Weekend Wildlife

Spot the mouse!

An uninvited, but not unwelcome, visitor has made a home near our bird feeders this weekend. When we got home on Saturday afternoon, I looked out of the window to see if there was anything around. Nothing in the trees, so I scanned the floor for movement and spotted something. I was sure I was seeing things to start with, but there definitely was movement, which turned out to be a little mouse! I'm fairly sure it was wood mouse, but not completely certain. Apologies for the picture quality, it was taken through a closed window.

Wood mouse?

We also made it for our usual wander around our local patch. With all of the strange and very wet weather we've been having, the water meadows have been more 'water' than 'meadow' with fast flowing streams crossing the path in various places, causing some erosion of the path (and funnily enough, I'm teaching about erosion this week to my year 8s, talk about a real-life example).

Shortly after we had entered the path, we were surrounded by bird song, and flitting through the branches were long tailed tits, a large gang of them. There are a number of low and fallen trees near one of the streams; these beautiful little birds were taking advantage of the cover and high water level to bathe and preen. We watched them, spellbound, until we were startled by a very loud and manic screech of jays the other side of the path, possibly startled by the kestrel that had bolted overhead. We were out a little later than usual, so we did not see the full compliment of birds we would normally see, but we did glimpse a roost of magpies, and came out of the watermeadows to witness the sunset over the road.

Flock of roosting magpies

Erosion of the path due to rain water

Sunset