30 Days Wild & a Patch Update

30 Days Wild started on the 1st June, a campaign to encourage people to do something wild even for just a few minutes each day. Not too difficult to do a little something each day for me, every day first thing I sit with a cuppa watching the birds in the garden for the Garden Birdwatch and for pure enjoyment! I Birdtrack my walk to work each morning and every evening sit with the best view of the garden in hope of seeing a Fox or a Hedgehog and if I check out of the patio doors sometimes a Pipistrelle bat. What i'm not so good at is regularly blogging about it but i'll try and post a little more over the month!

Onto a patch update, our Swifts were back over the house on the 8th May, a couple of days later than last year, although there was only 2 at first, we have 4 or 5 on a regular basis now, which is about right, we don't get many but a few is better than none! A couple of Swallows are back at the farm near work and this past couple of weeks a few House Martins have been around our street too.

The end of April saw Warblers passing through the garden, all Chiffchaff I think.

A few Black-headed Gulls are back around, usually in the centre of town and quite a few Herring Gulls fly over the house.

We have lots of juvenile Starlings taking over the garden, a couple of juvenile House Sparrows and one juvenile Robin but we only saw that a few times and then it disappeared. Our feeders are constantly being visited by Great and Blue Tits, the Blues especially are backwards and forwards right up until dusk. Only one visit from a Coal Tit in the past month though.

 

This one is not a great photo but it gives an idea of just how many Starlings we're getting at the moment!

Blue Tit

Other regular visitors include Blackbirds, Woodpigeons, Collared Dove, Dunnock, Goldfinch and a Magpie. Unfortunately one of our local Magpies got hit by a car last week whilst being chased by another, beyond help i'm afraid.

Goldfinch

Blackbird

Robin

Squirrels are still visiting often and we have mice coming to the window feeder, there are slight differences between them so it's not just the same one. The Hedgehog had been coming in nightly but I haven't seen it since last week though that may be because it's getting darker later i'm going to bed before it comes in! We did have a funny moment a couple of weeks back where a Fox got spooked by the Hedgehog and it jumped half way down the garden!

We've also had a few moths in the garden, Brimstones nearly every evening, I managed to get a slightly blurry photo as it rested on the ivy. Also a beautiful Cinnabar moth, possibly from one of the caterpillars we had on the Ragwort last year.

Cinnabar Moth

Brimstone Moth

Down in the woods the Blue and Great Tits have fledged lots of youngsters, their chirping follows you around, a good year for them. A Blackcap pair were nesting but they seem to have disappeared unfortunately, i'm not sure what happened there. Woodpigeons are still nesting in quite a few of the trees and we have seen at least one juvenile Robin. There is a general lack of Chiffchaff in the woods this year, i've only heard one singing, last year there were several and 3 or 4 Blackcap too so a little disappointing. There are both Song and Mistle Thrush in the woods and we hear the Song Thrush singing often.

Robin

Stock Dove 

Great Tit 

Song Thrush

Wren

The park in the centre of town has plenty of birds, Rooks, Jackdaw, Magpie, Crows, Woodpigeons, Blackbirds, both Song and Mistle Thrush as well as the smaller birds too - Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Wrens and Dunnocks. I even had a Greenfinch one morning, these are few and far between here.

Dartmouth park seems to be lacking in the smaller birds possibly due to the removal of all the bushes and trees they frequented, at the moment it's just a barely grassed patch of land.

Magpie

I've finally spotted the Red Kite around town, though everyone else in the family has managed it to see it this year, i've only been able to add it to the patch list about 3 weeks back. A Heron is around often, it landed on the neighbours roof at one point, apparently it's eaten all the small fish in their pond.......karma maybe for her dislike of our lovely local foxes and wishing she could shoot them........

We've had a constant flow of Holly Blue butterflies around our trees and ivy, they do not like posing for photos though! There's also been a few Speckled Wood and the odd Large White.

The flowers in the garden have been blooming and we've had lots of bees around.

 

 

And finally some photos of the Sparrows that frequent the front garden.