Snow Joke

A day after the Spring Equinox snow had blanketed the whole of the UK. It caused havoc throughout the country and caused widespread bafflement and outrage (trust the British) but at times it was stunning. Here's a collection of picture's from the garden and the local Creswell Crags just to prove it really happened...

The back garden, on a cold December March morning.

That's a hammock frame. Oh the irony.

So much snow!

Out at the Crags, a small area home to Ice Age artifacts and the world's most northerly cave painting.

 

It's like the Ice Age never ended.

Stunning views though.

Well worth wrapping up for.

The Barn Owl

Twas the night of Hallow's Eve,
A time of fear and fright.
And out there over darkened fields,
Is a ghost that haunts the night.

As towns begin to bustle,
Costumed revellers take to the street.
But in the sticks there is no sound,
'part from the phantom's shriek.

The temperature begins to plummet,
The stars light up the skies.
But out there shrunk in hedgerow deep,
A creature fears for his demise.

To be seen is to face certain death,
Its a dangerous game to play.
Best to keep head down and hide,
If he's to see another day.

The phantom roams the midnight air,
Looking to claim another soul.
A face of brightest white they say,
And eyes like blackened coal.

It is said you cannot hear it,
Don't see till it's too late.
The only time its presence dawns,
Is when delivering you your fate. 

Pellets, Packham and a Return to Ringing

As I sit writing this, I can still smell the stench of broken open owl pellet that's burned into my nose. Yes after only two days at home I'm already breaking open packaged owl sick in my mum's kitchen.

But she's at work so shhhh... She doesn't have to know. 

Tawny chicks being they're usual laid back selves.

I was given the pellet by a friend (I have those kind of friends) from some of the many she finds whilst walking the local wood that sustains a healthy population of Tawny Owls that I have had the fortune to be able to ring.

Speaking of ringing, yesterday morning gave me the chance to get back out for the first time since January. And what a morning it was! We were at the same wood as the Tawny's (and could hear one at one point), ringing at a feeding station. We got an astonishing 85 birds in total with some of the highlights including two Treecreeper, 5 Nuthatch and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

The woodpeckers had been drumming all morning and if we hadn't been as busy then I would have been tempted to try the old "hitting a tree with stones" trick to lure them in for a closer look. However it would have probably resulted in me looking like an idiot when I was completely ignored.

The wood has been rung consistently for years and this gives us great information on the lifespans and movements of the birds within the area. There was yet more evidence of how poor last years breeding season had been for the tit species, with almost all of them caught being older that last summer. Fingers crossed for a better season this year.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Chris Packham giving his talk on Saturday night. He was brilliant.

Oh and I also made a YouTube video of the owl pellet dissection if you'd care to have a peek:  http://youtu.be/bX_VQkqZHCc

Below are some of the things I found in the pellet. Nothing extraordinary apart from the scaled skin at the bottom which I'm still miffed by. If its a reptile then I can only think it would be a Grass Snake.

A small bone

Another bone

A third bone

Oh look! A bone...

Some hair

The scaled skin. The hair on it isn't attached, it was just sat on there.

Breaking Smews!

..... Or so was the title when I actually wrote it.

 

Y'see now a week and a half has past since I wrote that title and saved this blog post to draft that I intended to finish the next day.

 

Since then my laptop broke and I've since ordered a new one. To be fair I was due a new one. I'd had my netbook for 4 years and it had got so full of stuff that it's speed was like that of a Giant Redwood in a 100metre sprint. And in the world of computers (where anything over 94 milliseconds is compared old) my computer looked like it had been dug up from a Neolithic archaeological excavation.

 

But enough about that. Back to the birds. And more importantly news about Smews. Yes you may think that I'm running these Smew gags into the ground but I don't know when I'll get the chance again. And it's my blog so I'll do what I want.

 

So anyway. The weekend after last I was back at Harewood and had taken my binoculars in the hope of getting a better view of the pair. And wouldn't Smew believe it, they were both there! I got some cracking views of the male diving with a male Goldeneye. It was like finding a Strawberry Crème and an Orange Crème in the Roses box in amongst all the wrappers and nuts. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

 

As I had no chance of taking a picture of a Smew half way across a lake I tried to take a picture of Red Kites circling half way up in the air. Similar results.

 

I'm back off home at the weekend for Easter where bird ringing and watching shall commence with a vengeance.

 

And hopefully we have no more technical (me dropping my laptop on the floor) difficulties. But I'm sure everything will be fine.

 

You could even say I'm confident everything will run Smewthly.

 

 

I'll stop now.