30 Days Wild: Day 10 - Along for the rode

Tonight we've been on the hunt for woodcock and nightjar which involves a bit of a twist on the standard breeding bird survey, in that it's done at dusk rather than dawn.

No nightjar tonight; the habitat we were surveying is good in places but not extensive. A few woodcock "roding" towards the end of the survey though.

"Roding" basically describes the activity of the male woodcock patrolling along woodland edges and over scrubby areas where there may be female woodcock looking to mate. They perform distinctive squeaking and grunting calls as they do it in an effort to woo the ladies.

Maria scans the treeline for woodcock - listening out for their distinctive calls

Again no photo of the birds in question - woodcock are really tricky to photograph in flight, especially on a phone!

Anyway, must dash off, we'll be back up in a few hours to go and do a normal breeding bird survey at dawn.

30 Days Wild - Day 9: Caught short

After another day stuck indoors it was high time for some motorcycle therapy in the evening sunshine.

So off I went, accompanied by Parkinson Senior on his bike, to some of my favourite local hill-top roads for a gentle pootle around.

I find motorbikes make ideal mobile platforms for bird spotting and quite often find myself riding alongside swallows, swifts and even the occasional sparrowhawk on country roads.

I usually have Maria on the back as my expert bird spotter (the international signal for an interesting bird usually involving several jabs in the ribs followed by furious pointing) but not this time, I was on my own. I had to fit it in around all of the usual observations involved in manoeuvering 220kg of Japanese engineering (plus me) around these scenic country lanes.

But it seems I managed just fine, as I rose over the crest of a particularly quiet moorland road a short eared owl passed over right in front of me at just above head height. What a sight. By the time I'd performed a skillfully executed stop into a nearby gateway to get a closer look it was gone.

I've seen several of these in the winter at local sites but this was my first in the uplands where these fine birds of prey choose to breed in the warmer months.

No photo this time, so you'll just have to take my word for it!

30 Days Wild - Day 8: Back for more?

Being stuck in the office on such a sunny day is generally quite depressing, until I heard a familiar rustle above the window.....

It seems our resident starlings - who have already fledged one brood this year - are back for a second go in our 1970's roofline.

 Every time I look at our increasingly shabby looking wooden fascias and contemplate spending at least two days at the top of a ladder re-painting them, the uPVC fascia leaflet on the doormat does seem very tempting. But then I think about our visiting feathered friends and decide that a bit of leg ache is a small price to pay for the in-office entertainment they provide, on what would otherwise be a rather dreary day of paperwork. The woodwork stays!

30 Days Wild - Day 7: A flying visit

After our long and arduous journey on Friday, followed by our dormouse packed Saturday, we were in need of a relaxing stop on our way back up north today.

We settled on Shuttleworth, near Bedford. Home not only to a recently restored Victorian "Swiss Garden" but even more importantly (according to Gareth anyway) the best collection of vintage aircraft in the UK, if not the world! Even better than that, today was an airshow day so we could even see them flying.

You might think that an airshow isn't particularly "wild" in the natural sense - but you'd be wrong. Lots of the planes on show today had wild names; "Tiger Moth", "Martlet", Comper "Swift", Cirrus "Moth", Hawker "Cygnet"and "Hind", Sopwith "Pup" and "Camel", "Chipmunk", Piper Super"cub", the Mew "Gull" and Gareth's favourite of the day the Fieseler "Storch" (German for Stork!?)

The Fieseler Storch - Capable of incredibly short take-off and landings, seemingly able to hang in the air. A very apt name indeed!

Just to make sure we'd covered true wildness today we did spend some time in the Swiss Garden with the local wildlife, particularly the resident peacocks and watching dozens of bees busy pollinating these Nepeta.

So not all plane spotting then....

 

30 Days Wild - Day 6: Can we handle it?

So what did we drive 9 hours across the country for yesterday?

Dormice of course!

We spent today on a "dormouse handling and survey techniques" course at Wildwood in Kent.

They have a fantastic collection of native animals and have captive breeding programs for several of them including the hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius). This gives the perfect opportunity for trainees to practice dormouse handling techniques, especially us northerners who are beyond the present natural range of this endangered woodland rodent.

We've done plenty of nut searches and nest tube surveys for this species as part of our work in the past but have only actually seen a handful of dormice (and not all at once!), so we hoped to get some new skills and refresh some of our old ones.

Our tutor for the day was Hazel Ryan, Senior Conservation Officer at Wildwood, who took us through the classroom theory in the morning followed by a whole afternoon in the dormouse pens where we practiced safely checking boxes, removing, handling, sexing, weighing and returning dormice.

Into the bag and ready to be weighed. It is actually awake - it just decided to blink for the photo!

What amazing animals and a really interesting day. We hope to get to grips with this species more often in the future!

30 Days Wild: Day 5 On the road again

We spent nearly all of today on the road, paying particular attention to junctions 24-25 of the M25 in a 2 hour traffic jam!

As a result the best we could do for today's wild encounters were a particularly plucky magpie;

 And this rather impressive looking specimen.

Our initial thoughts were some kind of coastal/dune species but we think it might be a species of poppy? We weren't expecting to be botanising on this trip but will look it up when we get home.

We promise a much more exciting  blog post (to us anyway) tomorrow......

30 Days Wild - Day 4 Going off the rails

With a couple of hours between bat surveys this afternoon we decided to get some exercise (as well as some much needed vitamin D!) on a bike ride along the transpennine trail from Oxspring to Dunford Bridge.

Its a steadily rising 12km ride along part of the former Woodhead Line, turning around for the return leg at the entrance to the Woodhead tunnel, which now only carries high voltage electric cables, not trains, under the Pennines to Manchester.

There are lots of opportunities to experience nature along the route as it passes from town into pasture and eventually heather moorland. The local volunteers do a great job of maintaining the habitats along the trail too with some nice wildflower areas developing.

As I was busy cycling I didn't actually get any photos during the ride, but I did get this one in the garden at home whilst mowing the lawn by the pond;

When we built the pond about 4 years ago I put that rock there, hoping that one day I'd get a photo of a frog sat on it - and there it is!