h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

WS,the big 13kg bag of feed is a Gardman product and like just about all of Sainsbury's and Homebase's product's endorsed by RSPB or made by them, the birdcage is. Sainsbury's I expect stay on the safe side of caution with their products to avoid an outcry!
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Still only a Robin using new birdfeeder as a perch which is ok as don't really want to start mass feeding as a communal garden but also I don't want it to get too expensive. I will be liberal with mixed feed if get snow again of course!
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I don't think the Great Spotted Woodpecker hole will turn into a nest as it doesn't seem to have come back and perhaps the sawn of standing tree trunk isn't as soft as it first appeared. It is fairly open to prying eyes too which is why I first noticed it of course. It could be restarted later of course.

Maybe it was just investigating, and probably getting a few insects too. It would be something else if it did nest, but as you say it is rather conspicuous, it will probably not bother.

How on earth do you manage to carry 13kg bags

Incidentally, talking about it getting expensive, I buy bulk and have it delivered, 20kg and 10kg bags, not to mention badger food now they are back, which is why they all get rationed - provided I can resist their pleas for more

Websailor

!3kg was £11 in Hombase and it came home on my pushbike rack!
Talk of the Devil, the male GS Woodpecker just turned up again as was next to hole but just seemed to be grazing for food as you said as didn't seem to dig in the big hole again. I can hear it "pinging" in the treee in garden, although can't actually see it.

Oh, lucky you, having a pushbike, just don't fall off

We have had male and female GS woodpeckers today. Still no Green woodpecker though, so my wish list isn't working very well at the moment

Websailor

I was up early and openned the window a little to hear bird song. The fluid Blackbird was of course the best tunester, but the Robin wasn't far behind. Thankfully the pair of Jays in Oak tree next to my window didn't join in wi the the songs, pretty they maybe, but great singers they aren't,lol!
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Strangely I am not sure whether the pair of Blackbirds are building 2 nests, one in Holly bush, the other about 20 feet away in smallish tree, or there are even 2 pairs in my one garden nesting! Both places are getting lots of visits from a female Blackbirds with beaks full of soft nesting material.
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I went to my quite upmarket garden centre near me this morning and although know nothing about plants I like to wander around as so nice there.
I thought I saw a mouse amoungst the pot plants and waited for it to move to get a better look as it walked around. However it had a pair of wings and turned out to be a Dunnock being mouse like amoungst the plants!
There were lots of birds there as I suppose to them the plant section is just one fantastic garden opportunity for bugs and worms!
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I know they sell reduced bird and animal books and was pleased to find half price the Collins British Wildlife book which has everything from animal poo examples to toadstools with birds and animals in between. I will never be an expert so nice to have a book like that, mind you even half price, at £15, it wasn't cheap but since I already have what s claimed to be the best bird book, Collins Bird Guide, they make a good pair. The new book is huge though!
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It is odd though as have few books but all the ones I do have are about wildlife.

Nice to have got a cheap wildlife book Strangely Strange! I have lots and lots of wildlife books ... lots of other books too!

Pillowcase, yep it is nice for me to have a couple of wildlife books as have little general wildlife knowledge, even my knowledge of birds isn't that in depth!
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It will be good to have it there while the things I have seen are still fresh in my mind. Plants and vegetation in particular are a whole differant world to me, I did see some common grasses I recognised in book though and it was nice to learn a little more about them.
Even things like animal droppings are of interest, there is a picture of Squirrel droppings which I have never noticed before so I might have to have a scout around in bushes in my garden, I don't think the squirrels will like such personal attention to their ablushions but it is all in the name of knowledge. lol.

Don't undersell yourself SS, you have more knowledge than very many people, and you are observant, which many people aren't, especially in these days of continual rushing about.

Talking of which I should be elsewhere right now

Websailor

Talking of observing, I have seen Mr Great Spotted Woodpecker back at the partly complete hole which is now looking more and more like a nest hole as now as deep as its bum in horizontal depth!
It seems to be doing it bit by bit, perhaps it has other holes on the go elsewhere?
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I can't remember if I mentioned it but I was watching a male Chaffinch in its new summer finery/new feathers and it suddenly flew straight at binos with its steelly blue beak head first like a rocket only to turn away at last minute!
I forgot all about how binos make things seem closer than they really are, lol.

It certainly sounds like a nest. I wonder if they excavate more than one for the female to choose the best, as some birds do? I must look it up.

Binoculars do bring things close. I have a Spotting Scope and that can be scary as they head for the kitchen window. The wood pigeons are the worst, as they collide with it quite often, in spite of having stickers up which are supposed to tell them there is a window there

Websailor

I should have added that it of course had a red patch at back of head as GS Woopeckers do, but it got all ruffled as it was banging on top of hole it was digging.
That raised a question, if hole is so tight it ruffles head feathers, how on earth does it see inside hole to dig as body of bird was totally filling hole?
Even more so when it is starting to be more than the entrance hole.

