Over the severe weather last week, I trained some trail cameras under the feeders hoping for some more unusual birds such as Bramblings and Siskins. I didn’t see either of these birds but I did capture this unexpected happening under the feeders at 3 o’clock in the morning:

There were several photos of this and I couldn’t quite work out what was going on…

..until they shifted position slightly and the final shot was this:

Badgers mating. I believe it is very normal for the male to bite the female on the neck like this at such times. Badgers mate throughout the year, although the peak is just after the cubs are born in late January/early February. However, the fertilised egg is not implanted immediately and it is only when the female puts on weight in the Autumn that she actually becomes pregnant. I am a bit unsure of the evolutionary benefit of such an arrangement though.

The other unusual visitor that I mentioned in the previous post was a Woodcock under the feeders during the night.

This bird has stayed around and we have flushed it 4 times now from the second meadow as we go round. This next image is a bit photographically challenged, but I can assure you that it is a Woodcock – one of us had the camera, the other had binoculars on it.

Two of the times we came across it, it flew up from the dug Turtle Dove strip which is the first time this additional piece of habitat has come into its own. The Woodcock is a bird of woodland and so I am sure it will soon be gone but it was lovely to see it while it has been holidaying here these last few days.

 

 

Going through the footage from the trail cameras, I got a shock. Just after midnight in the early hours of this morning, there was a wading bird standing under the feeders in the pitch dark. And then again at 6am

Its a Woodcock. Its a wader, but doesn’t ever wade. It’s a nocturnal woodland bird and uses that long beak to get worms out of the soil. And other insects as well, but mainly worms.

There is a resident British population, but during the winter there is an influx from the Baltic areas that outnumbers our birds by 5 to 1. This is the first time that we have seen Woodcock here and no doubt this bird is here in some way because of yesterday’s severe weather.

Woodcock have been hunted and eaten since Roman times, although I would like to think that a UK restaurant would face public disapproval if it had Woodcock on its menu these days, wouldn’t it? I hope so, because the bird is not doing so well. Another mildly interesting fact about these birds is that their pin feathers were used for drawing the gold stripe down the side of a Rolls Royce.

Here is an internet photo of what they look like in proper light:

What was it doing under the feeder though? Its beak does not look like something that is designed to eat the chopped peanuts and sunflowers hearts that were scattered on the ground.

During the night there was a thaw and for the first time for several nights the ground was not frozen and it actually might have been possible to get at the worms. In fact, the Woodcock was not the only thing out worming last night:

Look at the state of that badgers face.

 

 

 

Its been just awful weather. Days of exhaustingly strong icy winds, sub zero temperatures and now, finally this afternoon, snow.

I can understand how furry mammals living in holes below ground are coping with this, but what are the birds doing? How can there possibly be any still alive out there after all this?

I suspect that many have succumbed.

We are doing what we can to help. Smashed apple, lard pellets, sunflower hearts, chopped peanuts – all these have been liberally spread over the ground. However we have so many bully boys that hog the food for themselves and don’t allow any other bird near.

It’s only once they have had their fill that the others get a look in:

However, all this activity around the feeder has also attracted the interest of the Sparrowhawk. So he has also been fed:

Hopefully some of these birds are going into the bird boxes to roost at night. We think they are because many of the boxes have fresh droppings inside.

Meanwhile, the hole dwellers seem to be doing alright. Look at the luxuriant tails on these foxes:

And the badgers have wonderfully thick coats and burrows filled with hay. They are ok.

This was the scene as day became night today. Not much snow, but the photo doesn’t give any idea of the treacherous wind chill howling in from the east.

The forecast suggests that today was the lowest point and there is an expectation that things may be a little bit better tomorrow…I so hope that they are right. Thoughts of flower-filled meadows with butterflies and dragonflies seem completely ludicrous now, yet in a few short weeks this is what we will have. We will. Everyone just needs to hang on in there.