New male who I've named Colin gave us a miss over Xmas & New Year's day so was very pleased to see him this afternoon, giving me a reason to start new thread in the hope there's some romance this year!
Grim & grey day here so light was bad for pics @ almost 15.00
Resolution in vid was a great improvement ... he looks almost too pretty to be a boy!! Trademark ending though ... start as you mean to go on!
2013 photos & vids here
eff37 on Flickr
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Nige Flickr
Unknown said:have actually abseiled twice
And lived to tell the tale! Lol Must be fun to be a strong bloke!
WendyBartter said:Must be fun to be a strong bloke!
I was part of a mixed group on both occasions and everyone enjoyed it. You just have to want to do it.
Lot to learn
Colin back in nesthole yesterday in poor light & it's obvious from his cleaning up actions that I missed him eating prey ...
Yet another wet & windy day ... will it ever calm down???
Hello Wendy and friends
Just been catching up on this thread while my one week old son lies asleep on me as he has been doing now for 2 hours! So haven’t watched the videos but the photos are beautiful.
Anyway I promised you news of his arrival and he made his appearance just after Valentine’s Day (I’m glad for his sake that his future birthday celebrations won’t be spoiled by restaurant price hikes...) The birth was relatively smooth and quick, unfortunately the following days haven’t been quite so much as we’ve had a lot of difficulties with the feeding. Still, all 3 of us have learned quite a lot in a week... including for me the essential art of doing things one-handed as I am now! I will try to attach a photo.
On the ornithological front, as a side note, we’ve not seen our kestrel since last time (though obviously we have not been looking very hard) but I was excited to see our male blackcap back (or again - maybe he didn’t migrate but haven’t seen him since the summer) and a new pair of turtle doves have appeared in our bitternut tree (they didn’t make it in time for Christmas). On top of which, since putting out some fat balls (before the birth!) we’ve discovered that in addition to the blue and great tits we saw fledge, we have a family of long tailed tits and even at least one European crested tit which apparently doesn’t exist in England! Looking forward to the day when my son will start being interested in the amazing nature reserve that is our garden :-)