Tag Archives: moorhen

Fighting Moorhens (and an almost bold fox)

May 1, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

I’ve devoted a good number of recent posts to the admittedly very cute little moorhen chicks. Today though, I’m going to concentrate on the adults. Three of them were engaged in a mass punch-up on the pond (I’m not sure they’re all visible in these shots), the equivalent in moorhen-speak to a deer rut. There’s no doubt that mating rights are the main agenda.

moorhens fighting

moorhens fighting

moorhens fighting

moorhens fighting

I was going to post some photos of the local greylags, but I’ve just enjoyed a moderately successful encounter with one of our garden foxes. He was still acting shy, but did linger for several minutes. Here are two photos. I took a total of seven (very restrained for me), and they were all from 30+ feet away, but it’s a noticeable advancement on previous sightings. The shy fox is almost bold!

fox

fox

Camera note: all moorhen photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. Fox photographed with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens.

Posted in Foxes, water birds Also tagged |

Feeding the Chicks

April 23, 2014 by Words | 6 Comments

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.

Posted in rats, water birds Also tagged , , |

Fox and Badger Video

April 15, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

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.

Posted in Badger, Behaviour, Butterfly, Foxes, Landscape, Moon, South Downs National Park, water birds Also tagged , , , , , , , |