What a week it has been on my local patch. At the beginning of the week it seemed like spring had finally sprung, mornings were warm and sunny and the wildlife responded. The Fox cubs were playing on the old vicarage lawn:
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| He's behind you. A cub watches me while his sibling pounces on him. |
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| Fox cub enjoying the morning sunshine. |
The birds were singing strongly, including this Stock Dove, note the gorgeous iridescent green neck patch:
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| Stock Dove singing. |
A Sedge Warbler in the Hawthorn blossom:
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| Sedge Warbler singing. |
The last couple of days have reverted to overcast and cool mornings with the cloud clearing during the day. I came across a family party of Long-tailed Tits moving through the trees up past Church End this morning. The youngsters are really cute and their parents are working hard to keep them fed. You can't miss them, they are so noisy, continually calling to each other.
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| Juvenile Long-tailed Tit. |
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| Adult Long-tailed Tit with food for the young. |
I tweeted about this Common Whitethroat a week or so ago. It's song is a strange variation to the norm. Rather than the normal scratchy phrases it has pure phrases, very like a Blackcap but it retains the short, clipped phrases of the Whitethroat. It has Blackcaps stationed either side of it and when it starts to sing it often seems to set them off until they realise it sounds a bit different. I've never heard this variation before so I recorded it on my iPod, and this morning I finally managed to get a picture of the bird in question, it has been really mobile and stays tucked away in the cover except for the occasional song flight, when it does revert to a more normal song:
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| Common Whitethroat |
Here is the normal Common Whitethroat song for comparison:
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