Saturday 10 July 2010

2010 SUMMER MADNESS

Summer Madness - Well!  Isn't it?    Coalition Government cutbacks, constant Hospital Visits taking others, Constant Watering of greenhouse plants, emergency Parish Council meetings, allotment weeding, bats and bird surveys in parish, hard drive nearly full, book Car in for MOT and service, tiny flying beetles everywhere, hot muggy nights, - and to cap it all I was booked doing 40 in a 30 area as you leave Stafford south on the A449 by a manned camera.   Oh well! that's life.   Just be a little more careful in the future - go by bus and leave the car at home.
With a friend, we were out doing bat and bird surveys in the local woods last night and came across this bird.  It was a young Buzzard but it had a broken leg which was swollen badly and it was unable to put any weight on it.   One wonders how it got broken.  

Yesterday, I also saw my first Large White butterfly of the year.   But the most extraordinary bird find this year in our Parish was the bird my wife found under the Co-op shop window.  It had obviously flown into the window and killed itself.   She brought it home and I identified it as a Tree Creeper, again a young bird.   Rarely does one find many of the hundreds of young birds that don't survive beyond a few weeks after trying to fend for themselves and learning how to feed and avoid predators and dangers.  But if every one of the 10 Blue Tit eggs or the 14 Mallard eggs that were layed in our garden survived and bred themselves next spring, then we would soon be overrun by Tits and Ducks. 

Unfortunately, I am afraid that the Buzzard with the broken leg will probably not survive to breed itself but maybe one of its siblings will.   That's life - survival of the fittest - no where more certain than with our wildlife.

A sure sign of summer - as I write this I hear greenfinches singing in the garden.  But where are the Cuckoos we used to hear and see flying over when we first moved into this house?   I heard one calling on the Eastern boundary of our parish and one has been heard in the Preston Vale area.