Sparrowhawk

 About a week ago, a sparrowhawk killed a starling and ate it in my garden. This happened right outside my living room window, and my son witnessed the whole thing. Obviously, he was a bit upset by it. I missed this brutal incident, and came in to find that my son had closed the blinds and turned up the volume on the TV so he couldn't hear the starling screeching. 

After I'd calmed him down a little, I opened the blind slightly to see if the bird was still there. It was quite happily sitting on the lawn, eating the remains of the starling. I managed to get a photo (don't worry, you can't see anything gross in it). Sparrowhawks are stunning birds, and as I expalined to my son, they need to eat to survive, so they need to hunt. It was just unfortunate for us (and the starling) that it chose to hunt in our garden, near the window. I suppose, in a way, it's good that the sparrowhawk felt safe enough in the garden to sit and eat. Eventually, it flew off when my husband home, taking the remains of the starling with it.

Sparrowhawk on the lawn

 

Unexpected Owl

 The badgers are still visiting our garden every night. On saturday night, we were looking out of the bedroom window, watching a badger snuffle around. Then something flew passed the window, wings flapping but completely silent. It took me a few seconds to work out what it was, as it was moving quite fast, but I think it was an owl! It was quite big and looked fairly pale in colour (it was just getting dark, so I couldn't see that clearly).  My son, who was watching the badger with me, declared that it was a barn owl. He may well be right, he's much better at identifying birds than I am (and his eye sight is much better than mine).

I've never seen an owl in the wild before, so it was very exciting to see one just fly past my window. You can understand why people describe them as ghost-like, not only because of their colour but because of the weird silence. It was quite close to the window, which was open, and I couldn't hear any flapping noise from the (fairly large) wings or anything. It's really odd when you think about how big the owl is, my brain tells me that I should have heard some kind of noise as it flew past, but there was none. Obviously, it's well known that owls can fly silently, but it's strange and amazing to actually see, but not hear one in real life.

Every night now, when I look out for the badgers, I will also look out for the owl. The likelihood of seeing it again is probably minimal, but I can hope.

Buzzards....maybe?

 We actually had some rain yesterday....but not very much. It was just sort of drizzle on and off all afternoon. Unfortunately, not enough to make any real difference to the garden, everything is still very dry. I keep seeing warnings that August will be quite a dry month too, so we should be careful with the amount of water we are using. Still really hoping for a big storm or just some heavy rain! 

There are a lot of birds coming into the garden, and they are still enjoying the extra bowls of water we've been putting out. Temperatures continue to be above average for the time of year, but at least we're not in another heatwave (at the moment). The badger is making nightly visits to the garden too, and sometimes a second badger comes along.

The pheasants seem to be coming back into the field near our house, I've seen a big male pheasant strutting around a few times in the last week. Recently, we've seen a couple of birds of prey in the field too. They are around most days, either circling above the fields or resting on the fence posts. I think they are buzzards, but they are always slightly too far away to see clearly. We hear them quite often too. (I'm not that good at identifying birds of prey.) They are quite big, brownish coloured and make a screeching noise. Hopefully, I'll either get a clearer view at some point, or be able to get a photo of them.