nesting

It has been fascinating to watch the great tits set about building the nest from scratch. The nest is constructed mainly of spaghnum moss brought in strand by strand with some downy feathers and hair or wool. Although the nest looks woven it is actually made by pushing the strands to the side. As the volume builds up the central concave part of the nest appears simply because it is where the birds sit to push the moss towards the sides. The male spends a large part of his time in the nest box pecking fiercely at the wood around the entrance (as above). It doesn't appear to be making the entrance larger but possibly it is making it smoother. They only have one brood a year so success is absolutely critical to each bird and hence they go to a lot of time and effort to make the nest secure and secret. I think they would both be deeply shocked if they knew how closely they were being watched deep in their own home.

No idea

another unidentified flying object. We have a lot of goldfinches in the garden but this does not look like the typical juvenile goldfinch. In fact it doesn't look like anything, especially from the front. Can anyone help with identification? A greenfinch?

PS now that I have had time to look at some decent photos on Wildabout Britain (link) it is clear that this a greenfinch.

blackthorn

Blackthorn is now out everywhere. The flowers always appear before the leaves and the black stems create beautiful tonal contrasts against the pastel colours in the hedgerows before the green returns.

IFO

A skylark singing. They are not always easy to see against a bright background but they are easy to hear. They seem to tremble in flight as they sing.

UFOs spotted

I know this is April 1, all fools day, but the photographs above are absolutely genuine and worth closer inspection. I noticed two small white round (to the naked eye) objects floating across the sky over us. They caught my attention because they did not seem to move like birds, floating rather than flying. Buzzards sometimes do this on thermals around here but they did not have the outline of a buzzard. They were moving steadily rather than swiftly west east, and looked very white in the morning sun. I took three photos, hard to get a very sharp focus pointing at the sky. To my surprise there was a third white thing to the top left, which I had not noticed, and two fuzzy white things. Maybe they are balloons. On the unresized RAW files they appear white with a fuzzy grey outline. Help!! I promise you this is not an April Fool's joke, and they are not camera artefacts or manipulated with photo imaging software. Very strange.

On close inspection I wonder if these are parachutes although there were no planes overhead at the time and I have never seen anyone parachute around here. The two lower photos are enlarged and slightly enhanced. And two more in the last photo I took yesterday.

a Spot of trespassing

actually, June, the owner of this cottage called Greenscombe in the wood, gave us permission to go into her meadow which runs beside the Tamar. Not far from here today we saw a kingfisher, and a greater spotted woodpecker, to add to the general pleasure of being out and about. Spot and I are due to give a talk to the local group of WI's next month, and with any luck June will be in the audience and we will use this picture as an example of quintessential rural England.