Acrobatic Snails

I have some good news to start with today. I’ve been watching out for weeks to see if a second Great Crested Grebe would appear on the local fishing lake. I feared that this year there was one lonely grebe. But finally I’ve seen it with a partner!

Meanwhile the Canada Geese goslings are gradually growing older. They are still crossing between the lake and the field opposite on a regular basis and are still very entertaining as they do so. You can see the front gosling here is starting to get it’s adult colours.

I’ve managed to capture some photos of some of the bigger birds that live locally. I was just heading out of the housing estate and disturbed a grey heron which was stood on a rooftop. I haven’t quite worked out why these birds occasionally come into the estate and sit on random rooves.

This evening I saw this buzzard circling around the area. It was very high up and there were obviously excellent thermals as this bird seemed to hover for astonishing lengths of time without flapping it’s wings.

There is lots of Rosebay Willowherb in the hedges on the edge of the lake and they are really popular with pollinators.

With an abundance of insects in the area there is lots of food for the local birds, like this female chaffinch:

The garden bird feeders are still fairly busy with lots of starlings and goldfinches feeding a lot over the past week.

Bird feeders aren’t just for birds though. You would have thought that this particular feeder was difficult to reach for anything other than birds:

But as you can make out in that picture it appears that several snails have found their way onto this feeder. There must be something in the mixture that they really like. It was amazing to watch this individual make its way to the food, at a fast pace for a snail.

There are also loads of blackbirds in the area at the moment. We get the odd one in the garden but they can be seen more often on the grass verges and the playing field at the end of the road.

Finally today I have a damsel and a dragon to share with you that I saw when walking by the River Avon on Sunday. There were hundreds of these banded demoiselles around.

And this is a rather worn male black-tailed skimmer dragonfly: