Feather care: male linnet preening LIght overnight rain had refreshed vegetation.
The day promised record temperatures, so I set out at 5.30am. Swifts flew low and silently over juniper and scrub. Moths and tiny butterflies flew about the seeding grasses and rose from juniper. There were common blue and rich-coloured fritillary making territory in wavering flight. I heard the distant call of lapwing and curlew.
I sat contemplative on an erratic and caught the sweet note of a innet which settled in the bare branches of a hawthorn close by.
The day promised record temperatures, so I set out at 5.30am. Swifts flew low and silently over juniper and scrub. Moths and tiny butterflies flew about the seeding grasses and rose from juniper. There were common blue and rich-coloured fritillary making territory in wavering flight. I heard the distant call of lapwing and curlew.
I sat contemplative on an erratic and caught the sweet note of a innet which settled in the bare branches of a hawthorn close by.
I was silent and still and the linnet stayed some while on his perch. The photo-sequence shows his forked tail, his grey head and crimson breast. Then he turned to show his chestnut mantle and began to preen, shaking out his plumage intent on feather-care. When will he moult, going into eclipse plumage? He has given all his energy to breeding and in mid-summer the season is almost over. So his lovely colours will fade and he'll have new feathers.
Six- spot burnet are a striking moth and sunlight casts a lovely sheen over their wings.
How different the habit of the small birds which breed in this habitat! Bird-watching, you learn their ways gradually. Linnet which favours a perch on a bare twig not far from thick gorse and juniper. Stonechat who set up an alarm call when you intrude on their territory and perch on a twig above the scrub where they nest. They don't fly off but flit from perch to perch, in defence of their young. Redpoll whose in-flight call I hear every day, see they in flight but they fall silent when they come down into the scrub. I've heard them somewhere in a thick stand of gorse, but they're elusive. And the wren whose ticking call is common but who rarely likes to be looked at and buries himself deep in hawthorn.
How different the habit of the small birds which breed in this habitat! Bird-watching, you learn their ways gradually. Linnet which favours a perch on a bare twig not far from thick gorse and juniper. Stonechat who set up an alarm call when you intrude on their territory and perch on a twig above the scrub where they nest. They don't fly off but flit from perch to perch, in defence of their young. Redpoll whose in-flight call I hear every day, see they in flight but they fall silent when they come down into the scrub. I've heard them somewhere in a thick stand of gorse, but they're elusive. And the wren whose ticking call is common but who rarely likes to be looked at and buries himself deep in hawthorn.
Skylark will soon fall silent, once their breeding season is accomplished. I heard a male singing and found him sitting in the top of a juniper bush. In the breeding season the male has a crest of feathers which he raised and lowered during the time I observed him.
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