Tuesday 5 August 2014

An Ormsaigbeg Meadow - 4

Although the meadow is only a couple of hundred metres or so from our garden as a bird flies, some of the meadow's small birds never visit out feeders - these twites, which are frequently found moving around the meadow, are an example.

Another bird which is often up there is the rock pipit, identified from the other pipits by the thin and monotonous 'tweet-tweet' call which it emits as it hunts through the grasses and wildflowers.

But it's interesting to watch some of our frequent garden visitors, like this fine male redpoll....

....and this yellowhammer, in what is their normal environment.  The only difference between the behaviour of these and the non-garden visitors is that they allow one to approach much closer before flying off.

This fat cuckoo chick was being fed by two tiny and very anxious little birds that may have been warblers.  The parents of this monster are already back in Africa and their offspring will follow once he's built up enough reserves to make the long journey.

4 comments:

  1. Lovely photographs!

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  2. Thank you - but the main credit goes to the brilliance of the digital camera designers.

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  3. Hi Jon, what a superb shot of a juv. Cuckoo and a pretty typical view of these monstrous gems. Also would just like to correct your id of the pipit in the meadow, this one is a Meadow Pipit, a common breeder over much of the moorland and very often the host of the young Cuckoo.

    Off the record, ( I can find no reference to it in your writings, but may have missed it ), I was surprised to see the turbine at the Lighthouse no longer in use and in a prone position; is there a story here?

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  4. Hi Tom - Many thanks for the correction on the pipit. I thought, just for once, I might have got it right, but I have some way to go!
    Yes, there's a long, frustrating story behind the lighthouse turbine. When it works, it produces more than its rated output, but it's been dogged by mechanical problems for which the manufacturers won't accept the blame.
    Jon

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