Long-tailed tit collecting nest material

 Watched this little long-tailed tit collecting nest material - lichen and spiders' webs - in a patch of brambles beside the disused railway line at Brancepeth, County Durham.

Long-tailed tits

 Sometimes the best wildlife watching opportunities come from just standing still and waiting. Every day, someone leaves a handful of bird seed on a rock beside one of my favourite walks in the Deerness valley, then walks on. After they'd gone I stood and watched for a while and this flock of long-tailed tits arrived, totally oblivious to my presence.

Blue tits and long-tailed tits feeding on aphids

 Blue tits and long-tailed tits often seem hyperactive, constantly searching for food. A moth larva would be a good meal, but they also eat much smaller prey, picking off aphids that infest plants. The blue tit below was eating aphids from the stalks of a hogweed umbel. The long-tailed tits, pictured futher down this post, were feeding on the woolly aphids that cover the trunk and stem of a crab apple tree in our garden.

Individually, tiny morsels of food, but since the aphids feed on plant sap, rich in sugars, they must provide a significant energy reward.

Backstone Bank wood

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about this fledgling tawny owl that we found comfortably ensconced in the crevice formed by the roots of an oak tree in Backstone Bank woods in Weardale. 

Here it is on the day that we found it .....

.... and here it is a few days later, although this might not be the same bird; it most likely had siblings, which the parents had distributed around the wood and would come back to feed at dusk.

Backstone bank is an ancient woodland SSSI and part of the forest that once clothed Weardale. It's a lovely sessile oak wood on acid soil, covering the hillside on the eastern edge of Tunstall reservoir.It's a popular spot for birders, not least because ....

...pied flycatchers nest there. Above, a male, below, .....

..... his consort, who is nesting ....

... in this nest box.

While we sat and watched this long-tailed tit caught caterpillars ...

... and this robin paid us a visit.

The woodland has lots of fallen wood that is left to decay, gradually sinking under a blanket of moss and woodland wild flowers.

There are some nice stands of wood horsetail and lots of ...

... bilberry.

Yellow pimpernel, an indicator species of ancient woodland, is plentiful here.

The trees are mainly sessile oak, with ash, hazel holly and birch and some scattered bird cherry and rowan.

All in all, a lovely place for a tawny owl to raise a family.

Long-tailed tits

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is all about this flock of long-tailed tits, that suddenly appeared around me on a very cold winter afternoon - and brightened up my day.

It was there when I pressed the shutter release ......

The most useful photographic advice I ever received was "if you want people to believe you're a competent photographer, never show anyone your failures". That's meant dumping well over 99% of my photographs, which is much easier and cheaper to do in these days of digital photography, when they disappear into the ether with the click of a button, at no cost. 

But digital photography also delivers its own special kind of failures, thanks to the phenomenon of shutter-lag - that interval between pressing the shutter release and the sensor capturing the image. So I've got plenty of pictures like those below, which looked really good when I composed them and pressed the shutter....

This long-tailed tit was sitting perfectly on that twig in the foreground, looking at me over its shoulder as I pressed the shutter release  ..... it must have taken off like a rocket.

In those last few milliseconds, this pigeon decided that it didn't want any publicity. Its feet came out well, though ...

.... and this guillemot was overcome with shyness at the last moment too....

River Wear, Wolsingham

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a walk along the River Wear at Wolsingham in Weardale. Even though the riverbank woods look bare at this time of year there's always plenty to see along this stretch of river .....

 ... like the exquisite filigree of cypress-leaved feather moss Thuidium tamariscinum. Many woodland mosses make a lot of fresh new growth during mild spells in winter, when more light can reach them through the leafless branches.

There are often some fine fungi along here too on all the decaying wood - like these velvet shanks.

When we had prolonged heavy rain in Weardale a couple of weeks ago and the river rose very rapidly and flooded its banks. It scoured away all the dead leaves but the dead sweet cicely flower stems - which are chest-high here in summer and smell of aniseed - remained rooted but were flattened by the water, leaving a contour map on he ground of the path of the current as it had swept around the tree trunks.

Above the high water mark of the flood there was still a thick layer of autumn's decaying leaves ...

...... with bluebell leaves already spearing through.

Closer to the river the retreating water had deposited a thick layer of silt, but the buried snowdrops that grow in profusion here early in the year had already forced there way up to the sunlight and started to bloom.

When the water level falls if leaves behind these dark, temporary pools amongst the alders on the edge of the river. Sometimes there are fish trapped and the local herons are well aware of this - there are always heron footprints around the edges. In the spring toads breed in the pools and then it's a race against time for the tadpoles to develop before the pools dry up.

This stretch of river always has resident dippers and at this time of year they sing a lot, establishing their territory. It's amazing how you can always hear their song above the sound of the river - its pitch must have evolved to penetrate the background noise of the water rushing over a stony riverbed.

The riverside woodlands are constantly raided by parties of long-tailed tits .....

nuthatches ......

..... and treecreepers, all looking for insects in tree bark crevices, while ........

...... this heron, evidently out of luck in the riverside pools, flapped away to try its luck on earthworms in the fields above the river.