Bluebells

Spent the morning with Mr T charging around Holyford Woods with a step ladder! Now I admit this is a rather hypocritical post for me... flowers and woods (not my most favourite things in the world!). But the woods were just fantastic, with stunning scenery...

Nicely positioned dew droplet in the last photo!

And why did we have a ladder with us??? Well for our annual check of the nest boxes.

We only managed to look at half of them in the wood (there are 90 odd), and none of the ones checked were ready for us. Most of the occupied nest boxes contained a nest full of eggs, but a couple of them did look like this...

Really REALLY baby Blue Tits!

So like most things in the natural world this year, Blue and Great Tits are nesting later than usual. Normally we would have rung over a hundred pulli on this date in previous years.

Whilst wandering in the woods, a Tawny Owl was nice too see in the densest patch of holly. Otherwise just the usual Marsh Tit, Tree Creeper, GS Woody, etc...

I had the moth trap out on Saturday night, I didn't bother last night as it was a bit too windy for my liking.

Saturday night's haul was only 9 moths of 8 species. There were no new ones for the garden, but one new for the year. Full list as follows: 2 Pebble Prominent, singles of Waved Umber, Brimstone, Spectacle (nfy), Muslin Moth, Nut-tree Tussock, Common Quaker and Hebrew Character.