1st January 2023
The New Year brought with it the Sparrowhawk. It spent an exceptionally long time perched in the tree by the bird feeders. Most of the time was spent preening. Needless to say, there were no songbirds in the vicinity. I took several (hundreds) of photographs, which I have trimmed down to this lucky sequence of it emptying out our songbirds in one avian excretion.
2nd February 2023
Rosemary spotted a Grey Heron near the field pond. I rushed out to take a photograph. I was far from it, and it was standing down the slope to the pond, so little of the Heron was in sight. I grabbed a few frames from about100 meters away, and then walked towards it. Of course, it flew off.
I looked at the frames I took, not technically good, but you could see it was eating a frog or toad. So worth keeping them. I think it was a Toad, and so does Rosemary.
2nd January 2023
The wildlife camera threw up an interesting find. In between the rabbits, muntjac deer and the foxes, was an Otter. We have seen it only once. Maybe it was exploring the pond. There are several ponds in the immediate vicinity, many with fish. Our pond dries out in the Summer so not suitable for fish. Anyway, nice to see it, a change from Rabbits and Foxes.
Back in the late spring, early summer of 2022, we had a skulk of foxes in the field bringing up four fox cubs. We believe it was two vixens, with a couple of cubs each. Normally we would see two cubs at a time, but on occasion another two cubs would come from the other side of the mound and join in with the play. One set of cubs disappeared during the summer. We assume (hope) they moved on somewhere else. The cubs are now fully grown, and we have seen them since this video was put together.
You can watch the short edition, a little over 5 minutes, or the long two and a quarter hour video. The longer video also stars Badger, Muntjac deer, Squirrels, rabbits, Great spotted woodpecker and various other birds.
Five minutes and 52 seconds showing the highlights of the cubs.
Two hours and 19 minutes. The full monty.
11th December 2022
We have had a dry and very cold few days in the United Kingdom. The temperature in Kingswood dropped to -11C and has been below freezing all night and day. I haven’t felt anything as cold as this since we first moved here in the late 1980s. Despite this cold patch, the UK average temperature for 2022 averaged more than 10C, the first time ever it has topped 10C. The cold weather went on until the 18th, but of course warmed up for Christmas.
I grabbed a few pictures of the frost patterns on cobwebs and vegetation using my mobile phone.
