Walking Anti-Clockwise

For 47 years or thereabouts I have walked in the Stornoway Castle Grounds. For some reason which I cannot explain, 99% of the time (perhaps more) my walk has been in a clockwise direction. 

Today, after having had breakfast in The Woodlands Café, I decided to walk in an anti-clockwise direction. It felt quite strange.

However that was not all that was unusual. I noticed something that I cannot recall being so aware of before. The huge number of Blackbirds flying around. There are a lot of birds in the Grounds from Cranes and Ravens down in size to Wrens. Most of the time the most noticeable bird is the Robin. However this year there seems to have been a dearth of birds on many of my walks. Today was different. I doubt that there was a single step when there was not a Blackbird or several Blackbirds in view. 

Anyway I thought that, as it's a while since I showed any pictures of my walks, I'd show you a few today. 

The first thing I did was check the rain app to make sure I wasn't going to get soaked because I wasn't dressed for an 'any-weather' walk. I had enough time for the 'Short Walk' which is about 1.3 miles

I'm Back

How's that for an inventive title?

Good afternoon, on this windy, dull, wet, 11ºC Sunday afternoon on the Isle of Lewis. Apart from to feed the birds I've not been out of the house today so the weather is irrelevant except to the extent that almost everyone feels more cheerful when the sun is shining.

It's three weeks since I opened a blog of mine or anyone else's to read, write or do anything in Blogland. I'm pretty sure that must be the longest period of 'non-attendance' since I started blogging in 2007.

During the three weeks I developed a kidney infection and then had yet another few days in hospital pre-sepsis whilst they sorted things out. Given the inevitably of that happening again and again the consultant has embarked on a regime of preventative antibiotics. Here's hoping.  

My visitors of two months have now departed and I'm back to being in the state of being single that I have become very used to over the last 20 years or so. 

You would think that with three weeks 'off' I'd have a hundred ideas about which to blog. If nothing else I could take a leaf out of YP's blog and show you more of the wonderful island on which I live.  Or I could write about National Simplicity Day. Or I could just use what little imagination I have.

Monday morning. 

As it was I didn't even manage to finish the introduction and post just to let you know that I'm back. Well I am. But I have to be in town to pick up a friend who's car is going in for repair, That's at 9am. So I'm saying 'Hello' and I'll be back later. However, with thanks to Rachel for waking me up again, I shall post some photos from the last three weeks.

The first is my son's new tent. It has no poles! It's just kept up by inflated tubes. I was amazed. He, Carol and Brodie spent a weekend in the sun at one of Lewis's many beaches.

I called in at Tesco on Saturday morning. That's how I like to see a supermarket - no people but full shelves.

Gaz and Brodie came round for an afternoon. Brodie is 3½ and has every toy on the face of the earth. At that age I think I had a wooden giraffe my Uncle had brought home from some exotic place he was stationed in The War and possibly a. Dinkey Toy. The whole afternoon Brodie played with a helter skelter I bought for him well before he was able even to crawl and he's played with it ever since. Sometimes simple is just more enjoyable.

Every night the birds come down in their dozens to bathe in the pond. The fishes seem not to care.

I hope you all have a great week. See you later.

Chiffchaffs

The Outer Hebrides is a wonderland of and for birdlife. I would love to be able to photograph a lot more of it but, if I'm truly honest, I just don't put enough effort into it. In other words I'm an opportunistic birdlife photographer. On the whole I've managed some passable photos over the years which have been good enough for proper identification at least.

Quite a few of my photos have, however, been taken through my kitchen window with the limitations that can impose in terms of reflections, distortion and, when the wind blows, salt on the glass. I'm also either photographing into the sun (in the morning - the house faces East) or in the shade when the sun is behind trees, buildings or the house. On the other hand if I'd tried to go out of the house to get the photo the subject would have long fled.

So it was yesterday. Two birds flitted into the garden and came right up to the window. I was pretty sure I'd never seen them before. I reached for the ever-present camera but by the time it was switched on they were in a lavatera bush 10 metres away. The light was poor but, in the 60 or so seconds they were in the garden, I managed some photos.

The visitors are Chiffchaffs. They are normally summer visitors, wintering around the mediterranean, but some have started to over-winter in the UK. There are also those that come to the UK in the winter from the east and look slightly different in appearance. They are much greyer than our normal green Chiffchaffs with just a little green in the wings and are known as Siberian Chiffchaffs which these visitors look very much like. They also sound different (but I couldn't hear them). This year there has been an influx of Siberian Chiffchaffs to the Outer Hebrides with 3 at Ness, 3 on Uists recently and 5 on Barra. (Information supplied by Yvonne Benting of Outer Hebrides Birds).

A First: Merlin

It's not the first Merlin I've seen on the Island by any means but it's the first one I've seen sitting on a post in my garden. It was there for only a short time and, sod's law, I had a macro lens on the camera and the Big Lens was in the boot of the car. So I had to make do with a 200mm lens through a window at an oblique angle. I just managed a shot before it departed at speed. I say 'it' because it's either a female or a young male. The garden has been strangely devoid of sparrows this afternoon so I assume it's still lurking.

