the garden recently-avenged!!

Plenty of garden action over the past week, probably due to the warm weather. luckily it has not been too hot and I have been out in the garden with the camera. I would like to announce the joyous news that there has been a shooting. yes that's right, a shooting, only with a camera. I finally managed to get that picture of a magpie. That given, the light was low, I was too slow and the birdbath was in the way but never-the-less I have finally managed to get that photo.

As you can see, there still not much but at least I have now got one in case I need to use it.

the warm weather meant that many birds and animals were quite sluggish and, as with the deer at hard castle craggs, not very flighty. I think that this picture of our local collard dove pair relaxing on the law sums up just about how everyone was feeling. They were the very essence of the word relaxed!!

The hot weather also had the bonus and bring all the frogs back to the pond so that they could remain cool. Normally the next time that we would see the frogs would be next spring when they return to lay more eggs so its great to catch up with them even now. On Sunday we had at least 5 frogs in the top pond and at least 1 was still around today.

No real reason why i included this apart from the fact that I love click beetles. this one didn't click, primarily because I didn't annoy it. I found this on the house wall resting from the sun. you might be able to see that the beetle is hiding on the side of the wall away from the sun.

speaking of laying eggs, our great tit parents have been working around the clock. I have named them Neat and scratty, mainly for those precise reasons. I think the top bird is the male (Neat) and the bottom bird the female. I'm not quite sure what happened to her but she does look a mess. still, she is doing a great job as a mum and, for that matter, him as a dad. I hope they don't nab the click beetle, see earlier, but if they do, it died in a worthy cause. this is our only remaining pair of birds in the garden since the robins move, their chicks were probably eaten by the wretched cat. This pair are quite safe from cats, almost 5m about the ground. they really are great parents. I stood near the box for about 20 mins and in that time both birds made a total number of about 15 trips. Its great to watch and photograph.

And another great addition to the garden wildlife is the return of our large red damselflies. there was only one but that's still a great sight, just look at the colours.

as you can see its been a great weekend for the garden wildlife. also, the stock dove returned this evening, keeping the bird biodiversity on a high