Birds (as in 🦅🐧🕊🦆🦢🦉🦩🦚🦜🐔 etc)

[spicer]

Recently moved to a place right next to the Lea – we’ve got a pair of swans with 8 cygnets that park themselves right outside our window every morning – every day I’m nervously counting to check they’re all still there…

[colinfilth]

Cygnets are pretty robust bruisers. Not like goslings which are seagull buffets.

[urbanfox]

Big unit

The buzzards were having a mooch around the field earlier too.

[boxtoboxelder]

I saw this guy hovering above me and then swooping down for fish. I didn’t have a phone with me but looked it up later when I got back to shore from paddle boarding. Turns out it’s a belted kingfisher.

We also spotted a blue heron and an osprey

[colinfilth]

Our perennially present goldfinches seemed to have disappeared over the early spring, but saw/heard a couple out on the way to the shops yesterday so hopefully they’ll be back in the garden soon. Also saw a handful of long-tailed tits on my feeders, which is nice because they’ve not been around much over the last year and they are picturesque little things.

[robstation01]

Been out and done two of my surveys in the last 14 hours, two different sites, one at dusk and one at dawn. Nothing out of the ordinary, but just lovely to be out at those times. Hares, barking roe deer, bats and loads of singing birds. First Reed Warbler of the year too was nice, takes my year total of species seen to 159.

Best bit of the surveys was seeing the snipe displaying and drumming, which is a really weird and eerie noise. Worst bit was the bloody cows following me around!

[GarethI]

Red kites getting a bad rep in Henley, is it?

[zorb]

What feeders do you have out? I get goldfinches most days but 90% of the time they’re only after niger seeds. Pretty little lads, wish I could get decent photos of them from the house.

[colinfilth]

Yup niger seeds mostly and they’ll sit on there for ages, but it’s not been dropping level for a while now… Also got sunflower seeds most of the time, which they’ll sometimes go for, and a fat block at the moment, although those seem to get less popular over the spring/summer.

[Anon6716638]

The ones we had visit incredibly regularly were interested in the sunflower seeds.

[colinfilth]

Yeah it’s been weird, they’ve been a permanent fixture for ages and then just kind of went. From experience this sort of thing sometimes happens if someone nearby puts up a new feeder of their own, and they just switch preferences.

[Anon6716638]

Worse than cats for loyalty

[froglet]

I wasn’t wholly convinced that the biscuit snatcher was a kite, but I’ve just looked on Wikipedia and it says there was a rash of red kite sandwich thefts in Marlow so I can believe that the local birds have branched out to biscuits

[urbanfox]

Personally think that biscuit theft is a desirable trait in a bird population. Provides a bit of light entertainment, doesn’t it?

[sine_wave]

Spotted this family of geese at the weekend at the Trentham Estate. Lovely.

[GarethI]

That kite colony has spread fairly widely now, I think. I saw a couple overhead when I was getting off the train at Rye House recently.

[harru]

Does anyone know how to deter or get rid of magpies?

This little lad was trying to fledge yesterday. He fell off the wall and there was a magpie snooping around so my gf scooped him up and put him back on.

She watched excitedly all afternoon as he psyched himself up for another go, periodically going out to shoo away the magpie…

Eventually he makes a break for it! He’s off!

…gets as far as next doors fence before the magpie gets hold of him and you can imagine the rest.

Nature happens and all that but she was a bit upset.

[kram]

Eep. No experience myself, but there’s some advice here: How to Get Rid of Magpies | Deterrents for Gardens - The RSPB.

[kram]

Hung out with my woodpecker friend again this morning. Flew out of a tree and started looking for ants in the grass a few meters away. Seemed happy for me to be there, as long as I maintained social distancing. Its (presumably) mate was calling from where they’re nesting, and it was calling back to them.

[urbanfox]

Saw a couple of these geese and their geeselets earlier

Greylag goose, is it?

Also saw a small browny-orange bird but couldn’t get a photo. It was kind of like jay colouring but the size of a tit. What could that have been?