The old country saying is ‘when the furze is out of flower, kissing’s out of favour’, but the gorsehas been in flower for a few weeks, at least one bush on Storrs Hill has been, where it overhangs a south-facing embankment wall.
The female great spotted woodpecker is a regular on the sunflower hearts: it prefers them to the fatballs.
We hadn’t seen the pheasants in the garden for months but the recent wintry weather brought a male in. He settled down in the shelter of one of the plants in the border as the rain lashed.
Nostell Priory, 10.10 a.m., 4°C, 39°F: The rival great spotted woodpeckers are drumming again, one in the middle of the Pleasure Grounds, the other, from the sound of it, from the far side of the Lower Lake. The first time that I heard it, I was likening the drumming of the nearer bird to the percussive sound of castanets but today I realise that a castanet is too clackety; the tree that this woodpecker has chosen resonates with the more satisfyingly hollow sound of a Chinese block; ‘tockety-tock!’, not ‘clackety-clack!’.
Also calling, a green woodpecker; we hear it’s ‘yaffle’ call a couple of times from the woods on the west bank of the lake but this morning we don’t actually see either species of woodpecker.
We’ve done well for seeing goldcrests this winter. In previous years, the few views that I’ve had of them have been of silhouettes amongst the branches of tall pines but this year they seem to have been more confiding, oblivious of our presence. This morning a single goldcrest is the first bird that we see as we walk out of the courtyard into the gardens, as it checks out the branches of a yew.
In the Pleasure Grounds a treecreeper is working its way methodically up the trunk of a tall oak. It ascends in a straight line; unlike the nuthatch, it doesn’t have the option of going downwards and this one isn’t even tempted to veer off sideways.
There’s a bright spot of colour on a dull morning as a kingfisher flies diagonally across the Middle Lake.
Lower Lake, Nostell Priory, 11.30 a.m.: We’re convinced that the woodpecker, tapping on the upper surface of a bough is a lesser spotted as it appears to be about the size of a nuthatch but luckily, while it’s fresh in my mind, I sit on a bench and draw a field sketch: when I look it up in the bird book I realise that the red vent proves that it’s actually a normal sized woodpecker – a greater spotted – at the top of a very tall oak!
The lesser spotted has barred black and white plumage on its back.
It was good to see the great spotted woodpecker, a female (no red nape patch) on the feeders this morning, reaching the last sunflower hearts that even the nuthatch and the squirrel couldn’t quite get to. It’s such a muscular looking bird.
It moved to the trunk of our crab apple and carefully investigated a spot on the bark, then made its way up the main stem before diverting to a side branch in the crown of the tree and making off with its trademark bouncing flight past the right hand end of the blackthorn blossom into the wood.
And, at 8.40 a.m., I saw a house martin swooping around the gable end of a house across the road. I’ve had distant views of martins or swallows over the meadow in the evening but this is the first time that I’ve seen one taking an interest in this regular nest site. It’s about a month since we saw our first swallow.
I noticed two sparrows flew down under the eves as the martin circled. I wonder if they had their eyes on taking over an old martin’s nest?
We haven’t seen a woodpecker at the bird feeders recently so I was surprised to see a juvenile clinging to the fat-balls this morning. I don’t ever remember seeing a juvenile in the garden before.
It flew off and climbed up the trunk of the crab apple. It seems keen on exploring, perching on top of a garden light and pecking at it, then flying to the runner bean poles and investigating those.
This afternoon it came back with an adult male.
The male has a patch of red on the back of his head, the juvenile has the red cap. He fed the youngster – which seemed to be managing quite well by itself – until a wood pigeon landed on the top of the feeding pole, scaring it away. The male continued feeding for a few minutes. We’re soon going to run out of fat-balls again at this rate.
12 noon, Peasholm Park, Scarborough; We can hear the tapping and see the odd bit of bark dropping down but at first all we can see in the tree canopy is a wood pigeon preening in the branches above. After a minute or so we see a female great spotted woodpecker working her way up the multiple trunks of the adjacent tree.
Once again my monocular comes in handy because through it we can see that in the morning sun the red of her vent shows up well as she hangs almost upside down, pecking on the overhanging trunk. There is no red on the back of her head, which is how we can tell that she’s a female.
North Bay
It was a calm morning but there must have been quite a swell because the waves at North Bay were crashing against the sea wall.
Hangdog Commuter
Despite having spent a day in Scarborough, this terrier looked distinctly hangdog as she commuted to Malton on the Scarborough/York/Liverpool coast to coast train.
The old country saying is ‘when the furze is out of flower, kissing’s out of favour’, but the gorse has been in flower for a few weeks, at least one bush on Storrs Hill has been, where it overhangs a south-facing embankment wall.
The female great spotted woodpecker is a regular on the sunflower hearts: it prefers them to the fatballs.
We hadn’t seen the pheasants in the garden for months but the recent wintry weather brought a male in. He settled down in the shelter of one of the plants in the border as the rain lashed.
