30 Wednesday Oct 2019
It’s that time of year when the Grey squirrels prepare for the colder months both by stashing away as many non-perishable titbits of food as they can and by eating fit to burst, fattening themselves up to help cope with the cold months of winter. If only we could all use that excuse!
19 Thursday Sep 2019
It’s been a while since I’ve walked past the dipping pond at Cosmeston but I’m glad I did today as one of the resident water voles made an appearance.
It was quite well concealed amongst the reeds at the side of the pond – that brown fur really helps them to blend in.
In the past I’ve only seen them eating lily pads but today this little chap was munching on reed stems.
Eventually, it noticed me standing on the boardwalk but didn’t seem too bothered and carried on eating.
But it sure freaked out when one of the juvenile Moorhens came by to say hello!
03 Wednesday Apr 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, animals, mammal, nature
Today’s cute young things are not birds but mammals, a pair of cute little bunnies who were checking out the world from the safety of the entrance to their burrow, a very wise thing to do as a lot of dogs are exercised in this field.
23 Saturday Mar 2019
Before our visit to the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Rye Harbour on 11 March, I’d only ever seen Hares at a distance, a long distance, so, although we saw lots of wonderful birds during our 8-mile exploration of the reserve that day, the highlight for me was getting reasonably close views of several Hares.
Admittedly, most of those views were of their rear ends as they skedaddled but, even then, we could see how big their ears and back legs were. And, although the photo below was also taken at quite a distance and has had to be heavily cropped, I do like how it shows the comparison between the Rabbit and the Hare.
And, luckily, very luckily, this one Hare decided to sit still for longer than the previous ones – at least, it sat still for about 30 seconds, which was just enough to get one decent photo. What magnificent creatures they are!
p.s. If you’ve not yet read Marianne Taylor’s wonderful book The Way of the Hare (Bloomsbury, London, 2017), you really should. It’s a treat!
17 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, animals, mammal, nature
Today has been another fabulous day out with my friends from the Glamorgan Bird Club, enjoying the magnificent Welsh countryside and marvelling at all its amazing birds – and I’ll report on that in tomorrow’s blog post – but, for me, the most exciting thing today was these prints in the mud under a bridge near Dryslwyn. I think these are the closest I’ve yet been to a live Otter!
15 Friday Feb 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, animals, nature, spring
Under blue skies and glorious sunshine, I returned to Barry for another long exploratory meander today so I expected this blog post to contain one of the many photos I took of water lapping on sand, aerobatic gulls soaring overhead, seaweed floating in and out on the waves, birds feeding amongst the reeds and rivulets in the Old Harbour …. But then I happened to glance over a railing into someone’s allotment and saw this gorgeous creature basking in the warm afternoon sun. And all thoughts of a marine theme vanished in a blink of a sleepy fox’s eye.
01 Tuesday Jan 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, animals, mammal, nature
To kickstart my birding list for the new year, I walked 8+ miles around Cardiff Bay, logging all the different bird species I could find (they’ll appear on my Birding 2019 page as soon as I finish editing my photos). With mostly blue skies and an abundance of lovely birds, it was a super walk but the highlight wasn’t the birds – it was spotting and then watching these two beautiful foxes lolling about in the grass, enjoying the winter sunshine. Such magnificent creatures!
15 Sunday Jul 2018
Well, the truth is Ratty probably never went away. Water voles might disappear from sight during the cold months of winter but they don’t actually hibernate – they simply burrow deeper underground to keep warm, and they spend a lot of time sleeping, which means they don’t need to snack too often from the larder they stock in autumn, full of bulbs, roots and tubers. They also bung up the entrance to their burrows with a mix of vegetation and mud, which helps keep the heat inside.
Come the Spring, they emerge and spend more time out and about, though it’s only in the past month or so that I’ve seen them again at Cosmeston. That may just be the timing of my visits, though the few I’ve seen have also seemed a bit less confident about being out and about than last year’s Water voles, possibly because some idiot people have let their dogs jump into the dipping pond, an area where they are obviously forbidden.
It’s probably impossible to tell how many of last year’s release of 100 Water voles have survived the winter but another 40-odd were released a few weeks back to supplement the local population.
People love to watch them, young and old alike, so let’s hope we can all enjoy them chewing away at the vegetation for the days, weeks, months to come.
19 Monday Feb 2018
“Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?”
“Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens.”
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
27 Wednesday Sep 2017
If you don’t like rats, look away now!
While I realise that a blog about rats might not appeal to everyone, I rarely get to see or write about mammals so, when these two rats came brazenly sniffing around for the seeds I was feeding to the birds at Cosmeston, I couldn’t resist taking photos. And once I have photos, a blog shall surely follow.
These are Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), immigrants from central Asia that arrived in Britain around 1720. Of course, I don’t mean these two individuals arrived in 1720 – rats usually only live about a year in the wild – but their ancestors were sea-going rodents that just loved to sail the oceans wide and jumped ship wherever they docked. Nowadays, rats are more settled, and they’ll live almost anywhere – houses, gardens, parks, farmlands and farm buildings – you name it, there’s probably a rat in it somewhere.
They particularly like cereals – so, my bird seed would’ve gone down a treat – but they’ll eat pretty much anything, from small birds and their eggs to molluscs and food scraps. If you’re someone who hates these much-maligned creatures, remember that they too play an important part in the food chain, in particular as food for the owls and foxes that everyone loves.
