Garden Birds and wild birds thread.

last night i had a little visitor climb up to the window, one of last years girl badger babies who remembered it can get hand fed a piece of fruit bread if it makes the effort

Sadly when it turned to climb down it is the one with the big wound on her back, doesnt look infected , i would be gutted to lose that one

Badgers have been fighting with an interloper and looks like she got caught , maybe protecting babies
 
denislawsbackheel said:
Got up yesterday morning to see a sparrowhawk on the garden plucking some poor bird it had killed. It must have spent twenty minutes removing all the feathers and eating some before flying off with the remains into a nearby wood.
It seemed oblivious to me or any threat in the garden.
It was bigger than I expected, quite a bit bigger than a kestrel.
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You are lucky mate. They tend to have 'plucking posts' where they habitually pluck birds they have killed. Those posts are normally in wooded areas. The ones that frequent our bird feeders are like smash and grab raiders, they fly in at fantastic speed, hit a poor greenfinch or the like on our feeders and carry them off to the woods where they are plucked. Absolutely beautiful birds.
 
denislawsbackheel said:
Got up yesterday morning to see a sparrowhawk on the garden plucking some poor bird it had killed. It must have spent twenty minutes removing all the feathers and eating some before flying off with the remains into a nearby wood.
It seemed oblivious to me or any threat in the garden.
It was bigger than I expected, quite a bit bigger than a kestrel.
Click to expand...
ones i have seen are not much bigger than a thrush, and kestrels have been crow-sized, too big to zip through foliage like a sparrow-hawk, might be regional variations in sizes due to food availbity. A kestel zapped a blackbird not 5 yds from where i was sat and completely ignored me, pretty much ripped it to bits before departing with the spoils. Gruesone as the blackie was still alive for a minute or two....The first on the scene were a couple of crows that found something to squabble over..`
 
A week or two back I was walking toward my wood shop when something caught my eye to the left of me. I was within five feet of the door and a bird flew off a rake I had under the lean to, almost flew right into me. It stopped, turned and flew into the glass panel of the door, I got to see it spread eagle against the glass. It dropped a couple of feet, regained it’s equilibrium and flew past me so fast I only saw it for a few seconds before it turned the building and gone. It was a little ‘Sharpe Shinned Hawk’ that I’ve been seeing around the yard recently. What struck me was how silent the whole thing was and how beautiful it’s markings were
 
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Small little guy but the yellow/orange eye distinguishes it from the Cooper’s Hawk
 
nellyonthewing said:
Its a Black snake..People freak out when they see one but they are pretty harmless and really good pest controllers. I've had pygmy rattlers, coral snakes and cottonmouths in the yard..Last year I had fruit rats under the house -they ripped off the vapor barrier and ate the AC ducting.. This will fix the twats.
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We don’t have a lot of snakes in the valley, just a few grass snakes but drop into the river canyons and lower elevations there’s no shortage of Rattlers.
 
idahoblues said:
We don’t have a lot of snakes in the valley, just a few grass snakes but drop into the river canyons and lower elevations there’s no shortage of Rattlers.
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Those cottonmouths are nasty . They come after you. My mate was fishing and drinking .A cottonmouth was on the bank of the lake and they started shooting at it but were too pissed to hit anything. That snake swam out towards them and started to climb up the anchor rope.
 
nellyonthewing said:
Those cottonmouths are nasty . They come after you. My mate was fishing and drinking .A cottonmouth was on the bank of the lake and they started shooting at it but were too pissed to hit anything. That snake swam out towards them and started to climb up the anchor rope.
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I was sitting on a lake in Alabamy and had a similar deal, big cottonmouth swimming right for us. Brown Snakes in Oz are very aggressive in the same way
 
Merlin sits in the open window now when i feed the wildlife , last night five badgers came from nowhere up to the window at speed and he shit himself lol , never seen him back off so fast ever

The wound on the badger is still clean but the scab has come off too soon , fingers crossed it heals
 
bellbuzzer said:
ones i have seen are not much bigger than a thrush,
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bellbuzzer said:
and kestrels have been crow-sized, too big to zip through foliage like a sparrow-hawk, might be regional variations in sizes due to food availbity.
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The Male Sparrowhawk is Thrush sized ..often almost half the size of the female,which is common with quite a few Raptors.

The Male concentrates on Sparrows,thrushes etc..whilst the female can take anything up to Wood Pigeon size or even Corvids.

Ive certainly never seen a kestrel Crow sized,altho again the female tends to be larger than the male..

Going back to the sparrowhawk a female of the speices is said to be the size of a male Goshawk its much rarer and more secretive cousin.

The Goshawk is rarely seen far from a Wood,and despite itz size can easily navigate through dense foilage and trees at breakneck speed.

Ive only seen,knowingly , wild Goshawk 3 times ...a sight to behold
As the books say..resembles a huge Sparrowhawk.
 
Had a sparrowhawk in the garden on Friday. It had just caught something and then took to the very back of garden to eat it.

Put a few bird boxes up this year and waiting to see if anything uses them.
 
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