Ian has reported a coot (fulica atra), a new species for the park. Coots are small black waterbirds, close relatives of moorhens. Both species belong to the family Raillidae.
Continue reading “A new species”A new species
A new picture of a squirrel from DKG and, from our archive, two more posts about squirrels
Latest blue tit news
A message from DKG during the week
A long stay observing and photographing the Blue Tits. I am certain they have young. They were both frantically entering and leaving the nest all the time I was there. Still no sightings of the Green Woodpeckers but I did see a Great Spotted Woodpecker, although I was not quick enough to get any photos.
Click on any picture to open the gallery
Slow worm
Mail from DKG
“At the end of the last work party we made our first check of the year on the slow worm mats . The small coppice in Kestrel Field, and the Arboretum were checked; not expecting to see any this early in the year, we were pleasantly surprised to find a solitary slow worm warming itself under one of the mats. This was the same mat where we found the grass snakes in 2017. Hopefully more will be found as the summer approaches.”
Pictures by DKG and Suzanne Humphries
Click here for more about our slow worms
Jackdaw
An old ash tree at the top of The Race has been cut back by tree surgeons because it was very rotten in places and branches had fallen during the winter. It was considered too dangerously close to the path to be left to fall down and rot away at its own speed.
Read on to see what was found
Woodpeckers
Great spotted and green. . .
read on for more about the park’s woodpeckers
Great tits are very loud at this time of year. They sit high in the trees, like this one in the willows by the decorated bridge, and shout. It is a distinctive repetitive call like a creaky gate. Listen out for it.
Alcathoe bat
Picture by Manuel Ruedi CC-BY-SA-3.0
A very rare bat, Myotis alcathoe, has been discovered in the caves near Bradford on Avon where many species of bat swarm during the breeding season in early autumn.
Continue reading “Alcathoe bat”Buzzard
This is a young buzzard, photographed in the hawthorn trees beside Lambrok Stream. For a couple of weeks he has been hunting in the field on the Church Lane side of the stream, where there are field vole colonies. He roosts in the same oak the barn owls visited last spring.
It would be wonderful if he found a mate and nested in or around the park this year; fingers crossed.
Header photograph by Suzanne Humphries
More about buzzards:
Buzzard
Nesting time for our squirrels
Grey squirrels are building nests at this time of year. A squirrel’s nest is an untidy ball of sticks that looks so haphazard that you might wonder if it arrived there by accident: snapped twigs and dead leaves blown by the winter’s storm winds. It’s called a drey.
Continue readingBird watching
by DKG
A few bird photos taken early yesterday morning, some proving uncooperative (yet again). Our resident Jackdaws near the picnic area are nest building in their usual hole, in fact this pair remain here or close by throughout the year.
Continue reading “Bird watching”
SAVING BUMBLE BEES
The warm weather has brought some queen bumblebees out from hibernation before there are enough nectar producing flowers to keep them going. If you find a bumblebee on the ground, too cold and weak to fly, you can help.
Click here to find out how to helpRobins
Photographs by DKG
There seem to be lots of robins in the park this year. In fact, there are lots of robins everywhere in Trowbridge. We know that their population in Britain has grown almost 50% since the 1970s but population growth is measured in means and averages, not in sudden seasonal spikes. There could be several reasons for this spike, not all of them necessarily good news for the park.
Battle in a nest box
By Barbara Johnson
We have two nest-boxes, one either side of our garden. One with a smaller hole, just for blue tits, the other with a larger hole to accommodate great tits, sparrows etc.
Read on for the rest of Barbara’s story
Winter blue tits
During the winter, in natural woodlands, blue tits spend most of their time in oaks, searching for insect food in the trees’ rich ecosystems. At this time of year they turn their attention to the midges, mites and wasps that come to lay eggs in the new leaf buds.
Read moreAdder factoid
An adder used to be called a nadder!
Continue reading “Adder factoid”
Loss of insect species
The media has made much of a recent meta analysis, Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers, published in the journal Biological Conservation. Researchers Francisco Sanchez-Bayo and Kris A.G. Wykhuys have come to conclusions so frightening that even the newspapers couldn’t find the words to make it scarier than it really is.
Continue reading “Loss of insect species”Spotting tawny owls
Has anybody heard or seen the tawny owl that was spotted in the park three weeks ago? We are hoping it is still here, perhaps with a mate, looking for nest sites.
Tawny owl calls are unmistakeable, the classic too-wit-too-woo, but their camouflage is excellent and they are difficult to spot against a background of tree bark. Here is a short video from YouTube to help with identification.
Contact details, if you have anything to report, are here.
More about tawnies:
A charm of goldfinches
While checking goldfinch facts to go with DKG’s pictures last week, we discovered, to our delight, that the collective noun for goldfinches is a charm. How charming is that?
Continue reading “A charm of goldfinches”Notes from the past
A letter from local ornithologist, David C.
I must say DKG’s Tawny Owl & Kingfisher photos are really good. Tawny Owls seem to be doing okay in Wiltshire and Kingfishers are also widely distributed. They seem very inefficient breeders with only about half the chicks surviving their first Winter from more than one brood each Spring!
Continue reading “Notes from the past”Goldfinch
A goldfinch high in an ash tree, photographed by DKG early on Tuesday.
Continue reading “Goldfinch”
This is the robin that sang for the Friends of Southwick Country Park as they hacked their way through the thicket of bramble and blackthorn at the rear of the car park on Tuesday morning.
