Northern Experience Wildlife Tours

Tag: Coal Tit

  • Another waiting room

    With a busy schedule over the Christmas and New Year period, this weekend is our chance to visit friends and family in Derbyshire and East Yorkshire.

    I spent most of Friday afternoon filling all of our bird and squirrel feeders.  The Jays were around again, screaming at me from the Ash tree at the bottom of the garden.  The Coal Tits were rather bolder, perching just above my head and settling into ‘angry little bird’ mode.  After all the feeders were replenished, it seems I need to pay a visit to my good friend Martin over in Haltwhistle to re-stock our extension with sacks of bird food 🙂

    We drove down to Derbyshire in the snow on Friday evening.  The roads were fine, but the carpark at Wetherby Services was a proper nightmare.  A delicious casserole and a glass of wine awaited us at the end of the journey.  Saturday dawned clear, bright and snowy and we spent the day visiting friends.  Saturday evening’s entertainment was a meal in Derby with Sarah’s parents and her youngest sister and other half, followed by a theatre visit to see The Snow Queen. Or so we thought…

    As we walked from the car park towards the restaurant, the pavements were glistening with ice.  Which is when Sarah’s mum went base over apex and heard her leg break. 🙁 We had an ‘interesting’ 5 hours in the  Royal Derby Hospital, followed by a takeaway pizza.  The best laid plans…

    Now we’re on our way back north, and conditions look perfect for carrying out our next two offshore surveys on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Best wrap up warm.

    Get well soon mum.  And enjoy putting your feet up over Christmas 🙂

  • The little fir tree

    As Chair of Governors at our local First School, I had an invitation to attend the Christmas production this afternoon.  It was a heartwarming tale of a little fir tree who was teased for being so small but eventually found his place as a Christmas tree in a children’s hospital.  The characters included several fir trees, angels, snowflakes, raindrops, sunbeams, doctors, nurses, foxes, owls, rabbits and a woodcutter…as well as kings, shepherds, Mary and Joseph.

    Which brings us nicely to the little fir tree on our patio.  I haven’t had as much time to work on my bonsai display as I would have liked this year (one of the perils of running your own business…) so most of the trees have developed dense, lush foliage.  I have been regularly trimming any over long shoots so they’re all still quite compact.  The display sits midway between six feeders in the apple tree and two feeders on the garden wall, so it’s a regular perch for many of the birds that are visiting.  As the weather has turned towards wintry, the number of birds in the garden has increased to the point where it’s almost impossible to watch everything that’s going on.  Sarah was at home this morning and we spent a little while just watching the comings and goings.  The highlight was two Willow Tits together but there were 15+ Coal Tits, 5 or 6 Bullfinches, 10 Chaffinches, 4 House Sparrows, 4 Greenfinches, a couple of Goldfinches and little groups of Blue and Great Tits.  Birdwatching begins at home…and once we get some cold, frosty or snowy weather, my bonsai display should produce some excellent photo opportunities as well.

    A cold, wet mid-December night might not seem that promising in terms of wildlife but we had something new for the garden about an hour ago when a Winter Moth Operophtera brumata landed on the outside of the kitchen window.  Our little southeast Northumberland garden now has records of about 250 different species of moth.  It helps that there’s a 76ha woodland behind us though.