Cockatiel news!

It's been a very busy summer, both in the woods and getting used to the new job. I'll post some pics from the woods soon, but there's some important sad and good news to post first.

Sadly our cockatiel Pete, who lived with us for 16 years, died a few weeks ago. We miss him lots, and have made a memorial video of him here:

We thought we'd try not having a pet for a while - we lasted just two weeks before deciding to look for some new birds... and today they arrived, so here's a short welcome to Floyd and Dusty!

They're brothers (the breeder assures they are males), with a mixed Pied and Pearl heritage. They're a bit tired in this video, having just put up with a long drive, but they settled in very quickly. We're looking forward to getting some proper time with them out of the cage tomorrow. We intend for them to be out of the cage all day eventually, but initially we'll only have them out while we're around, until we're sure we can trust them. Their parents sadly plucked their feathers out at 11 days old, so they've been hand reared since then, and it really does show in their behaviour - though in this video they're still a bit nervous as they only met us a few hours earlier. They don't have flight feathers yet, because of being plucked, but they should grow some during their next moult - and Dusty in fact has a few flight feathers already growing, and can manage a short hop through the air.

More videos to come soon...

Mike

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Great Tits nesting in an iron pipe!

Birds nest in the strangest places... Check this video out, showing a Great Tit going to feed its chicks inside an iron pipe we left leaning against our log store in the woods:

Here's a few still pictures too, showing the parent waiting near the nest to check the nearby humans aren't a threat:

About to enter the nest, with a beak full of food:

And finally, coming back out, ready to go and collect more food:

Nice to see them doing well, when you're near the pipe you can hear the chicks chirping.

Mike

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Stormy seas at Rye Harbour

We wandered down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve recently, to see how the repairs were getting on after the storm surge in early Dec 2013 - we were pleased to see that after just a couple of weeks it was all back in place:

Given how it looked earlier, that's very impressive!

Mind you, given that the materials they've repaired it with are the same as those washed away, it's only a matter of time before it happens again I guess... As if to underline this point, the sea looked pretty ferocious for the English Channel:

Not that these little Turnstones were complaining - they were dodging the waves to look for food that might be washed up:

The beach had certainly shifted during the storm - there was a new 8-foot depression in the shingle which hadn't been there before...

I hope it's a long time before we get another flood like that, but with sea levels creeping up a few mm per year, and extreme weather becoming ever more common, it might come again sooner than we'd like...

Mike

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Greater Spotted Woodpeckers feeding their chicks

Check out this video of Greater Spotted Woodpeckers feeding their chicks in our woodland! We had heard the woodpecker hollowing out a nest in this tree some weeks ago, but hadn't seen where it was. This weekend I was in the woods preparing logs for next winter, when I heard the chicks, from about 40m away as they were making so much noise as they were being fed! You'll be able to hear them in the video. Photos follow after the video...

Here's a woodpecker approaching the nest:

And here's one of them peeking out of the nest to check it's safe to leave:

Here's a close-up of the nest hole, taken with flash to illuminate some of the interior. It's on the underside of a branch and then turns a corner, so you can't see the chicks. Apparently woodpeckers normally drill sideways into a trunk and then downwards, but I guess this pair fancied a change!

Here's the logs I was processing for the woodburner ready for next winter:

I went home with a nice trailer load!

Mike

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Turnstones at Rye Harbour beach

Well, I'd never heard of a bird called a Turnstone before, but apparently that's what we were watching on the beach this evening at Rye Harbour. And funnily enough, we did see some turning stuff over to look for food!

They did spend quite a bit of time just sitting though, as it was exceptionally windy! You can see the sand being driven by the wind in these photos...

Nice evening to be by the sea though!

Mike

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New Year sunset 2013

After the seemingly endless rain of 2012, it was great for the first day of 2013 to be wall-to-wall sunshine! We went for a walk down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve at sunset and got a few pics on the walk to the sea...

We also made it to the wood briefly, just one photo from there, but an important one: a Blue Tit. We've not seen them in the woods at the feeder this winter, and were wondering why, but this one was over in Sweep Wood. Not sure if there are fewer of them, or if they are just in different parts of the wood for some reason...

Happy New Year!

Mike

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Nightingales return to our woodland!

Nightingales love coppice with a couple of years' growth, as it gives the thick, bushy foliage they like for nesting. They'd not been seen for some years in our woods, so we were delighted to see one in Sweep Wood yesterday, in an area we coppiced just voer two years ago! Here's a video of it singing - you can't see it, but at least you can hear its song.

Looking down the path from the top of the hill there is really great right now:

Mike

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Cockatiel videos

Tracy's been having great fun with hew new camera (a Canon SX220), here's some videos of our pet cockatiels up to their daily mischief...

She's looking forward to using it in the woods soon!

Mike

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No sign of batman...

But we do have Robin, and this week he posed for some action shots!
Some of them have a bit of blurring, even at a shutter speed of 1/640, ISO800 and not much zoom - I'll try again on a sunnier day for more, but here's the pics I have for now:
I also got several where he was about to leap into flight, but the noise of the camera shutter made him pause:
After all that hard work, he wanted something in return.
and he got it, of course:
Mike

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Our friend Robin...

Robin came to help this week. He thought he'd try using the maul to help us split logs, but he found his feet weren't big enough to grip the handle...
So he though he'd pose for some photos instead.
He's really enjoying having us here, as we're disturbing lots of bugs that he's eating. A moth flew out of a branch Tracy moved and Robin had that within two seconds, and under one of the log racks he found a worm to eat too! He gave us a few good songs too. We like having him around :-)

Mike

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