Close encounter with goldfinches

Today, I would like to share with you a video I took of goldfinches at my bird feeder. I tried to get very close to their faces so that I could see how they ate their seeds. See how they move their beaks?  http://youtu.be/FvaQF2cUNcY

Featherless blackbird

 We had a strange looking blackbird in our garden last year. I originally thought that it had white feathers but watching the tape later made me realise that he had actually none. I don't know what happened to the bird, whether it was due to illness or if he had been in a fight. I never saw him this year, so I expect he died sometime over the winter. I have placed the clip on youtube http://youtu.be/DDihiMnRWwI where you can see him foraging in you back garden.

Squirrel eating nuts

I have squirrels coming to our garden to eat the peanuts we leave out for the birds. I am quite fascinated by their paws. They look so much like little hands. So I decided to film one squirrel eating and use my zoom to focus on its paws. Very long claws! If you would like to view the 51-second clip on Youtube, go to http://youtu.be/Iq9MlitZMa8. In the meantime, here are a couple of still images.

Unfair advantage - blue tits

I managed to film a very private feeding session at the top of my apple tree. I only realised their presence when I heard their hungry calls. Three little fledglings were patiently waiting for their parents to feed them and got very noisy when food arrived. Only it seems one baby got all the food while the other two were standing right behind him, out of beak's reach .....!
I hope they changed places soon afterwards! Have a look at the video on http://youtu.be/dvKqEz8E5IY

Song thrush or Grive musicienne

It is funny to see the slight difference in meaning between both French and English words. "Musicienne", which is the feminine of "musicien", means "musician". Whereas in English, we describe our thrushes as "whistling".
Talking about differences, the difference in gender is somewhat complicated in French. It is something you just have to learn at school. If it makes you feel better, we, French people, had to learn all your irregular verbs too (i.e. to go, I went, not I goed, etc.)!!
Now, we say " grive musicienne" because we say "une grive", not "un grive", the word is feminine. Yep, even if the bird is male, we still call it a "she". In the French language, the "le" ou "la" is associated with the name, not the actual gender. Similarly, your calling a ship "she" was always a bit weird to me, probably because we say "un bateau/ un navire", masculine. I believe it is because sailors were very fond of their boats that they referred to them as female.
One funny analogy about gender (they are lots more) is frogs and toads, i.e. grenouille and crapeau. Grenouille is feminine, so we would say "Madame Grenouille" and crapeau is masculine so we would say "Monsieur Crapeau", irrespective of the fact the Grenouille could be a male and Crapeau a female.
Anyway, enough of my French lesson. Have a look at my Youtube video of the thrush eating a big slug http://youtu.be/PavZxtvCY_U

Why are juvenile blue tits green?

I could not give you the scientific explanation but what I know is that when you mix blue and yellow, which are the colours of an adult blue tit, you get green. So, somehow, the bird's body is not mature enough to process the colours in its body hence unable to separate blue from yellow. What do you think? Is my theory any good? You can also watch my video of a juvenile blue tit on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmhBhL-y1ic. In the meantime, is are a few still images taken from it.

Scared of cows

Have you ever had to cross a field only to realise that you need to walk past a herd of cows? Pretty scary isn't? even worse if there is a bull amongst them as he can be very protective.
Anyway, we were walking in the Devon countryside and went through a field. I was a bit hesitant at first seeing that there were calves. We just pretended not to be scared and kept walking in a straight line. The cows just moved of their own accord, me made space for the couple behind us and I got a nice collection of pictures, see?

Singing wren

The pictures below were taken from a small clip Singing wren scratching and fluffing feathers that I posted on Youtube. This little wren is having a good clean/scratch but still manages to sing. It looks like it is struggling with a few fleas too.

Being about 10cm high, wrens are probably going to be the smallest birds you will ever see in your back garden. It is hard to take close shots of them with a camera because they keep jumping from one place to the other when foraging.

Their distinctive feature, apart from their size, is their tail. It looks like someone has pushed a small lollipop stick on their bum.

Wild otter eating a live lamprey fish

I have posted a 45sec clip Otter eating lamprey that I filmed when we went on holiday to Devon last March 2011. We had just parked the car in the hotel car park and decided to go for a walk before checking in. As we were crossing the bridge, we heard a lot of splashing and saw some sort of commotion right in the centre of the river. We realised that an otter was making all that noise. The otter then swam to the river bank. We gathered it must have caught a fish and was going to eat it. By crossing the river and walking along the other side of the bank, we managed to get as near as it was physically possible and continued filming. By then, we could see that it was a long fish, possibly an eel, although we realised later that it was in fact a lamprey. The lamprey was still alive 20 minutes later, as you can see in the video, and the otter was struggling getting its sharp teeth through the flesh of its prey. We went for a walk and when we came back over an hour later, the otter was still munching away. Visibility was getting poor with sunset approaching so I stopped filming. The locals we met later on at the pub were very impressed and thought we were very lucky to have found an otter so quickly. They enjoyed watching the footage on the camcorder viewer.
Unfortunately, all the footage I took of the otter that day disappeared as I accidentally deleted the whole folder while "cleaning" my hard drive. Doh!
Luckily, I still have one clip, the one I have uploaded to Youtube. The reason is because I made a copy of the footage to another folder when I sent it to the BBC. Although the BBC never acknowledged receipt of my video, I am still able to share it with you through Youtube. I hope you will enjoy watching it.

