BIRDING THE LUNE ESTUARY THE FOREST OF BOWLAND AND BEYOND......................................................MEDITTERANEAN GULLS CONDER POOL PETE WOODRUFF

Friday 13 May 2011

Something Suspicious....

And a couple more excellent photographs the first of which is....

Common Tern. Geoff Gradwell

I'm not sure whats going on here with these birds, but what I do know is that its a cracking photograph of two Common Terns grappling beak to beak in mid-air.

RBA Pager Service.

A message this afternoon via this service informed us of two Nature Reserves in North Norfolk which have recently been targeted by egg collectors, otherwise known as thieves. The message goes on to ask birders to be always vigilant and report immediately to the local police anything suspicious including car registrations and people involved....Well they can rely on me on that one, and hope they can on you too.

I recall many years ago being with my old friend and mentor in the Rusland Valley in Cumbria in the halcyon days of staking out for hours on end in the hope of views of the enigmatic Honey Buzzard (HB) with a mix of successful and unsuccessful days. On one occasion we were joined by a man who drew up in a van with ladders on the roof rack, it was blatantly obvious what this mans station was in the world of birds and his conversation left no doubt to John and I that he was a ringer and knew far more than we did about the whereabouts of these birds, but by the end of the conversation we were none the wiser as he quite rightly played his cards close to his chest and good for him.

On another occasion we were joined one day by two men who as far as I was concerned were as equally obvious as the ringer had been what their station was in the world of birds/wildlife, and on this particular day they were in the business of egg theft if only they could find out where the HB were. I reckon these two thought John and I looked like a couple of dumbos little knowing that I'd sussed them out almost the instant they had arrived on the scene to talk to us, one of them in particular - who was the mouthpiece of the pair - had written across his forehead....'you can see what a nice guy I am, but what you don't realise is that we're looking for HB to steal the eggs'....these two creeps left no more the wiser than they had been thirty minute earlier, what they didn't know was that John and I didn't know where the HB's were either.

So....please be aware, the persecution of birds of prey and stealing of eggs of several bird species and Peregrine Falcon chicks as another example THRIVES AND LIVES ON IN THE 21st CENTURY. 

And finally....

Nuthatch. Gary Jones

This Nuthatch obligingly visited GJ's garden after he baited the bird table with some tasty seeds.  

PLEASE NOTE....Blogger has had some maintenance problems and yesterdays (Thursday) post 'More like March than May' which disappeared has now returned as a Friday post, but the three interesting comments to the post which I received have still to be restored.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Don't know about you Pete but the blogger programme has been playing silly ....... I've lost postings, images and comments.

    Thank you for thinking the Common Terns is worthy of showing, although it can't been seen, the male (top bird) was 'teasing' the female who followed him before he handed over the catch, unfortunately it cannot been seen in her beak at the angle taken.

    (my poor typing so replacing previous comment with this one).

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  3. Don't know about the comments you lost Geoff but hopefully your blog should be back to normal by now, though I've not yet had my comments restored on Thursdays post 'More like March than May' and looks like I may not get them back about which I'm a little miffed.

    I thought thats what may have been happening re the terns Geoff but didn't know they engaged in this behaviour, maybe lots of species behave like this....still learning!

    Your looking in and comments are much appreciated.

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  4. I too lost comments and likewise 'disappointed'... so long as you know it wasn't me and thank you for viewing my attempts and much appreciated comments.

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  5. Likewise, I lost images and comments, the images are back but the comments have vanished, thought it was something I had done!!

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