Post script to this post: Well I apologise for misleading everyone. I have seen many Sparrowhawks and photographed them too. What made me not even think of this one being a sparrowhawk was the fact that it was so small: about the same size as a blackbird. However I have now had a more analytical look at it and the determining factor is the wings. I should immediately have noticed. When one sees a sparrowhawk the short stocky wings are very noticeable when compared with the long sharp wings of the Merlin.

Post post script: As my next post will show. It was a Merlin after all. I should have had the courage of my convictions.

Chaffinch

I think that Spesh has chaffinches occasionally in her garden. Now I can't say for certain that I have never seen one in the garden here in Eagleton but if I have I've not recorded it. So, for the record, here, at just after 0600 yesterday morning, is a photo of a Chaffinch (and a Greenfinch) on the bird table.

Late yesterday evening the Chaffinch re-appeared and I managed another slightly better photo through the window in the late evening sun: not good but better than the morning one.

Dunnock or Hedgesparrow

I was idly looking out of the kitchen window a few days ago when a Dunnock caught my eye. I am used to seeing dozens of Sparrows (House Sparrows to be precise) very day and all day in the garden. However a Dunnock is a relative rarity and I discovered that I've never posted seeing one on the blog. Dunnocks or Hedgesparrows look similar to female House Sparrows but are Accentors and have a grey head and chest and a fine beak unlike the House Sparrow's finch-like beak. They are also a solitary bird unlike the very gregarious House Sparrows.

A Sparrowhawk Visits

I woke up a few days ago and opened the curtain to see whether Pauline's good weather luck was holding. The sky was overcast. It was just after 5am so the light was poor. Then just outside my bedroom window I saw a bird: a female sparrow hawk waiting for her breakfast. Ironically I had put my cameras in the car ready for the off in the morning so had to go and retrieve one.

At 5am waiting for breakfast to emerge

This was the first time I'd seen a sparrow hawk so close and not actually in flight although one did attempt unsuccessfully to take a sparrow from the bird table some years ago and crashed into the flowers just outside the kitchen window. This evening I looked up as I was finishing dinner and there she was again sitting on the fencepost at the corner of the garden. This time the light was better but I had to take the photo through a rain-covered kitchen window. 

Here's looking at you

After a while I decided to be brave and open the back door and try again. She looked directly at me and decided that I was no immediate threat so I managed a shot or two before she flew off to seek supper over in the trees where the starlings were roosting for the night. They were less sanguine about her presence and immediately took to the sky. I had no idea there were so many starlings roosting so close to me.

After a short while she returned. 

Sitting patiently

When I went into the garden today I saw that there were lots of pigeon's feather scattered around so I assume that she has taken a pigeon whilst I've been away and is now after a second one. She certainly looks well fed even though she is a rather tatty specimen. I wonder if it was this pigeon that is no more:

Or this one?

Surely not this one?

Feeding The Bairns

One of the things I learned from evidence led in a planning inquiry I was involved in many many moons ago was that the common tern is a highly adaptable bird: disturb its nesting colony and it will just move somewhere else and establish another one. I've lived in Eagleton for 23 years and the terns have rarely flown over my house on the way from the feeding grounds to the nesting site. This year they have been flying non-stop for several months over the house. 

Terns fly very quickly and with a flight that is either extremely graceful (with the wind and with nothing in their beak) or extremely jerkily (against the wind and with a fish in their beak for the young).  Either way they are a difficult bird to photograph when they are in flight. Anyway in between the rain I've managed a few shots:

The distance between the possible breeding sites and the feeding grounds is between one and one and a half miles:

I have no idea how many flights a day each tern flies but several months from 0400 'till 2100 one is talking of a great many miles.

A New Colony

Oh dear. More emails. "Why are you not blogging?" It seems that if a week goes by and I don't blog (not because I don't want to but because I'm just living other parts of my life) that is the magic trigger for the 'are you ok?' emails. You know what? I really love that there are people out there who care enough to ask. Thank you.

One of the things that has been very rewarding this week has been seiing a new colony of Sparrows establish itself in the garden. As I said in a post a few weeks ago entitled Lucky I have a colony of sparrows living in the roof above my bedroom. Perhaps ten years ago I set up a nesting box on the wall of the garage. It was badly sited because it’s on the North wall and has never been occupied……until this spring. I first noticed a sparrow going into it a few weeks ago but now it’s clear that it has established itsef as a little overspill colony.

The Birds Are Returning

In the week I spent in the garden the Skylark was singing away merrily and the usual suspects like the Sparrows and Starlings were busy fattening themselves up for the coming breeding season on the food on the bird table. I saw a Great Skua (known locally as Bonxies) so they may be plentiful again this year. The Greenfinches are more plentiful this year than they were last year too. It's strange how some years there are many Greenfinches in the garden and some there are few. This is obviously going to be a 'many' year and they are possibly outnumbering the Sparrows at the moment. In my experience, however, they have fewer clutches than the Sparrows are outnumbered by the end of the breeding season.

Plenty of Robins this year

Not the best Goldfinch picture but the best this spring so far 

This is not a bird but a cat trying to catch a pigeon. They taunt it.

A Wheatear showing its wonderful telltale flash. Shame about the fence.

Not a particularly common bird in the garden the Blackbird appreciated the results of the grass being scarified  

As sis this selection: an unusual sight on the grass in my garden

Wheatear 

The Starlings are noisy and quarrelsome and the bully-boys of the bird table but beautiful nevertheless