Great Spotted Woodpecker

We had a visitor in the garden today.

A female Great Spotted Woodpecker was tucking into the peanuts on the bird feeder (hidden behind the seed feeder).

It stayed for several minutes, giving me time to get the camera ready.

At the same time, the Green Woodpecker mentioned in our previous blog was tucking into ants on the lawn for its Christmas feast.

Posted on Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 22:44
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Autumn had been and gone

It doesn’t seem long since the tree outside the front of our house was covered in golden brown autumn leaves, shining in the sunshine.

Even then the tree to the left had already lost all of its leaves.

Since then the autumn winds and rains have stripped the tree of all its leaves.

Now they both stand bare and the sunshine has a much more winter feel about it, casting longer shadows from lower in the sky.

I wonder how long it will be before I can take the same photo with snow on the branches.

As I look out of the window now I can see one magpie, two blackbirds, one starling and several sparrows just sitting there in the cold.

Perhaps they are sleeping off the large feast they’ve had from the feeders in our back garden.

Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 10:49
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The lawnpecker is back

The lawnpecker is back - at least that’s what we call him.

It’s a sign that autumn is arriving when we see the Green Woodpecker on the lawn.  One of their favourite foods is ants, and our lawn has plenty of them.

The male is always more adventurous and he appears in the autumn, and can be seen frequently through the autumn and winter until the warm weather arrives next year.

The female is much more timid and we only see her when the weather is very bad and her desire for food overcomes her fear.  We know winter has really arrived when we see them both on the lawn.

They aim for the areas where there are ants nests under the lawn and poke their beaks repeatedly down to get the ants.  They can be in just one spot for over 10 minutes, occasionally looking up to check for danger - so they must be really stuffing themselves with ants.

Posted on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 14:21
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Not so sunny today

Not quite so sunny today but looking out of the kitchen window at breakfast time there was a squirrel on the bird table.

And I was pleased to see both of the blackbirds still rushing in and out of the honeysuckle on our garden back fence with food in their beaks to feed their young.  A magpie was taking a strong interest in them yesterday but it doesn’t seem to have put them off.

And then the post lady brought the latest version of our narrow boat plans from our preferred builder.  They look a great improvement and we’re getting close to what we want.  There were four pages of helpful notes with suggestions for further improvements.

Now we need to spend a little time looking through the plans and continuing to refine the design.

Posted on Saturday, May 6, 2006 at 14:53
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