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A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Tag Archives: greater spotted woodpecker

Some More Visitors to my Garden : Birds

13 Thu Nov 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, wild birds

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

birds, blackbird, chaffinch, coal tit, Garden birds, Great Tit, greater spotted woodpecker, greenfinch, house sparrow, moorhen, Muscovy duck, pheasant, pied wagtail, Robin, rook, Suffolk, wren

During this summer and early autumn I managed to photograph a number of animals, birds, insects and other creatures in my garden.  Some of these photos are of very poor quality but I will include them as a record of what I saw.  This post will be of the birds I’ve seen in my garden.

006Great Tit (640x397)

This Great Tit has an insect in its beak and was fluttering its wings very quickly (hence the blurring). It was waiting for me to go away so that it could feed its chicks in a nest box we have in the garden.

007Great Tit (640x504)

I quickly took another photograph and then walked away

036Great tit with insect (640x443)

Here is one of the pair of Great Tits using that same nest box nearly two weeks later. I am fascinated to see how carefully they hold the insects in their beaks so as not to crush them.

018Greenfinch (640x427)

This is a Greenfinch. There are always plenty of these in the garden. The feeder pole is always leaning and covered in mud because of the squirrels and rooks that use the feeder too.

003Cock Pheasant (640x427)

I didn’t quite get all of this cock Pheasant’s tail.

038Cock pheasant (640x427)

Cock Pheasant

039Cock pheasant (640x427)

Cock Pheasant

025Female blackbird (640x434)

A female Blackbird collecting insects for her chicks.

037Female blackbird (640x427)

Another female Blackbird searching for food.

036Female blackbird (640x427)

And again.

My daughter came running to me one day saying that there was a strange bird in our garden.  She described it as being half duck, half chicken.  I had to have a look and discovered that one of our neighbour’s Muscovy Ducks was visiting us.  If you have ever seen a Muscovy Duck walking you will know that they move their head and neck back and forth while walking just like a chicken does.

033Muscovy duck (640x427)

Female Muscovy Duck

034Muscovy duck (640x427)

Walking like a chicken

I thought I would post this photo of a Wren again as I was quite pleased to get it.  Wrens are quite shy birds and fairly small (3.75″) but have very loud voices.

029Wren

Wren

005Robin

I’ve posted this photo of a Robin before too

005Female greater spotted woodpecker (640x427)

Female Greater Spotted Woodpecker

006Male chaffinch (640x493)

Male Chaffinch

007Pied wagtail (640x442)

Pied Wagtail

009Rook (640x427)

Rook

010Rook (640x427)

Rook.

011Coal tit (640x499)

Coal Tit. These birds are very slightly smaller than Blue Tits at about 4.5″. You can see the mud on the feeder that the Rooks put there with their dirty feet and beaks!

012Male house sparrow (640x491)

Male House Sparrow

049Rear view of moorhen (640x437)

The usual rear view of a Moorhen as it runs off down the garden

012Blackbird (640x427)

A male Blackbird at dusk

 

 

 

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A Walking Week Part One

05 Mon May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in domestic animals, fish, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, walking, wild birds

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Adrian Bell, bird-scarer cannon, Blue Tit, buttercup, comfrey, cow parsley, cows, cut-leaved crane's-bill, daisy, fairy ring, field maple, fish, Germander Speedwell, goosegrass, great yellow-cress, greater spotted woodpecker, Greater Stitchwort, greefinch, Hawthorn, Herb-Robert, Lords and Ladies, May, orange-tip butterfly, perch, pineapple weed, pond, red campion, ribwort, sheep, St Mark's fly, stinging nettle, wedding ring, wild rose

I have managed to do a little walking this week and have enjoyed it very much.  Monday and Tuesday’s walking was mainly round the shops so doesn’t count as enjoyable walking.  For some stupid reason I mistook the time of E’s hair appointment and we arrived in Halesworth an hour early on Monday.  E kindly said she was happy to wait for an hour at the hairdressers but I thought she might go mad with boredom so we did the supermarket shopping and then I got more petrol for the car.  She then went for her hair appointment and while she was there I called in at the jewellers to see if anything can be done to my wedding ring to stop it cutting into my finger.  Twenty years ago we hadn’t thought that my ring would wear away so quickly.  Apparently, we chose the wrong ring – a 9 carat D-profile ring – and should have had a round-profile ring and something of a better quality.  Well, too late now!  This is my wedding ring, bought for me by my husband and blessed at our Marriage Blessing Service.  We weren’t able to be married in church as we had both been married before, but we had a beautiful Blessing Service after our Registry Office wedding.  The jeweller said either we could buy a new ring or have my one built up which would cost the same as a new ring.  A dilemma which we are still thinking about.

Both Monday and Tuesday were mainly cloudy days and no good for drying washing outside so I decorated the inside of the house with wet clothes.  I had more shopping to do in Bungay so drove there on Tuesday afternoon and I made my purchases.  On the way home I got stuck in a traffic jam!  This is quite out of the ordinary, living where we live.  The vehicle in front of me was a supermarket delivery van and not much holds them up usually!  I couldn’t see what the problem was as these vans are quite wide, so I edged round a bit and saw….

Image   Image

The cows took their time to leave their field and amble down the road to the farmyard.  The stockman had a busy time trying to get the cows out of people’s gardens where there were lots of interesting plants and trees to eat.  I took the photos with my phone and then enlarged the pictures so the quality isn’t that good.

E asked if we could watch a DVD together during the evening which I thought would be nice but no-one thought to tell my eyes to watch too.  As soon as I sat down they became extremely heavy and so I dozed most of the way through the film to the disapproval of my daughter.  This is not the first time I have done this.

