Snake in the Grass.

But no need for alarm although the Grass Snake startled me as it slid away a little too quickly for a photo at Shellingford Quarry yesterday, this is a good site for these harmless reptiles and apart from this snake it was quiet on the birding front with only a mixture of Finch a Whitethroat and a very tuneful chorus from Song Thrush and Blackbird. From my photo you can see that I viewed a Blood Vein Moth and a purple/mauve flower that I will leave you to name. The forecast of a huge deluge of rain thankfully failed to materialise although a phone call from a cousin holidaying in Devon told of tropical like rainfall, lets hope it continues to hold off.

camboy

Common as Muck

That cheeky chappie the House Sparrow is in decline in some parts and it brings home to me just how the commonplace suddenly becomes very important when we realise that something taken for granted could be lost forever. With its rather monotonous cheep cheep and somewhat dull colour scheme this bird is often overlooked, but on closer inspection its subtle browns, greys and various shades in between have a beauty all of their own.
Oxfordshire is successfully operating a rescue plan for its cousin the Tree Sparrow although this horrendously wet summer is proving a most difficult time and its looking as though this year is going to be our first real disappoinment in some six seasons of a steady upward trend in breeding numbers, of course many other species are also struggling and we are in the hands of an unseasonal season.

camboy

Hooray Henrys.

Stereotyping is a dangerous practise not least because it often assumes an inferiority of intellect of those who hold views different to ones own. A case in point is the poking of fun at the shooting fraternity as if they are stupid, this I can assure you is most certainly not the case and there are many very clever brains out there justifying the wholesale slaughter of gamebirds, an argument one would think impossible to win, but winning they are although often with suspect research from institutions desperate for funding.
Just look at the clever names of their campaigns SOS (save our songbirds) and songbird survival to an uninformed and usually only midly interested public these are obvious and opinion forming by the use of a few letters. So what can I come up with how about Save Hawks in Trouble  or shit for short doesn't quite roll off the tongue does it ? If we are to get across to the powers that be, we need reasoned and researched arguments. So how do I stand on the killing of creatures for self gratification it doesn't really bother me because things live and things die and so it has always been and always will be and a Pheasant will have no preference to being taken by a fox or shot by a person, indeed it is well to remember that mercy is not an understood concept in the natural world, but what I do care passionately about is when the activities of people seriously impinge on the countryside to such an extent that the way our food is grown and sporting excess result in the loss of species and often with the dubious excuse of " gotta turn a profit guv"  Shooters must and I mean they really must start being more responsible in their attitudes toward a more sensibly balanced countryside and get away from what has been called by themselves The Numbers Game a term first used many years past by shooting folk to describe the guilt felt because of disproportionate and inappropriate numbers of Pheasants released, leading to abuse of the countryside  examples being the supplying of shoot days to the  corporate sector and over indulgence in the slaughter of gamebirds.

camboy

Woolstone Wanderlust.

 Yesterday 4th July had a walk beneath the downs starting at Woolstone a pretty village from where family members visiting gardens open to the public for the weekend had last Sunday seen Spotted Flycatchers.  Nice views of a pair of Bullfinch, couple of Chiffchaff but nothing too exciting from the unusual perspective and most noticable was the unseasonal muddy conditions with water laying in puddles that in a normal year would have been more likely to have been used at this time of year as dust baths. Met a couple from Sheffield who are camping locally at britchcombe farm, and they told me of relations of theirs from Australia who spent a couple of weeks on holiday with them at their Yorkshire home recently and spent virtually the whole of the holiday huddled round the central heating radiators and were glad to get back to OZ. The weather people are talking of a lot more of the same, Great & Blue Tit, Tree Sparrow and Barn Owl are struggling badly and so am I.

camboy

It's Good To Talk.

And sometimes it's good to listen, like the Ben Sheldon talk on the study of diseases in birds, this is an ongoing research project at  Wytham Woods by scientists and assistants of the Edward Grey Instutute. Arranged  as part of the Ashmolean Natural History of Oxford member events I was pleased to see the talk was attended by the best part of a dozen OOS members who like myself left with our heads full of many interesting facts and speculative opinions concerning the mainly avian malaria and bird pox studies currently being undertaken there. The woods were made famous by the pioneering work of the revered David Lack many years ago, initially I believe on the Robin but for a long time now the Great and Blue Tit have been the studied birds along with another project covering Mute Swans. My thanks to the ANHSO and Ben Sheldon for this splendid talk.

camboy

Weather it will or whether it wont.

And so this very difficult year weatherwise continues just how serious it will be in the the long term remains to be seen. I remember the years of my younger days when car headlights and windscreens were insect splattered and one would have an annoying task of trying to keep headlights and windscreen clean, oh! that that were the case now, and talking to our OOS conservation officer Dr Alan Larkman just the other day and bemoaning the insecticides being dumped on the countryside he quite rightly pointed that in fact the problem is more likely the herbicides that modern farming uses thereby denying the insects their necessary means of sustenance and consequently the numbers required to sustain reasonable bird populations.

camboy

From my Garden

The Long-Tailed Tits that often breeze through my garden are a brief joy to behold as they acrobatically work the trees and bushes the first ones already gone before the last arrive they are indeed all action and very entertaining, an avian delight I never tire of.
The Foxes I have seen only a few times and in a way I prefer not to see them in such domestic surroundings and a sight of them in the garden fails to excite me in the way a view even if only briefly of wild Fox in its more natural habitat raises my heartbeat.

camboy