Close encounter with giraffes

Today, I am not going to tell you which zoo I went to visit because I feel like I have said it too many times already! :-)

We were very lucky that day we went to the zoo as, not only we managed to get very close to lions, but we arrived at the giraffes' enclosure just as the keepers were bringing them food. They had a truck full of leafy branches that they tied to a pole, high up in the air. For once, the giraffes did not have to bend down to reach for their food, they could enjoy their meal at head level. It did not take them long to eat all the leaves but I had enough time to get some nice pictures. You can see the calf quite well in the last picture. 

I never realised until then that giraffes have a highly dexterous, bluish-black tongue. They use it to eat the foliage, curling the tongue around the leaves to grab them. I hope you enjoy the pictures. You know that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

My pet Robin

In my old home, I befriended a robin. I know that if I had spent more time out in the garden, I would have managed to have him feed from my hand. But, finding the time is not easy and I never managed to come closer than arm's reach. Still, I think I had a pretty close relationship with him over the years.
It all started when I was working in the garden, digging our very small vegetable patch or weeding around the flower borders. I could often see him in the corner of my eyes watching me. Occasionally, he would fly past my nose really fast and so close that I would feel the air from his wings. I realised later that I was standing too near "his" Rhododendron and he was only trying to scare me away to protect his territory.
Indeed, Robin had a special place in the garden, right in the middle of our Rhododendron, where he would regularly sing his heart out.
One day, I was working in the vegetable patch and Robin was a couple of metres away from me, perched on a branch of our apple tree. I threw worms at him. He was startled at first but got used to it and just stayed on its perch. I knew he could see what I was throwing because he would lean its body sideways following the worms with one eye.
Despite my efforts, Robin never obliged and ignored my lovely meals.
A while later, I was getting some compost from my compost bin and Robin stood on top of the fence near by. I picked a nice juicy worm from the bin and threw it at him. Then, to my amazement, Robin flew right behind the compost bin and disappeared for a few seconds. He flew back up again and stood on the edge of the bin with a great huge spider in its beak, which he ate in front of me. It was as if he was telling me that his favourite food was nice crunchy spiders, not squashy wet worms.
From that day on, I overcame my aversion to spiders and started looking for them around the garden, lifting pieces of wood and stones, just so I could offer them to Robin to eat.
I would gently squash a spider, place it at the end of a very long wooden stick and wedge it gently on a branch next to him, in the Rhododendron or on the apple tree. This was exhilarating, particularly the first time he picked up and ate the diner I was presenting to him! By that time, I also had him trained to my call, a distinctive clicking noise I would make with my mouth everytime I had food ready for him to eat. He would come to me most times and I think the other times, he was probably too far to hear me. I don't know what happened to Robin. We sold our house about 1 1/2 year ago. I did write a note to the new owners telling them all about Robin but I guess I will never know.

Young starlings trying to eat peanuts - Funny birds!

Last spring, I filmed a family of starlings who had landed on our bird feeder. I have posted the HD video on Youtube Young Starlings trying to eat peanuts. You are welcome to have a look. It only lasts a couple of minutes. The young birds were trying to pick up some peanuts while waiting for their parents to feed them. They did not know how to use their beaks properly and kept flicking the peanuts in the air. Juveniles are easy to differentiate from the adults as they have brown-grey plumage and a big mouth! :-). The parents, on the other hand, look black, although when you look closer, you can see they have green and purple glossy feathers.

Did you know that most (but not all!) birds are not able to see things in three dimensions like we humans do? Their eyes are located on either side of their heads. They have, what we call, monocular vision. This is something you can see well in this clip. You can see the birds leaning their heads to the side. They are actually trying to look at the peanuts on the metal tray.

I only realised this a few years back when I was digging my vegetable patch. A robin would keep me company waiting for easy food to grab while I was not looking. One day, it was perched high on a branch a couple of metres away from me. I picked up a worm and threw it towards him. Although startled at first, he realised that he was in no danger and remained on the branch. I kept throwing worms (sorry worms, but it was for the good of Science!) in its direction and then I realised that the robin was tilting its head sideways and down following the worm with one eye.

Anyway, you will see below a few still pictures taken from my video.

Where is Mummy?

Me! Me first!

 

Getting crowded here

But! Where is everybody?

Ring tailed lemurs at Whipsnade Zoo

These lemurs are so cute, aren't they? I took these pictures at Whipsnade Zoo, near Dunstable. You are able to walk inside an enclosure at the zoo which enables you walk right past them.

I would like to put a nice caption for pictures 1 and 3. Would you like to help and suggest a funny caption please? I will post the winning caption under the pictures. If you feel very creative, I can put a caption for the other two as well. Get set, go!

Supergirl very strong girl!

Have a look at this to see how strong my daughter is! Funny! :-) Older brothers are nice aren't ? ;-)

Close encounter with lions

We have been going to Wipsnade Zoo, near Dunstable, ever since the kids were small. It really is a lovely zoo. A bit pricey maybe but if you bring a picnic with you, you can spread the costs then. Anyway, they have installed a great huge glass partition at the lion's enclosure so that visitors can have a good look at them and still feel secure.
When we went to the zoo a couple of years ago, I had the most fantastic opportunity! There were a few lions lying down a couple feet away from us. Then, the rest of the pride came to join them. I was therefore able to take some great pictures. What's even better is that after a while, they must have smelled something interesting as they all went away, to investigate. Have a look at the following pictures. It is just as good as a movie, isn't it?