I saw a thing in the garden (1 Viewer)

[MacDara]

I'm pretty certain I've never seen a peregrine in the wild. I'm surprised/skeptical that so many of you have.

I have however seen a few kestrels and what I assume to be sparrowhawk's.

In other news, Mother Coot has finally hatched three little fluff balls. At low tide there's a puddle of water where they hang out, it's not even two meters from the kitchen window. I shouldn't feed them bread, should I?

And yeah, no bread. Veg scrappings should be grand?

 

[seanc]

And yeah, no bread. Veg scrappings should be grand?

The house mate has just chucked some cooked fish fingers out there. I'd have had them!

 

[flashback]

I'm pretty certain I've never seen a peregrine in the wild. I'm surprised/skeptical that so many of you have.

I have however seen a few kestrels and what I assume to be sparrowhawk's.

i would have said they are fairly all different.

Peregrines had specific routes that they'd use. They had corridors along which you'd see them, and they always seemed like they were on a mission going from HERE to THERE, no fluting about. The nearest thing to fluting about is sometimes they'd land about 10m to the side of the nest and have a bit of a stand there, and then go off about their business.
Kestrels had a favourite field, or headland that they'd hover over and loiter around, and a specific area where they'd peel off and shelter down into.
Sparrowhawks were all over the shop, but they'd be blitzing along just over the ground, often down paths, but swerving all over the place.

Calls, the only one I heard a lot was peregrines, they were quite shouty around their nest, but it was distinctive elongated shrieky kind of squuuaaak.

But the easiest one was how they looked. Peregrine had a distintive set back falcon-y look, really distinctive leading edge/end of their wings. The sparrowhawks have a less svelte, more flared out wing and tail, almost more like a kestrel.

versus the peregrine:

 

[magicbastarder]

you'd really only see peregrines if you live near cliffs near the coast, AFAIK, or have them nesting in a nearby church steeple. we saw a kestrel today actually while on the way home from clare island, it was doing its windhover thing.

 

[flashback]

you'd really only see peregrines if you live near cliffs near the coast, AFAIK, or have them nesting in a nearby church steeple. we saw a kestrel today actually while on the way home from clare island, it was doing its windhover thing.

I didn't know this, but that sounds about right. I don't think I've seen them anywhere other than around the cliffs here.

I'm not sure where I read it, I might have bored people here with it before, but allegedly Kestrels can see into the UV end of the spectrum. Mouse pee fluoresces in UV, and mice dibble pee constantly. The mice have tracks which they all scurry up and down, so when the kestrel is hovering like that, it's looking along these fluorescing tracks for movement.

At the start I thought they were scanning the entire field, and I was thinking that's an awful lot of processing to have going on. But keeping an eye on a handful of tracks is much easier.

 

[flashback]

That picture of the sparrowhawk reminds me that I've heard it speculated the cuckoo is doing a mimic type evolutionary process to appear similar to other barred birds of prey, especially the sparrowhawk. Meaning when the cuckoo turns up, the other birds scarper.

Then there's these other insane evolutionary mechanisms that are in play because they do this brood parasitism. I think there's active research going on still with them, there's these races with egg colour, and then kind of sub species of cuckoos who specialize on one specific local bird population. But this local specialization genes are sex linked, so... I think things start getting really crazy here, but the females carry only this trait which leads to lines and almost to sub speciation, but not quite because the hosts keep changing egg colour too. I forget exactly. It hurt my head at the time.

 

[seanc]

Waheyyy, chatting about birds with the lads on a Saturday night.

Not my garden, but an interesting thing about how damn clever magpies are, also, it is METAL:

12ft

 

[flashback]

Waheyyy, chatting about birds with the lads on a Saturday night.

Not my garden, but an interesting thing about how damn clever magpies are, also, it is METAL:

12ft

There was some funny thing I saw about crows. Something like in Japan they were having problems with crows nesting on power lines, so the workers pulled down the nests.

The crows decided this wasn't on, so they went off and built LOADS of nests on power lines, way more than they actually needed. Just wrecked the shop with nests all over the power lines.

I think the general moral of the story is don't fuck with corvids. They're the Jigsaw of the bird world.

 

[seanc]

Was walking a bit up river from where I live. The river is actually a fairly lifeless culvert. But some of the ducks have used a shopping trolley in the water as a scaffold for their impressive nest.

 

[seanc]

I knew coots built floating nests, but are they supposed to float around?

There was a coots nest floating around in the middle of the water there. It seems to have settled underneath the neighbours gaff now. Tides coming in.

 

[seanc]

I didn't quite capture the wake, I think this is dad swan, mum swan paddles with one leg. but there's swan, absolutely bossing the whole ting.

 

[chris d]

Good aul swan.

 

[Cormcolash]

I saw a ChatGPThumped in the garden

 

[seanc]

I saw a ChatGPThumped in the garden

While there are many things you can see in the garden, such as small mammals, birds and insects, it is unlikely that you saw an AI in your garden.

Nonetheless, many people find it enjoyable to look at things in the garden, and as an AI, ChatGPThumped is not manifest in the physical world like a human. I'm sure chatGPThumped would be able to help you source, name and ultimately destroy anything in your garden. Thank you for asking!

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Found a stray kitten in the park. Currently upstairs and the dog going nuts downstairs.

 

[ann post]

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[pete]

ANTS. FLYING.

End of days shit out there.

 

[magicbastarder]

insert hackneyed father ted reference.

 

[flashback]

ANTS. FLYING.

End of days shit out there.

interesting. The ants were flying down here about a month ago.

Maybe different ants fly at different times?

They only seem to do it for a day or two. The local swallow population can barely move afterwards.

 

[ann post]

about two weeks ago here.