It was a male then, as the female doesn't have the red on the head. Perhaps they work by touch

Websailor

PS Nest April to July. They dig out tree chambers at about 3m above the ground or will use specialist nest boxes. Does that sound about right?

Websailor

Keep your eyes open. Apparently both male and female excavate nest holes

Websailor

I would say it was higher, perhaps at level of a second floor flat as I have to look up from my first floor flat with the ground floor flat below me of course.
It is a lopped, but growing, tree in apparant good health as dug out hole looks to be living wood.
The lopped tree is on border of communal grounds next to a small carpark for 3 cars, but it is fairly quiet there.

Perhaps he is just being sensible, being higher up. It will be interesting to see what happens. Keep us posted.

Gotta

Websailor

I went to a nature reserve round an hour's bike ride away today. I heard a piping noise like a bird under some dense bushes and saw what I first thought was a mouse, then a rat, then I saw a cute looking face staring at me intently with a long slim body and realised it was a Weasel!
I watched that lean, mean killing machine for 15mins grubbing around in the dead leaves and detritus under the bush. At one point it dug under a small broken branch using its front paws like a dog. It went as deep as its short tail. I suspect it was digging into a smaller than itself mousehole but didn't appear to find anything that time
The Weasel seemed fairly small so it may have been a female or juvenile. The fur was orangey but fairly dark, with a white area under chest of course. I had never seen a Weasel before but did come across a Stoat one summer on a country path that went up on its back legs to look at me the ran across into a hedge.
The Stoat was huge compared to the weasel I saw today!

You do see some interesting things SS. You are lucky to be able to get out like that. I have to walk or catch a or train which is not much fun, it takes too long.

Websailor

Hey Strangely Strange, that's really great to see a little weasel! I think they're very cute but of course like you say they're also very ferocious predators! We actually do not have weasels here in South Africa (in fact they're not found in sub-Saharan Africa at all). We do have a little animal called a Striped Weasel but actually it's not a true weasel but a relative; it looks like a cross between a weasel and a skunk, being black with white longitudinal stripes. It is widespread in Africa but rare and *very* few people have ever seen one in the wild! I haven't.

Weasels are cute pillowcase and although might not be that rare are not that often seen due too colour and elusiveness, which is great as bettter chance of survival. As you said they are cute but quite ruthless!
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WS, yes, I am lucky to be able to get ut and about and while physically able to I should do more really. Being male allows me to wander about where perhaps a lady on their own can't although should be able to but that is the world we live in sadly!
Strangely though, like you and your Badgers, I actually probably see more in my back garden as watching it most. Watching a Badger sett in the wild in the cold might be fun every now and then but suspect the novelty soon wears off. Perhaps you might see a Weasel eentually if have a railway line close by, as I believe I said you did, as the Nature Reserve I said I was at had one close by too. I don't often go there to be hones as it is a very unpleasant hours cycle ride on busy roads and even past a dreadful urine smelling layby near a huge road(no toilets). I suspect even there in that awful place some sort of wildlife has adapted and lives there.
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The problem is although that Wildlife Sanctuary is ok, well at least the very middle dog free bit, the outside is really just another urban park with the usual thuggish percentage of dog walkers with thuggish dogs to suit the owners so I sometimes go there to0 make a change but not regularly. I actually can't think of anything there I haven't seen locally in parks or my sanctuary, or seen by others, incuding Weasels.
I am very lucky wooded parkwise around here and it is just a little less thuggish too, not a lot, but just a little, I suspect due to it being just a little further from a town centre.
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I often wonder what digs the comparatively large holes infront of Leylandi hedge in my garden but suspect it is Foxes not Badgers as the security light comes on easily here so anything that unusual would be talked about, the manic talking about a GS Woodpecker which was sadly seen by what might be a DHSS flat in the other block was bad enough. They were actually leaning out windows and shouting it out to other residents!
N o hopefully the holes are fox holes as wouldn't this lot t know about and poor Badgers!
I am just thankful the GS Woopecker nest is other side to DHSS flat so hopefully they don't see it, hopefully they don't spot the ocassional Green Woodpeckers we get here, they are a bit shyer though.
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Incidemtly. WS, you were right about male and females GS Woodpeckers building nest as both have been digging although not seen both at nest at same time. I believe they are now digging the actual nesting chmaber out as body of digger is not going in hole so deep and there is a slight change of angle to their bodies suggesting more sculptured digging downwards and not straight ahead, the males head feathers are still getting ruffled by digging though!
I have heard Woodpecker drumming this morning and just heard a Woodpeckers 'plink' call so one maybe back in garden. must go and look!