Spiders, Birds and Badgers

One of the delights of the enforced work that I had to do was seeing the birds returning to my back yard. My office, spare room really but office sounds better, over looks the yard and one of the first things I did when I first moved in was to put up a couple of bird feeders. This spring the first in this house but not the first in the village, I had a procession of birds visiting and feeding. While the numbers dropped off following the breeding season, in the autumn the birds disappeared completely.

This is not abnormal as when there is an abundance of seeds and berries from the natural larder the avian visitors stock up on that natural harvest. Then as they are eaten the birds will return to the places where they have found food previously. Therefore, by coincidence I was working when the birds started to return. It started with a single sparrow and today at one point I had nine in the yard at the same time. It was amazing to see some rather remarkable behaviour too, as two of the birds sat at the apertures of the feeders and were tossing seeds on the ground to their brethren. As these were all likely to be related as the offspring from this years brood will stay with the parents until the spring, they will support each other through the winter.

While for many folks sparrows are a rather mundane bird, but I love seeing them and other birds seeing them come in to feed too. Another rather overlooked bird is the Jackdaw. On the roofs and in the chimneys of all the houses in this part of the village. Even these stopped visiting my yard during the autumn abundance. Again my enforced reworking over the past few weeks enabled me to witness something I had not observed before. While in the spring and summer they will flock together when looking for food. But this is not really flocking but as soon as one bird finds food others will come and try and grab all or some of it too. However in the autumn they genuinely start to flock together and just as dusk arrives they group together in a genuine wheeling flight. They really seem to be just enjoying flight, taking to the air just because they can. I may be imposing human emotions on to the birds but that is what it looks like. Another moment of interesting behaviour that I have seen from the Jackdaws is them grabbing on to the brick walls to pluck insects and spiders from the brickwork.

I was going to try and film it but it was over before I could as a car turned the corner causing the birds to take to the wing. I do get some odd looks from people when I have the camera out, I am sure that they just don't see what I could be filming. Personally I think that's there loss at not seeing the wonders of nature around us.

Seeing the Jackdaws doing this reminded me of something I saw in the spring. I had put out some meal worms, and I had not even sat back at my desk before a pair of great tits and a pair of blue tits were feeding on them and taking them back to nests. The great tit kept on coming back after the meal worms were gone. It was searching the brick walls for bugs. I was trying to get the camera set up to film this but the point where I knew the bird would get to it found before I could get the camera to power up. There is broken brick where I knew there was a spiders nest the great tit found it and took the spider and web. It was only latter that I realised that there were probably eggs there too.

Talking of spiders, in the top corner of my office window, okay I know its a bedroom window but I'm being pretentious! Because of this, I have stopped the window cleaner from washing the windows at the back of the house. Much to his puzzlement. As while the spider could rebuild the orb, if it were washed off, the spider could move from the location. As I am fascinated by the way the spider shoots out from its hiding place when a tiny fly lands in the web. But also the way the spider maintains the web. After collecting and feeding its prey it returns to the orb and just pulls the threads tight. It is remarkable to see and I will film this soon. With all the work that I had to do I have not had the opportunity to do that.

The only problem is that while I have resolved many of my computer problems, with the help of a cartoonist I should add, I still cant capture or upload the video from one of my cameras. As my regular reader may remember I bought a pre owned a camera that had Inferred abilities. This camera I also discovered is ideal for close up and macro work. But it seems that the problem with transferring the video from this camera lays with the camera. I did buy a new lead but that didn't resolve the problem, I then replaced the fire wire card and that left the camera as the culprit. Its a shame as it is a nice camera to use, and I will continue to use the camera to film but until I can find a solution to transferring to the computer I guess that I will end up with a lot of work to do latter.

One of the other casualties of being forced to rework an environmental report, was various trips out to film all sorts of things. But also I decided that I needed to give myself a break from that work at times. So last week I went to one of the pubs in the village. As my normal local was rather lacking in atmosphere that night I decided to try one of the others.

We have four pubs in the village and when I first moved here one I nicknamed the Youth Club as it was full of young people and another I called the Darby And Joan Club as it was full of older folks. Thus, I did find it difficult to find a place that I could just get a relaxing drink. However, these two main pubs have changed hands and even without visiting them, I noticed that at one the previous trouble there appeared to have ceased, so I went there. I was pleasantly surprised as it is a nice friendly relaxed atmosphere now.

On my first visit to that particular hostelry when I first moved to the village I was being offered drugs. Not the welcome I wanted in the village. Now though that is tolerated and the associated difficulties appear to be gone. Also the couple that are now managing the place I had met before and are wildlife enthusiasts too. Therefore I had a chance to talk with other people who are thrilled by wildlife encounters. However, they were not the only ones who were wildlife enthusiasts and with other village locals we were talking about what is in and around the woods. While I was able to point others to places where they could see the deer and other mammals, I learnt the location of another Badger Sett.

Armed with that new information I headed up there tonight and I have now solved the mystery of where some of the Badgers went following the flooding at the beginning of September.

While there are problems in the local area, and while people do things that get me vexed, there are some wonderful people here too and having the natural world so close is what makes living here so delightful.