An hour in the woods

Last Saturday, dad and I got early and went out into a local wood to sit for an hour to see what we could see. It was the first time I had been in the woods since I broke my leg. Even though my cast is off, I am still walking with crutches, and I cannot walk very far at all, but where we sat wasn't too far from the road, even though the wood is quite isolated. I call the wood The Mortuary since that is where I leave dead animals to rot down (the badger and the buzzard are there at the moment).

Most of the wood has mature pine trees with no grass or vegetation on the ground, but at the end where we were there were gaps in the trees, bracken and grass on the floor, and a small pond. A lot of the trees had been blown over in the storms of 2012 which is actually good for some wildlife. The plan was to see how much wildlife I could see in an hour by sitting and being quiet, and was inspired by the current series of BBC Springwatch. Anyway, here's what I saw !

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch (with a video !)

This weekend was the Big Garden Birdwatch which is an event by the RSPB where thousands of people watch their garden for an hour and count what species of birds they see. I'm a member of the RSPB and I done this for years now although often my results weren't very interesting.

Anyone in the UK can take part: here's the link !

I did mine this afternoon. You have to count the most birds of each type you see in one go. Here is what I saw (with a time-lapse video at the end !) Above are some of the birds I usually see on my birdtable. How many do you think I saw today ?

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Last weekend I took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch for the RSPB. I had to see what birds landed in my garden, and write down the most I saw at one time.

In my garden is a bird table with peanuts, sunflower seeds and fat balls. We get a quite a lot of birds, but they might get scared off by all the cats in the village. Sometimes my cats bring in birds they have caught.

Winter birds

It's been a great Christmas but very snowy, so it's difficult to see many bones because there is the ground is all covered in lots of snow. Even though its been snowy and cold I've been on lots of walks and seen lots of wildlife, especially birds, so this week I'm just going to write about birds.

Because its been so snowy, the easiest wood to walk in is the Pheasant Wood, on the other side of the river to my village. There are actually lots of pheasant woods around where I live. During the year the gamekeepers look after the pheasants, then in winter people pay to shoot them. Here's a male pheasant on the left with a female pheasant on the right. They have very long tails. I have a pheasant skull in my collection.



Pheasants are quite fat, an they don't like to fly very much, so they just walk around on the ground. Here are what their footprints look like in the snow.