Birds in the garden

[Greta]

crows1.jpg (120.41 KiB) Viewed 2006 times

Crows.

[Greta]

magpie1.jpg (123.16 KiB) Viewed 2006 times

Magpie.
This tree is at the end of the garden, not quite in it as far as I can tell.

[Henrietta]

I heard that distinctive noise of a "Mute" swan yesterday, looked up and saw a lone swan flying right over my garden. Not that unusual you might think as I have swans in parks about a mile either side of me and the harbour only half a mile as the crow flies but it is still pretty unusual to see one directly over my garden.

[Greta]

Yes, I love these fly pasts. Why can't they do a circle and come past again, I wonder? Even ducks are exciting - I've certainly never seen a swan over here.

[Scally]

Swans, ducks and geese are fairly frequent over-flyers here, as I live in a valley with lots of small and medium sized ponds, lochs and a canal, so the water birds like to move around between them. Another common over-flyer are the local buzzards: they have a very distinctive and quite high pitched call, and are flying quite high, so you often hear them before you see them. The corvids are around a lot: mostly crows and magpies in the garden digging up the lawn for grubs and larvae, but the very occasional starling and jay. I know starlings are very common elsewhere, but we don't get them much here, for no particular reason. The rarest and most amazing birds we see here are perhaps the waxwings: winter visitors from Scandinavia, coming over to feast on rowan berries - I have a tree in the garden. I've seen them twice, but it is a dark and gloomy time of year and good photos are really hard to take: this are my best so far, and I'm hoping to do a lot better, it's just pot luck if you see them or not:

waxwing

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waxwings flock

waxwing12 012.JPG (1.61 MiB) Viewed 1976 times

[Scally]

Speaking of buzzards, heres a pair that I heard calling from my open patio doors just now: soaring above and mewing like cats:

Buzzards overhead!

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[Scally]

Actually I'll deviate into butterflies for today's post, all from the garden, but not at the same time: hope it isn't too off-topic, but its a great time of year to spot them:

Orange tip

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Peacock

peacock1.JPG (466.07 KiB) Viewed 1959 times

Small white

smallwhite239.JPG (5.09 MiB) Viewed 1959 times

[Violet]

Scally - lovely butterfly pictures. I haven't seen many butterflies in our garden this summer although lots of bees which I love to see.

[MrsAverage]

Had the first seasonal fly past of Canada Geese last night, squadrons and squadrons of them. Never seen so many at once before.
Sat there with camera at the ready tonight, and not a single one

[Scally]

There'll be another chance! Wild Geese are amazing aren't they? In October I try to visit Loch Leven RSPB nature reserve where the pick-footed geese congregate en-masse, they are truly awesome, one of natures finest spectacles. We get them overhead here too, but you need to be lucky or very quick to capture them in passage.