01 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in birds
It looked nothing like you would expect a Robin to look – where’s the famous red breast? But as soon as this little fledgling began to hop along the lane in front of me I knew it was a young Robin from the way it moved, and bobbed, and turned its head. It’s the jizz, as we birders say.
27 Thursday Jun 2024
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Coot, Coot chicks, Mallard, Mallard ducklings, Tufted ducklings
As well as the Red-eyed damselflies I wrote about yesterday, my wander around Cardiff’s inner city canals also produced sightings of some delightful young birds and I had a wonderful time watching their antics, and their interactions with each other and their parents.
Three tiny Coot chicks were having a little swim with their doting parents. The chicks looked very young, were still relying on their parents to feed them, and, after about 15 minutes, the parents took their little family back to the nearby nest to preen and rest.
There were also two broods of Mallards, both with their mothers supervising them as they whizzed along the canals, nibbling at the weed, wobbling across lily pads. One mother Mallard had a brood of four ducklings, the other just one surviving chick.
22 Saturday Jun 2024
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Canada geese, Canada goose goslings, Cardiff Bay birding, Lesser black-backed gull, Lesser black-backed gull chicks, Oystercatcher, Oystercatcher chick
For the first time in ages I walked a circuit of Cardiff Bay on Tuesday – I usually avoid the place in the summer as there are too many people for my liking, but I’d heard there were some chicks to be seen so I went looking. These are they …
Canada goose (above and below): there were two broods of goslings, one of five and one of six, with their parents and a flock of 20-plus adult geese (as if they were all keeping an eye on the children) in one of the now-landlocked old docks. They’ll be stuck there until they learn to fly but I’ve heard people have been feeding them (perhaps that’s also why so many adults are present) so hopefully they’ll all develop to maturity.
Lesser black-backed gull: one chick was still on the dolphin where their nest must have been (there is no other way the chick could have got there), squawking almost repeatedly at an adult gull that was perched higher up the dolphin structure. The other chick had either fallen or jumped from the dolphin and was nearby, at the water’s edge, washing and preening.
Oystercatcher: this was the main reason for my walk and definitely the highlight. A pair of Oystercatchers has been returning to the same spot, on another of the dolphin structures, for several years, to breed but they have always failed to raise a chick to adulthood. It is a very odd location for their nest – no other Oystercatchers breed locally so I wonder if this is where one of them was originally hatched. So far, this year’s breeding attempt is going well so let’s hope their good luck continues.
13 Thursday Jun 2024
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, breeding Lesser black-backed gulls, British birds, Lesser black-backed gull chicks, Lesser blacked gull, urban gulls
A pair of Lesser black-backed gulls is once again attempting to raise a family amongst the chimney pots of a house visible from the back of my flat.
Sadly, this process involves many hazards, one of which being the fact that, once they become more active, the chicks can easily fall from their precarious home. And that’s exactly what has happened to one of the local chicks. As I watched, and in spite of the slippery nature of the slate roofing tiles, it managed to climb up to the roof ridge but, of course, there was no way it could return to the nest. The parent gulls were very concerned and made a lot of noise when they discovered what had happened but, to be honest, that only made things worse as the little chick tried to reach them along the ridge but kept constantly slipping down the roof. I don’t know what eventually happened to the wee thing but I presume it fell off the roof and died.
The good news is that there is still one chick in the nest, and the parents are, so far, taking good care of it. Whether or not it survives to adulthood remains to be seen. Fingers crossed!
05 Wednesday Jun 2024
Posted in birds
I heard them before I saw their nest box, that loud insistent cheeping of hungry baby birds. In this case, they were hungry noisy Blue tit babies that were causing their parents to fly themselves ragged, hunting through trees and bushes for food for their young.
03 Monday Jun 2024
Tags
birding, birdwatching, Box tree moth caterpillars, Box tree moth larvae, Box tree moth pupa, British birds, jackdaw, Jackdaw eating Box tree moth larva
In this post I am pleased to bring some good news to those of you who grow Box trees, bushes and hedges (Buxus species) in your gardens.
Though many Box plants are being ravaged by the voracious larvae of the Box tree moth (Box tree moth cats, 2 May), it seems the local Jackdaws have developed a taste for the larvae – and pupae, I think, judging by what the Jackdaw in my photo below is eating. A local moth expert explained recently on Twitter/X that ‘the larvae are known to contain alkaloid toxins, so birds generally seem to avoid them.’ Presumably some birds are able to tolerate the toxins, which is good news for all you Box growers.
31 Friday May 2024
Posted in birds
Coots usually sit so tightly on their nests that you can’t see their eggs but I just happened to pass this one when s/he was standing up for a stretch and to move the eggs around.
By the time I got my camera out, the bird was almost sitting down again but I was able to count the eight (!) eggs, and to get a closer look at them. Now to watch out for the chicks emerging.
18 Saturday May 2024
Posted in birds
I’ve been watching this pair of Mute swans from the time they first started building their nest, in exactly the same spot as last year, and I spotted a couple of tiny fluffy heads about a week ago. When I passed the location today, mum, dad and their eight gorgeous cygnets were out for a swim around their river inlet.
The word cute is much overused when it comes to baby birds, but these cygnets really were the epitome of cute, preening and tidying their baby feathers, diving and splashing about enthusiastically.
16 Thursday May 2024
Posted in birds
As I was recently reminded by reading another blogger’s post, those of us who love birds each have our own ways of remembering their songs and calls. Every year, whenever I hear my first Common whitethroat, I immediately think ‘itchy and scratchy’. This is nothing to do with the animated television series, at least not in the sense of any comparison of sounds; rather it’s that the whitethroat’s song sounds very scratchy to me and my mind jumps to the word association of itchy with scratchy. The Common whitethroat pictured below was belting out his scratchy song with gusto and enthusiasm in his efforts to attract a mate.
08 Wednesday May 2024
Posted in birds
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We don’t often see Red kites in my part of coastal south Wales so you can probably imagine my delight yesterday to see four gliding overhead while I was exploring Lavernock Nature Reserve. They gradually circled higher, taking advantage of the warm weather thermals, before slowly drifting over the coastal fields towards Penarth and Cardiff. What a treat!
earthstar 
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