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?