Sorry it has been a while, again, since I last wrote anything, as always, I have good intentions but it is so easy to get sidetracked.
There are indications that the quiet time at Tollie is coming to an end, I was there on the 23rd Sep. and there was a lot of Buzzard activity with a few Crows in amongst them and of course this attracted at least three Kites, may have been more as some of them were untagged. Whilst there was no feeding seen while I was there, there were some good views of the birds. The Woodpeckers are still giving a good account of themselves and we are now getting a sizable flock of Goldfinch in to feed on the thistles in front of the visitors centre.
Improvements have been made to the Satellite tracking page and the birds can now be followed on Google Earth, click on the Google Earth link below the map on this page and follow the instructions.
You will see we have added four new birds for 2012, Millie, Merida, Ruaridh and Wyvis, this bird should not be confused with the 2011 with the same name that sadly died earlier this year, the name has been used again as it is the Wyvis Primary School in Conon Bridge that helped us to secure the tags for this year. Merida has been named after the lead character in the Disney film Brave, RSPB see here for more details. Millie is named after the scientific name for the Red kite, Milvus milvus and Ruaridh, the only male, is Gaelic for Red King. Sadly, no photos were taken of the birds when they were tagged but they all have blue, left wing, and red, right wing, tags with the follow codes:
Millie - 1VMerida - 2VRuaridh - 5VWyvis - 6V
So the challenge to any photographers out there is to send in photos of these birds, two have been to Tollie and as you can see from the tracking page all four of them are quite active at the moment.
The two tagged birds that bred this year, Lewis, on the Black Isle fledged one chick, who apparently was quite feisty when being tagged. Professor Feathers, in Angus, fledged three chicks and as far as we can tell all are doing well.
Other developments up at Tollie, we have had a wasps nest under the feeding table which made feeding quite lively, this was successfully moved to a more suitable site in the woods. We have also had a bumble bee nest in a gap between two of the logs that line the edge of the car park. Slow worms have also been spotted along with toads under the two panels we put out to attract such things. Some photos of other things that have been spotted in and around Tollie.
Four Spotted Chaser
Black Darter (Immature)
Silver-ground Carpet Moth
Speckled Wood Butterfly
Thanks to Liz for the photos, lets hope we get more like this and more of the kites.
Finally, now that we are starting to see the winter migrants we may be able to advance the Tollie bird list closer to the 100 target, it has been stalled in the mid 60s for a while now.
We do get the odd bird that goes north, but I think we are quite close to the northern limit of their range.
Wierd though how they don't seem to travel North from their home territory.
They have gone a lot further south in the past, but we think they stop when they reach other kites.
Great blog again Brad!! I added our red kites to google earth finally, and noticed that they do make some lengthy (ish) journeys South but not North! wonder why this is?