What have you seen

I’m surprised by the amount of cuckoos heard and seen during our present tour. In recent years I’ve witnessed very few. Possibly just in the right places at the right times. Fascinating breeding behaviours, females arrive first and go about finding suitable nests to deposit eggs. Male arrives and sits high in trees calling to all females to visit him and partake of his services. Neither parents take any interest in their offspring leaving that to the unsuspecting fosterers. The hatched cuckoos then remove any occupant eggs or chicks from their now home. Parent cuckoos having never seen their offspring then leave for sunny shores overseas.  It’s nature and it’s fascinating.

Whilst in Villefrance yesterday and parked next to a diy store saw about 30 Swifts flying about the most I have seen together for a few years  and then saw 2 Pergrine Falcons flying about and ignoring the Swifts and then 1 did a dive down and not sure whether it got a bird possibly a pigeon as a few were flying around made my day then had to do some diy shopping heyho.

Got a lot of Black Veined White butterflies about today had 4 on a tall Scabious plant tried to photo them  but they just moved away.

We had moved from the wooded area where there were lots of warblers of different varieties to an area of open countryside, so the birds are different, Skylarks and Yellowhammers, Red Kites and Buzzards, plus an odd Hare in the wheat fields and the night before last watch a fox watching us as we walked by on the road. No longer hear the Cuckoo's either.

This chap was in our garden earlier today.

Beautiful to look at tinny but they do make a mess of the feeders which in a positive from negative light helps the Dunnocks, Robins & Doves to get a share👍🏻😊

See, they’re helping their mates😀

There are various Woodpecker living across the road in the wooded area but it’s rare for them to venture into the garden. One flew into our closed window last year but, happily, recovered after a few minutes and flew off again👍 

A nuthatch visited the tree behind our pitch and gave a good display for several minutes. Another green woodpecker on the grass finger between pitches and a buzzard being driven mad by a group of rooks. Damsels and dragons out hawking and the buzz in the tree canopy a reminder of childhood. May be my hearing has deteriorated in latter years, also yet to clean bugs off the car windscreen like of old. Even remember cleaning them off mid journey, not these days it seems!

We had two grand days walking by the R.Wye where we saw and heard stacks of Warblers : Garden, Sedge, Willow, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, plus Reed Buntings, Long Tailed Tits, Sky Larks, and on & over the water Egrets, Messangers, Sand Martins, along with perhaps 20 Swan, and a Marsh Harrier.

While having our picnic lunch today we had an unexpected guest, but I am not sure of its identity, see the photo, anyone help?

Looks like it might belong to the Ichneumonidae group of insects Nellie. Leave you to hunt through them to find it though.

nelliethehooker, could it be a Longhorn Beetle, maybe Leptura Rubra, although the male has a dark head.