Guests for Summer

Camera Critters

A welcome new visitor this year was a heron. He would never stop but his flight path took him west to east directly over our house in the evenings. I caught my first glimpse of him in the spring. Maybe he was returning from a day on the reservoirs, or some river beyond our valley. Some have suggested he might be doing the rounds of the garden fish ponds in the area. Whichever it is I've enjoyed his flights into the sunset, his crazy legs dangling back behind him like half deployed landing gear.
Our tawny owls are joyously back in force this summer after their strange absence last year, as are the bats. Two years ago our bats had all but disappeared and there were a few at the back last year but this year they are front and back flitting back and forth. Maybe we are having a better year for their foodstuff, I've notice the moths seem to be up on last year. Are the butterflies doing better than last year? Hard to tell. This Ringlet seemed to be enjoying itself. We featured the Orange Tip earlier, and Debbie showed off her Speckled Wood, but we've also entertained Meadow Browns and many others of the common varieties. I'm still not convinced they are having as good a year as they should be.
One other visitor of note is the sparrowhawk. He was here last year and took a few birds from the front tree right under our noses but he really shocked us by upping his stakes and taking out a magpie, which he consumed in situ on the hillside surrounded by curious and seemingly unconcerned bunnies. We put up a new feeder on one of the back trees a few weeks ago which didn't remain hidden from his hawk eye for long. There is now the perfect imprint of a sparrowhawk on our patio windows. Following the line of where the feeder was hanging, he must have glided low down the hill, made his snatch from the feeder at speed, he's spotted daylight through the patio window through to the front window and tried to escape with the spoils by flying through our living room. The closed window put paid to that plan. Fortunately for the sparrowhawk and rather less fortunately for our sparrow colonies, there was no dead or comatose hawk sprawled on the patio when we investigated. Hopefully he'll think twice before trying that trick again.Lastly we have spied on occasion a cheeky face at the window. Three years ago this tree was constantly infested with feeder destroying cheeky faces but nowadays we are lucky (yes I did say lucky - that was not a typo) to see a brief visit from one of our old adversaries.