Category Archives: water birds

Feeding the Chicks

I was back at Falmer Pond today, checking out how the little moorhen chicks are coming along. A second nest has appeared, but I can’t make my mind up whether this is for a new brood or simply that the original family has moved home. I’ve not seen any activity on the original nest, but that could simply be a matter of timing. The chicks are doing fine, and the adults are still busy making sure they get their vitamins.

Moorhen chicks

Moorhen chicks

Moorhen chicks

Spending so much time skulking around the edge of the pond (me, that is) it’s impossible not to see the true skulkers (rats, that is) dashing in and out of the undergrowth. This is the cutest of the photos from today.

Brown rat in undergrowth

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

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Fox and Badger Video

This is a bit of a mixed bag. I spent most of my free time looking for small woodland birds. I could hear them, but getting a clear line of sight proved somewhat more difficult. I had better luck with the speckled wood butterflies which were out in number.

Speckled wood butterfly

This is a view of the woodland path I was following. It’s very pretty and runs adjacent to the fields where I was photographing buzzards yesterday.

woodland path

I made a very brief visit to the pond at Falmer Village to check up on the moorhen chicks. They’re doing fine. 😀

Moorhen chick and adult

Back home the garden is lively at night with foxes and badgers. I’ve even managed a couple of direct sightings of the bolder of the still shy pack. This is from last night.

fox

The trail camera is doing rather better than me at the moment and there are some nice behavioural interactions among these clips of foxes and badgers taken over the past two nights.

I’ll close with the moon from this evening. It’s just a few hour past full and was still quite low in the sky when I took this.

moon

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in Badger, Behaviour, Butterfly, Foxes, Landscape, Moon, South Downs National Park Tagged , , , , , , , , |

More Moorhen Chicks

Another quick post today. The moorhen chicks seem to be doing well, spending as much time out of the nest as in it, while the adults are being kept busy finding a constant supply of food.

These photos are all cropped to some extent and were taken from a sufficiently safe distance to avoid disturbing the birds.

Moorhen chicks

Moorhen chicks

Moorhen chicks

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

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