Blog update imminent!!

Sooooo, it's been over a month since my last blog post. And this isn't a proper post either. I went away to Austria (Zell Am Zee) with some family from 18th June to 2nd July, hence why I haven't been blogging! I'm still in the process of sorting through the holiday photos (there are a few thousand of them) so I'll just mention what I'm going to put up in blogs which I'll write in the near future.

Contents of blogs to come will include (all of them in the wild):
Red-backed Shrike
Golden Eagle
Griffon Vulture
Redstart
Black Redstart
Goldeneye
Great Crested Grebe
Hummingbird Hawk Moth
Various dragonflies and butterflies, including Swallowtails
Ibex

And maybe a few others.


Some local things now; I've had a brief look on the Coly for the Kingfisher pair I've been monitoring, hoping that the second brood didn't fledge whist I was away. I only saw one adult bird whilst I was there so it's hard to establish what's going on. Although this part of the day was unsuccessful, I headed downstream on the Coly and heard the call of more than one Kingfisher (more than 2 miles downstream of the Kingfisher nesting site that I already discovered). It didn't take long to see the two birds, both of which were juveniles. These birds then led me to what I'm 80% sure is the nest of a second Kingfisher family on the Coly. There's a hole in the bank, with lots of sticks below it, covered in poo! Very characteristic of a Kingfisher nest area. Especially as I saw the two birds sitting on the poo-covered branch, just beneath the hole in the bank... So, I'm assuming it's another nest. Either way, I walked widely around the area so as not to disturb them (although the probable nest site isn't hidden particularly well from public view so pretty much every dog walker and general walker will be disturbing the birds all through the day, whether it's intentional or not).

Another point of interest is some nesting Little Owls, also in Colyton. I've taken some poor quality photos of a juvenile and adult bird. They were taken at 21:30 on 4th July, so you can imagine the camera will have struggled with the low light! Some of the shots of these will probably go on my next blog post.