Its been a week since our return from Fair Isle and its back to the reality of work, darker nights and more local birds. The weathers been pretty poor but yesterday was a nice calm still day and one of our local Great -spotted Woodpeckers seemingly took the opportunity to bask in the sunshine on a tree close to its favoured feeder. In this sequence of photo's you can actually see it gradually getting sleepier and closing its eyes. It remained like that for awhile before flying off. Its one of the juvenile birds I ringed a couple of months ago and you can see the ring on the left leg. It can now be sexed as a female as its attained its adult plumage and has no red on the head. I know its one of the juveniles because I haven't ringed a female in the garden.
It certainly appeared that she was basking and dozing in the sunlight and stayed like this for a good 10 minutes.
The calmer weather has meant the Little Owl is again making its presence known and the darker mornings mean we are now hearing it calling from the garden in the mornings and the evenings.
The calmer weather has also meant Redwings have arrived from further north in large numbers and the nigh skies are now full of their 'tseep' calls.
I added a new species of bird to the new patch list during a rare respite in the weather earlier in the week when an evening stroll with Jan produced the goods with a flyover Crossbill!
With the vegetation beginning to die down and water levels rising I can now just see small patches of water in the pond opposite from a bedroom window. It'll be interesting to see how this winter compares with last winter and how many species of wildfowl I can get on the house list!
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