I don't know why I bother mentioning the strange weather anymore. At the beginning of this week we were melting in blazing sunshine and temperatures above 30 degrees but by the weekend this gloomy drizzle had set in. I would like to have shown you some contrasting pictures, but my brain was too fuzzy from the heat to remember to take them, so you'll have to put up with just the one's I took this morning of the grey skies.
This week's blog is going to be a little shorter than usual. We've been very stretched due to staff holidays so Paul and I have been running about trying to get everything done, shoveling stone onto droves while the sun beat down on us and dealing with escaping cows. Everything always goes wrong when you're short-staffed. So I haven't had a lot of chance to take pictures for you.
Also, it's a quiet time of year for the wildlife, so there's less to take pictures of. One of the few birds that I have seen regularly is the cranes. Every time I go out, I spot some in the fields, either in twos or threes, or sometimes a lot more. They're starting to gather into the winter flock now, so seeing a large group is more common. But I never get any pictures because they fly away if I get too close. Another bird that has been gathering into flocks is the yellow wagtails. Damon said he saw a large group on Friday. It won't be long until they start their migration back to Africa, along with many of our other visitors. Indeed some have already gone. Cuckoo's, who don't have to hang about and raise chicks, left ages ago. And the swifts have started leaving too. It is interesting that swifts and swallows have such different habits, considering how similar they are in many ways. Our swallows arrived in late March/early April, I think, and are on their third brood, which should be hatching soon. or may have hatched already. They probably won't leave until mid-late September. Swifts often don't arrive until early May and are leaving by mid-August, probably only rearing one brood. It makes you wonder why these patterns developed so differently.
I was very pleased to see a juvenile great spotted woodpecker on my feeder this week. Although it's not a species that is struggling particularly, it's always nice to see chicks raised successfully. This may well be the young of the pair I saw on my feeder earlier this year. You can tell it's a juvenile because the red patch is on the front of it's head. Males have red on the back, and females no red at all. When the young moult in Autumn, the red will disappear and adult plumage will come in.
That's all the news for this week. I will try to bring you something more next week.
Kathryn
West Sedgemoor Residential Volunteering team