BIRD NEWS:520

One last shot of Silvertag the female Bewick and her mate Orangetag. The staff member taught me that male birds on the reserve can be told by having a metal band on their right leg and female on their left. As Silvertag has a silver-metal tag on her left leg, I therefore class her as female. However, the colored tags are ID numbers and not sex indicators, so I am unaware if Orangetag is male or female - as it only has an orange tag that I can see.

This emperor goose did not wait for its photo to be taken - but disappeared from view behind the diving feeder cage. Ah yes - here is an info board about the sand martins that I spotted flying all over the lake on my riverside stroll earlier. from the sand martin hide, I didn't see any.

Another fact I learned from the staff member I spoke with was that the trumpeter swans were not the original ones I had known from a few years back. This would explain why they stopped being as friendly all of a sudden - they were not the same swans and did not know me!

Here is a wood pigeon staring down at me from a hut. There is another one, staring down from a tree branch. In the woodland hide, I found....a leaf, a mushroom, and a young moorhen!

Back home, and I still have an abundance of sparrows - gobbling thru 2 mugs worth of seed per day, one suet ball per week also seems to disappear to them. The peanuts vanish quite fast also, as we have plenty of blue tits and a few great tits hanging around.