Patch Walk

A scary thing happened this morning. 

When I got up at 06:30 it was chucking it down with rain. While I was having breakfast and waiting for my laptop to boot up my thoughts turned to friends of mine who had been up here for a week on holiday and who were heading for the ferry terminal to catch the ferry back across to the Scottish mainland to start their long drive back down to Lancashire.

With the laptop ready I checked the Met Office weather forecast to see what the weather was going to be like for their journey. It was forecasting sunshine from 07:00. Another look out of the window at the dark overcast sky, in all directions, and the rain running down the window made me chuckled at how wrong the forecast was.

Then the scary thing happened.

At 07:05 the sky suddenly brightened, the cloud started breaking up and the sun was out!! The bad weather was heading out into the North Sea and to the West bright less cloudy sky was heading my way.

I decided it was about time I went out and had a bit of a wander around part of my patch. A couple of weeks ago I found a Swallow nest in an old wartime building which had four eggs in it. As I had raised a nest record for the nest I needed to go back and check on it's progress.

I set off up the hill and saw the ferry leaving the harbour, my friends were on their way home. As I wandered up the track I passed a colony of Arctic Terns. So far when I have been up the track the colony has got airbourne and kept an eye on me and then very quickly started to settle down again as I passed. Today they were a lot more vocal and some of them actually flew over to the track and started to buzz me. That response plus seeing a few terns flying into the colony with food in their beaks is a pretty good sign that they are breeding and have young.

I quickly moved further up the path and the reception party returned back to the colony and started to settle down.

When I got to the top of the hill I looked down onto the area that had held the Black-headed Gull colony, it was now void of any gulls. There were a few Black-headed Gulls and some Common Gulls a bit further South of the where the colony had been.

A pair of Bonxies (Great Skuas) were patrolling over head and came over to take a look at me before moving out over the moorland.

Oystercatchers and Curlew were also being very vocal with lots of alarm calling but I did't see any young moving about in the heather.

Meadow Pipits and a couple of Twite were flitting across the heather
 
A couple of Arctic Skuas were flying along the ridge where I have seen them before, they seem to prefer that area to the land on the North side of the moor.

A couple of Swallows flying overhead reminded me of why I had come to this part of my patch. Arriving at the site I entered the building and good see that the nest was well lined with feathers.

I got my new gadget out of my pocket and switched it on. I then carefully placed the probe over the edge of the nest and on the screen I could see a wide gape of a young Swallow after food. A quick look around the nest revealed four chicks. So all the eggs have successfully hatched.

In case you are wondering what gadget I'm using, it is a hand-held endoscope with a colour monitor. The tiny camera has a ring of LED's around it that allow the user to light up what the camera is looking at. It is designed for use around the home for looking into cracks and crevices but makes an excellent tool for inspecting hard to access nests.

Hand-held Endoscope

On the walk back home I saw more Arctic Terns taking food back to the colony which is an encouraging sign.

I also heard a tern call that was different to the Arctic Terns that were flying around. I was quickly able to locate the bird flying against the breeze and a look through the binoculars confirmed it was a Little Tern. There are only a handful of Little Terns seen up here so to see one flying over my patch was an excellent end to the walk.

Wheatear

It's nearly halfway through the year and yesterday I saw my first Wheatear on my patch. There seems to have been a lack of this species so far this year. Hopefully a few more will start to appear over the coming weeks.

More nests

Since my last post another Blackbird nest has been found in the garden this time with three chicks on it. When the nest was found on the 18 June it had one newly hatched chick and two eggs which had also hatched by the following day. On Tuesday 24 June the chicks were ringed. Based o nthe hatching to fledging time of the last nest these chicks should be off the nest this weekend.

In the barn there are two possibly three more Starling nests now with young on and a continuous convoy of adult birds arriving with food.

Nest update

The Blackbird nest saw the five chicks fledge on Friday (31 May). Four had already gone when I checked the nest at 09:00 and the last one had gone by the time I rechecked the nest at 16:00. They could be heard calling from the undergrowth on the bank the nest was in.

Last Blackbird chick on nest prior to fledging

This morning I popped out as usual first thing to top up the bird feeders and when I returned I found one of the ringed chicks sitting on the work top in the kitchen!!

Last Friday (31 May) also saw the first chick on the Ostercatcher nest with a second egg starting to hatch. The third egg was still intact. By Saturday morning (1 June) the second egg was still hatching and now the third egg had started as well. The first chick was still sitting on the nest. A check of the nest late on Saturday evening and there was one chick left the other two had gone, hopefully into the nearby cover. A final check of the nest on Sunday morning and the last chick had also gone. Just in time too as the field has now been ploughed and grass seed sown.

First Oystercatcher chick with the second egg starting to hatch

The young Starlings are now starting to gather in ever increasing numbers, this morning there were 43 in the garden!!