PSA Winter Watch St...
 

PSA Winter Watch Starts Tonight

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Just to say that Winter Watch starts tonight for those who watch it.

And the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch runs over this weekend if you have time to gaze out of the window for an hour.

Think of the baby robins_MG_7517

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 10:14 am
geck0, cvilla, Hoff and 5 people reacted
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excellent

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 11:12 am
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Similar interests: A Treasure and a Challenge

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 12:35 pm
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Thats obviously not a baby robin because you can see it

Untitled 2

Untitled

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 1:17 pm
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By that reasoning your photos were not baby robins either 🙂

It was at least a juvenille and worryingly showed no fear of people, I had to be very careful to avoid standing on the little beast.

For the record that shot was taken with  my 100mm macro lense and I had to back away from the bird to get it framed.

Love your nest pictures.

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 1:57 pm
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I did put a thread up this morning, not realising there was already one.

Not baby robin season, but loving the photos anyway.

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 4:10 pm
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@Bunnyhop

Sorry if I put this thread up when you already had one. 🙁

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 5:00 pm
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No worries. It just means more people get to see the winter watch.

Edit: It appears my thread is stuck somewhere in the ether :o)

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 7:22 pm
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Came here to say normally this thread is Bunnyhop's PSA.

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 8:10 pm
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I will leave it to Bunnyhop in future. 🙂

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 8:51 pm
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Excellent Winter Watch this evening, the footage of the Bluefin Tuna was incredible, especially shot from a kayak off the coast of Devon! I’m wondering if that was Start Bay.
Re Garden Bird Watch, I’m expecting it to be the usual washout, partly because the weather is going to be pretty grim, and partly because it usually is! Two weeks or so ago when it was cold and frosty I had a lot of birds turn up, but once it turned mild they all buggered off! Except for the starlings, which I’m now bulk-buying suet pellets for; so far, since December 16, I’ve bought just shy of 40kg of suet pellets, I’ll probably be ordering another 12.75kg box by the end of the week!

During that cold spell, I had a pair of chaffinches, a dunnock, a wren, a grey wagtail, a pair of robins, almost certainly not two males, because one wasn’t trying to rip the other one’s head off and shit down it’s neck, a long-tailed tit, blue tits, great tits, marsh tits, coal tits, a pair of magpies, gold crests and a chifchaff! The chifchaff flew up and perched on my kitchen windowsill while I was looking to see where it was gone, it was literally about two feet in front of my face staring straight at me through the glass! I’ve never seen one closer than about fifty feet when I’ve been out walking; to have one in my garden was just an absolute dream.

Oh, also the pair of blackbirds that have made my garden their territory, and four very fat pigeons!

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 10:38 pm
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The bloke in the kayak had quite a lot of bottle going out on his own up to 10 miles off shore. He must be fit, confident and have good skills.

I have only ever seen common and bottle nosed dolphins , porpoises, seals and a sun fish.

His photography and camera work look good  in the circumstances.

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 12:35 am
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As ever lovely film making and even though I've been into nature for ever, there is something new to learn every programme.

To be fair to Bruce I tried to put a PSA up yesterday early morning but it didn't work, so grateful that he put one up, so thanks.

Edit; It was on the news that a new colony of red squirrels were discovered by thermal imaging camera. These are in a large forest in North Yorkshire, fabulous.

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 8:53 am
J-R, MrSparkle, J-R and 1 people reacted
 beej
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The bloke in the kayak with the tuna footage - who was filming him? Looked like drone footage.

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 8:57 am
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At least two drones/ camera units; there was occasionally a drone visible, hovering in the corner of a shot!

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 9:02 am
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I have only ever seen common and bottle nosed dolphins , porpoises, seals and a sun fish.

We often see seals around the cliffs here, even quite close to the busy beaches and I've seen one quite far up the river, and there are regular reports of dolphins, sun fish and basking sharks, which I haven't been lucky enough to spot. But I think it was last year when we watched something just sticking a huge fin out of the water and waving it around for ages. I didn't have my binocs with me so couldn't get an ID but some sort of whale.

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 1:21 pm
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@IdleJon - where did you see the creature with the huge dorsal fin?

 
Posted : 22/01/2025 10:09 pm
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@IdleJon – where did you see the creature with the huge dorsal fin?

From the cliffs between Mumbles and Langland, South Wales. Not sure which fin it was and to be absolutely honest because I was facing out to sea, no real idea of scale, but it looked to me like  a whale slowly rolling and waving a fin in the air, and then repeating. We often see seals along that stretch (7 of them a couple of months ago), and there was a great northern diver sitting just off-shore a couple of weeks ago.

 
Posted : 23/01/2025 2:18 pm
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We have the delight of the long-tailed tits back in our area and feeding on our feeders again.

Though this morning I was chasing off pheasants as the overflow from the woods near us...grrr.

 
Posted : 23/01/2025 2:35 pm
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Though this morning I was chasing off pheasants as the overflow from the woods near us…grrr.

The only place we see lots of pheasants around here is near a particular private estate on Gower. There were dozens of them in the fields around that area when I walked through in autumn. Then, at a talk about wildlife crime, someone mentioned that they had recently found a poisoned raptor on Gower - in itself unusual, it's a quiet area for that sort of crime - and the policeman giving the talk perked up his ears and asked if it was near the aforementioned area.

 
Posted : 23/01/2025 3:01 pm