It’s been a full Moon for the past few nights and a good opportunity therefore, to spend the wee small hours out in the fields and the woods keeping an eye on some of the Deer.Armed gangs of city poachers tend to be more active when they can see what they’re doing a bit better and it’s nice not to have to depend on NVE when the Moon is illuminating the landscape as brightly as it’s been doing this weekend.I want to be with my wife and and helping her out during the day…

The Dunnocks have made their nest in the big fat fir tree beside the pond at the top of the garden this year and they now have the four chicks shown in the above picture. I was doing jobs quite close to the nest-site for most of the afternoon, such as mowing the lawn and planting stuff in and around the pond, but probably because I’m a familiar sight to them, the parents took no notice of me whatsoever.It was later, when I was absolutely certain that both adult birds were foraging for food…

Having fledged from a nest in the wood at the end of the garden, this young Nuthatch was, along with a sibling, in and out of my garden for about three weeks in the summer of 2005. They spent much of their time searching for insects under the peeling bark of my children’s old rustic swing and they also discovered a taste for nibbed peanuts placed in a container on one of the bird-tables. Occasionally, they would also have a go at the whole peanuts in the feeders, but with less success.

….rises from the small river meandering its way through the valley about fifty metres below my bivouack.

I know that there are a lot of you out there who are totally fed up with Winter and can’t wait for Spring. I also know that many of you don’t or can’t get out and about as much as you’d like to either, so above and opposite are a handful of pictures to prove to you that, although still quite early in the year, things really are beginning to stir in the woodlands and the hedgerows and that, before you know it, the sun will be shining in bright blue skies and there’ll…

“Kim’s Knee-High”

For the price of a mealworm, “DT” the Blackbird allowed me to get close enough to him today to use my Ricoh camera!

I mention my uncle Chris several times on this website and he has a chapter devoted to him in “Slices”. He was an old-fashioned type gamekeeper working the Severn Valley throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. I spent huge amounts of time with him as a boy, soaking up all he was prepared to teach me about the countryside and its wildlife.

I’m assuming that this is the female Common Darter, but the females in particular of the various resident and migrant species of Darter are incredibly difficult to tell apart sometimes, even for the Dragonfly specialists! Interestingly I spotted a magnificent and seemingly tireless Brown Hawker plus a Hairy Hawker and a Gold-Ringed Dragonfly all within ten minutes of taking this photograph! Unfortunately however, I couldn’t get anywhere near any of them to get pictures.

The generally warmer, milder climate so familiar to the Southern coast of England seems to encourage local gardeners to try their hand at growing a huge variety of quite exotic-looking plant species.

This rather shabby-looking and frayed around the edges Peacock is the very first butterfly that I’ve seen so far in 2009. In fact, I saw it on the 21st February, two days ahead of my previous earliest sighting of 23rd February in 2008.The very first Butterflies to be seen in the year are nearly always the hibernators and, having “slept” through the Winter, they emerge in early Spring, usually at the first hint of a warmer, sunny day. I would guess that this particular specimen…

This is one of the two surviving fledgling youngsters that “Two-Tone” and his mate have successfully reared over the past few weeks. There were originally four eggs, but one failed to hatch and one of the fledglings was taken by a cat! The non-hatching egg problem seems to be fairly universal amongst many species of birds this Spring and is probably down to the unseasonally damp and chilly weather that keeps re-occurring. It could well be that adults are running a much greater risk…

Despite being a lover of all things carrion, this extremely common species of fly doesn’t actually lay its eggs in dead stuff. Instead, the female carries and hatches her eggs inside her own body and then gives live birth to her young. This species is also the reason why it’s not always a good idea to pick and eat wild Blackberries in September, but as I’ve talked about that elsewhere, I shan’t bother repeating myself here. Oh well, you know the old…

I’ve just read an article claiming that 200 million years ago, some species of fly were the size of a small rats….That’s about the size of the one above as it appears in the picture! Mmm….I guess in that case, it probably wouldn’t have been a good time to invent the windscreen!