bullfinch blues

adding a bit of colour to the niger seed holder. Bull finches are rare visitors to our bird feeders, but this year we have had regular visits from a pair of them. I guess they are nesting nearby. They are very shy birds so it is a treat to get a good view of one.

martinville

meanwhile, round at the front of the house the martins have returned en masse and are quickly renovating or rebuilding the old nests. The pesky sparrows (top right) are intent on stealing the vacant sites but at the moment the martins are winning the battle for once. It has taken the martins a month since they returned to start nesting, presumably because it has been cold and wet and they need to build up their body mass before starting breeding.

the great escape

The two chicks left the nest on the morning of 23 May, ie 3 days ago. The picture at the top is the last one of them in the box. You can almost hear them, "You go first", "No, after you", "No, after you". In that amazing away that nature has, after 23 days in a small wooden box, they flew out into a totally different world and survived. The middle photo is later that morning on their very first flight, the juvenile tufts are still just visible, and the bottom photo was today, three days later. So they have survived so far.

helpful signs 1041

the church at St.Mary's, Ashbury (not Bratton Clovelly) in deepest Devon, and below the good ladies of Latchley (well, Lamerhooe really but it is the little village of Latchley in the background).

fallen nuthatch

on my first day out of the nest I wasn't much good at flying, and I wasn't much good at climbing, even with my spidery feet. Parent nuthatches were fraught with anxiety about their poorly performing off-spring

It remains very quiet for this time of year. There were no butterflies out today, and the flowers are weeks behind apart from one solitary marsh orchid. The great tit chicks are almost as big as their parents now but show little sign of leaving the nest apart from a few wing strengthening exercises. Sometimes it looks as if the parents are keen for them to leave ... much the same as the parents of any stroppy adolescents might be. Jays are normally very wary of people so it was unusual for one (as above) to keep still long enough to be photographed. And below, the Tamar keeps rolling on.