Hobbies and Crafts

aaw that was nice Jane. All we have over us is crows and magpies!!

Just been watching 2 Red Kites overhead. It is the first time in a while I have seen them over us. There are plenty around here but not right above us for sometime. Nice to see them back again :-D

All fine Barbra, glad the birds are back. Enjoy your garden.

Hello our birds are back gold finches blue tits sparrows .cold tits black birds thrush & feeding four young ones .really busy again good to see them finished potting plants & Hanging baskets so can enjoy my garden now hope you are all okay Barbara

The female sparrowhawk is quite big compared to a Kestrel, the male not so big. Hawks they get in Tenerife are quite small, don't know what they are.

The ones we get around here are sparrowhawks so not very big. Perhaps the mouse bit it. May have been a youngster our birds rear earlier than UK. It's 30 C today.

Plenty of insects from March onward. We usually get the swallows and swifts late February and they don't leave until September.

Lol fisty cuffs out at the mealy worm cafe this evening. Resident Robin sees the mealy worms as his property, cue two very young sparrows eating them. Robin huffing and puffing literally jumping up and down and flying at them, adult male sparrow arrives and eats Robin flies off in a huff and takes a bath. :-D

Poor little mouse. I hope it was uninjured and managed to find a bolt hole. I quite like mice as long as they are not in the house.

We went on a 90 minute boat trip on the Norfolk Broads a couple of days ago. We saw the usual ducks, geese and swans with young and a couple of grey herons looking like statues at the water’s edge, but we also saw 3 separate Marsh Harriers. They nest in the reed beds and were flying low over the beds and quite close to us. They are beautiful birds in flight. They have a large wingspan and just seemed to be gliding above the reeds. Lovely to see.

Different to the usual post. But fascinating. I am surprised a Hawk would drop the mouse as they are usually clever at clinging on to them. Maybe the hawk was attacked by something bigger. Do you have the small hawks there, sort of Kestrel sized?

It looked alert when it disappeared but I did wonder if it had escaped without injuring or shock. There are cats around here so it's fate isn't known as an injured or dead mouse would have been devoured overnight.

Our dog hasn't been attracted to the hedge so it's gone from there that's all I can say. :-)

:-D :-D I am surprised the poor thing hadn't died from shock Pat.
If my cat Thomas had spotted it he would have had it for his dinner!! :-D

Well a new one on me!

Sat yesterday afternoon reading, it was hot so an ideal thing to do. I was sat in the sitting room near the patio doors, we have a small patio out front with an hibiscus hedge between the patio and our wall.

I heard a squawk followed by a high pitched squeal which disturbed my reading and I looked outside to see something hit the hedge and whatever it was was dropping through the hedge. :-0

A branch broke the fall and I found I was looking at a mouse clinging to the branch. It regained it's balance and shot off into the hedge and hasn't been seen by us (or the dog) since :-D

Looks like one of the hawks had picked it up for a meal and dropped it when overhead. The mouse was lucky to fall into the only soft thing in that area. Don't know if it suffered any injury or how shocked it was but it's got a second chance yesterday :-D

We actually had four goldfinches feeding on the feeder today, not seen that many for ages. Our Robin is still taking mealy worms to the pile of leaves he calls his nest, can’t hear or see if there is anything in it. Sometimes two of them fly in and out as well .

Oh Pat poor dog ,I bet she was champing at the muzzle to try and caatch one of the Swallows LOL What a lovely sight though :-D.... We have a few here now .

I think it is the kind of weather where we might start seeing Bats in the evenings.

Vera it doesn't take long for the bird baths to get really mucky again does it? It is the Woodpigeons that turn it into a toilet :-S :-S. We did have a couple of Goldfinch too the other day having a drink which is very unusual. They never feed though from the window feeder.to get on the feeder.
The Spotted Woodpecker is a bit of a bully and keeps all the little birds well away from the feeder . :-S

I’ve just been sitting by the open conservatory door watching a robin taking meal worms from the ground feeder. I also gave the bird bath a really good scrub out. I hate that job but if I don’t do it regularly it gets in such a state. We have recently had a couple of goldfinches coming to drink from it though I seldom see them on the feeders, so I’d like to be sure the water is reasonably clean.

There seem to be plenty of bees around, as well as some butterflies and a few dragonflies.

Walking the dog this morning saw a wonderful aerobatic display by about a dozen swallows over the bondu (waste ground). They were swooping just above us, my dog thought she might catch one, they were too quick for her and she wears a muzzle :-D :-D :-D

I haven't seen a woodpecker for ages near here.

Last week I saw the swan family quite a distance from their nest, but wasn't sure it was them. By chance I met a friend another day out walking and she said that she'd just seen the family on their nest, so I walked that way to look. When I neared the spot, I saw them serenely gliding along the water having just left their base. They were the same sizes as the one's I'd seen earlier in the week, so I think they are happily covering a wider area now.

Yesterday I saw mum mallard with her offspring. She had 6 and some of them were almost as big as her, so hopefully have a good chance of surviving now. The youngsters were having a great time darting about feeding and making trails in the duck weed topping the water.

The Woodpecker is still a visitor many times a day on the window feeder :-D. I have to stay very still though as one movement from me and it is off.
We just had a Duck fly over the house :-D

Oh great Jane to see the woodpecker.

We don’t have so many magpies these days although two is more than enough.
I did read that magpies, starlings and sparrows were in decline because of the way we buy specialist bird food rather than feeding scraps as we used to. And goldfinches are on the increase.

Lovely to see the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on the window feeder today :-D :-D It has been a while since I have seen one.