Thursday, July 2, 2009

1st July,2009.

Light showers in the early morning which soon cleared but we then never realised the wonderful warm weather of the past couple of weeks or so. Hope that's not summer over!!!

Things generally are rather quiet and routine but lots of young birds now begining to appear . Overall it seems likely that it's been quite a good breeding season up here. At the crucial time we seem to have missed any prolonged cold periods with rain , or torrential downpours that flood things out!! On a local moor a Sort-eared Owl provided phenomenal views, simply sitting on a knoll around thirty metres away just ignoring me!! Tremendous. Later , returning home, I was intrigued to see a party of Rooks, a mixture of adults and young birds, feeding in a field which had been cut for silage a couple of days previously. The nearest rookery is about seven kilometres away and yet the birds arrive almost on cue as they don't feed regularly in this area. A case of learned behaviour by the adult birds linked to seasonality and passed on to the younger birds in the process? Nearby a group of sixteen Choughs was a great sight! Unfortunately they were far too mobile to be able to look for colour rings!

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