Wednesday is ‘shopping with mother’ day which went very well as Mum was on top form and we had a real laugh together.  The weather on Wednesday was lovely too – a hazy start and then lots of sunshine.  When I had had some lunch at home I decided to walk down the lane to take advantage of the bright weather and to see what was to be seen.

Image

Lots of stinging nettles and goosegrass.  Goosegrass is a relative of coffee and quinine and has many medicinal uses.  At one time the seeds were roasted and used as a coffee substitute and apparently the young shoots are edible and can be cooked in soups as a vegetable.  All I know about it is that if I touch it, it brings me out in a rash!  The seeds are hooked and stick to hair and clothes – hence the plant’s other name of Cleavers.

Stinging Nettles are very useful, if painful plants too.  They can be used for making cloth, food and medicine.  My plant book says that the Roman belief that stinging nettles cured rheumatism still persists in Britain.  I can say that there is some truth in this as when I am stung on my hands my rheumatic joints there become less painful.  I can’t say I would care to roll about in them unclothed as some people recommend!

Image

These are Hawthorn flowers – May blossom.  ‘Ne’er cast a clout til May be out’ – either don’t leave off your winter clothes until the end of the month of May, or, don’t leave off your winter clothes until the May blossom is on the trees.

Image

This is the wild rose and already there are large flower buds as you can see.  This is early, as the rose usually flowers at the end of May and into June.

Image

A fine crop of old equipment and other rubbish in this field.  At the beginning of Adrian Bell’s book ‘Corduroy’ he talks of the Suffolk farmers’ habit of leaving implements in corners of fields or yards covered in nettles until they are needed for some particular function.  They are then returned ‘to some out-of-the-way corner, to be a sleeping Gulliver for the grass again’.

Image

These are the boys – male sheep, tups.  A bit stinky – sleeping and snoring in the sun.  Wandering about having something to eat now and then – not a care in the world.

Image

 

Common comfrey.  In medieval times the roots of this plant were dug up in the spring and grated to produce a sludge which was packed round broken limbs.  It hardened to a consistency similar to that of Plaster of Paris.

Image

A view over the fields.

Image

Cut-leaved Crane’s-bill.

Image

Great Yellow-cress.

Image

The lane.

Image

Herb-Robert.  In the Middle Ages they believed that a plant showed how it could be used through its colour or shape – the doctrine of signatures.  This plant turns a fiery red in autumn so they thought it should be used in the treatment of blood disorders.  It has a strange odour and in some places it is known as ‘Stinking Bob’.

Image

Daisies.

Image

Daisies and Germander Speedwell.

Image

Greater Stitchwort.

Image

A Buttercup.

Image

Pineapple Weed.

Image

A female orange-tip butterfly.  Note the lovely green-marbled underwing.

Image

The signpost at the end of our lane.

Image

A male orange-tip butterfly.  I have been trying for over a week to photograph these fast flying butterflies!

Image

Lords and Ladies.  This is specially for Heather!  At last these strange plants are flowering here.  I have some in my garden but they are hidden by tall grass and difficult to photograph.

Image

Cow and calves.

Image

This is the pond at the side of the lane.  I’m not sure what the fish are – perhaps perch? – but we have the same fish in our big pond.

Image

The pond next to the lane.

Image

Field maple leaves and flowers.

Image

A St Mark’s fly.  They usually appear about the same time of year as the Feast of St Mark – 25th April.

R and I went out for a walk across the fields when he returned home from his trip to Gloucestershire that evening.

Image

Red Campion and cow-parsley growing at the end of our lane.

Image

A Red Campion flower.

Image

Ribwort flowers – Turkish Caps,

Image

A ‘fairy ring’ caused by toadstools.

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A bird-scarer cannon.

Image

More stitchwort.

Image

St Peter’s Washes.

I’ll end with some photos of birds seen in my garden during the past week.

Image

A female Greater-Spotted Woodpecker.

Image

A bluetit.

Image

Male and female Greenfinches

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Easter Day

20 Sun Apr 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Easter, greater spotted woodpecker

Happy Easter to everyone!

The weather today was much better than forecast.  I was woken at 6.00am by really heavy rain and thought at first that that was what we would get all day.  Fortunately, this was not the case.  We had a few more fairly heavy showers during the morning but the afternoon was dry with a couple of glimpses of the sun.  The temperature rose to the dizzy heights of 13 degrees centigrade as well!

Mum always comes to lunch on feast days but as I had to take her to church as well today, cooking the lunch and being able to eat it at lunch-time was going to prove difficult.  I got up early and managed to get a lot done by the time I had to leave for church.  I was disappointed not to be able to go to church with R and A, who has come home for the weekend, as the 9.30am service was at our church at Rumburgh.  When I arrived back home with Mum I found that a lot of work had been done by my dear family and we managed to eat our meal at 2.30pm.  I then sat around talking to the family all the afternoon feeling very tired but quite happy.  We had all exchanged little Easter gifts earlier.  When I was a girl we just had Easter chocolate eggs and sometimes we painted hen’s eggs with food dye.  With my girls things are different.  A really disliked chocolate when she was little and still doesn’t eat much of it now so I used to get her Easter-themed presents.  E also won’t eat Easter eggs (but does like chocolate) so I’ve always got her Easter gifts too.

014Easter decoration (640x480)

 

This is the Easter decoration in our hallway that E did for us (with apologies for the horrible carpet we can’t afford to replace yet!)

We did manage to see a male Greater Spotted Woodpecker on our peanut feeder today.

006Woodpecker on peanuts (640x427) 007Woodpecker on peanuts (640x427)

 

 

I will be able to post something longer and better tomorrow I hope.

 

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I talk about what it's like living in a quiet part of Suffolk. I am a wife, mother and daughter, a practising Christian and love the natural world that surrounds me. I enjoy my life - most of the time!

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