presumably to show, in due course, their appreciation of the 'winners' in the time honoured way of the animal kingdom!

 

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Posted
5 hours ago, Wiltshire Warrior Dragon said:

 As Mrs WWD and I headed south, at dusk, to our holiday cottage near Skipton, we were amazed and delighted by the number of barn owls we saw in Upper Wharfedale; I think it was six in total.

I see barn owls fairly often if I go out at the appropriate time of day. Never as many as six, but do sometimes see 3 or 4 in the space of a few miles. This one is notable because it appears to be spending hours each day hunting over my meadow, which I'm very happy about.

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