My Blog
My Blog
Down
I found about 80 nests last year and sent in records for 64 of them. The nests were from 13 species: mute swan, greylag goose, eider duck, oystercatcher, common gull, common tern, swallow, meadow pipit, rock pipit, song thrush, mistle thrush, blue tit and raven.
Last year I sent in 46 records from 16 species.
First three nests I found were ravens (as usual) and surprisingly I got the hatching dates for all three nests. Nest linings from cows, sheep, deer and polypropylene rope. One of these nests was near here and less than a minute from the road but the others needed a long drive and walk. There is a raven nest site near here that is impossible to see so it needs a 20m abseil down a slimy slightly overhanging cliff ending in a burn, (happily for me) it wasn’t used this year.
Before this year I had never found nests of mistle thrush or eider duck, I found four eider nests. I read that each nest has 7g of down on average (eider photo above thrush and tern below).
The blue tit laid ten eggs. It is thought that birds in the north of Britain lay more eggs because the days are longer so therefore they have more time to find food.
The BTO get around 6,000 blue tit records each year so my one record is insignificant. They get around 100 common gull records so I think my 39 might be useful.
I take photos quickly to keep disturbance to a minimum.
Saturday, 18 February 2017