Local patch lockdown 2: more birds

The end of another week of coronavirus lockdown early morning exercise walks, and still seeing new birds very close to home.

The best sighting was this pair of partridges - red-listed birds. They look like they are nesting in the hedge on the edge of a pasture (that was part of an opencast coal mine 25 years ago)

This pair of magpies are always in a pasture on part of a small holding

Surprised to see this reed bunting in a roadside hedge. It was about a mile from a large pond and reed bed, created as mitigation for the coal mining, where it might be nesting.

There are small rookeries nearby, so they are always searching for small soil animals in the pastures

Carrion crow repairing an old nest in an ash tree

Greeted every morning by the song of chaffinches

Coal tits are always in the trees close to small larch and pine plantations, which were established after opencast coal mining ended here. 

Curlew in a sheep pasture. Listening to their call is a lovely way to begin the day.

Lapwing aerial courtship displays are over now. Most will have nests with eggs.

Soon after sunrise on sunny mornings the air is always full of the song of skylarks, but they also sing on the ground.

Pied wagtail on a farmyard muck heap - a profitable feeding site for a bird that hunts flies

The glorious sound of a song thrush

And the song of a wren - a lot of noise for such a small bird 

Vandal identified

This year the Korean fir Abies koreana in our garden has produced its best cone crop ever. They usually stay on the tree well into winter but over the last week they've begun to disintegrate, with more being reduced every day to a spiky spindle. I thought it might be the dry autumn that was causing the cones' premature destruction but this morning I discovered the real cause..... 

.... and this is the culprit. I watched for half an hour while it made made repeated visits, pulling the cones apart.

This is what it was after - the seeds, which have purple papery wings. There are two seeds attached to each of those fan-shaped woody cone scales.

The bird is totally obsessed with plundering the food store that it has discovered - so much so that it allows us to approach quite closely to watch. At the current rate it will have trashed all the cones within about a week.

Korean fir is an ideal specimen conifer for a small garden, producing a reliable cone crop when just a few years old. Ours is growing in a very large pot and doubles up as a Christmas tree. The attractive cones are held upright on the branches and are purple when they first develop, ripening to brown and topped with very fragrant resin. And, as it turns out, excellent food for coal tits and if brings them into the garden, that's a plus.

Early Spring in Weardale

For once we managed to get out while there was still dew on the grass and headed up Weardale to St. John's Chapel and Chapel Fell.

Alchemists are said to have believed that the little silvery droplets of water that are secreted around the edge of lady's mantle leaves overnight had magical properties and were an essential ingredient in potions for turning base metals into silver. The Latin generic name for lady's mantle - Alchemilla - means 'little alchemist'.

 

We arrived just as this spider had finished spinning a new web, ready to snare flies warmed into life by the early morning sun. The owner of the web is highlighted by the sun on the twig on the right (double-click for larger image).

When the spider had finished the web it sat on its twig and stretched out a single leg that gripped a fine thread that runs right to the centre of the web (double-click to see this - you can see the spider's leg sticking out at right-angles to the twig, highlighted by the sun). When it catches a fly the vibrations will be transmitted along that signal thread and the spider will race out to impale it with its fangs.

With spiders' webs around it's safest to travel at ground level, like this ground beetle making its way over a carpet of last-year's larch needles.

Up on Chapel Fell some lapwings were already sitting on nests, ever-vigilant for marauding crows.

This coal tit had found a crevice in a stone wall that was just large enough to squeeze through ....

... and made regular trips back-and-forth with moss for lining its nest.
 

Nest sites don't come much more secure than this.

Sallow flowers produce nectar that attracts a wide range of insects, including this pair of peacock butterflies.

Although last winter was the most severe in recent memory, but I can't remember a spring when I've seen so many peacock butterflies. They seem to have hibernated very successfully around here.

This little insect is a water cricket Velia caprai, scooting across the surface film in a pool in one of the pastures in the valley.

Up on the fell tops the sounds of the day were the calls of lapwings and curlews, the drumming of snipe and the sound of sheep bleeting - especially when it was feeding time.

Down in the valley bottom it's lambing time - a proud mother with twin lambs.

It's been the warmest day of the year so far - dawn-to-dusk sunshine - perfect weather for sitting on the grass and having a doze in the afternoon heat.