At last caught on camera: the fish thief! This grey heron has been visiting for a while, leaving big footprints in the mud around the pond, but today’s the first time he’s triggered the trail cam. Does seem to be limping though. Hopefully will get more footage soon with a better view.
Category: Animals
A gaggle of geece
Five greylag geece visited the pond this morning; lovely to see but the the appetite of geece can be rather destructive to fragile pond plants. They didn’t stay long, treating the pond rather like a motorway service station, and once they had their fill off they went, heading north.
Kestrels wanted
We have a new nest box on one of the old oak trees on the edge of the field: this one for kestrels. Thanks to John and Mary from Talon Nest Boxes. Now we wait…
Toad time
And now it’s time for the toads: unlike frogs they’re quite happy to be out on dry land.
Oystercatchers
A long way from home* but these three oystercatchers seem happy enough rootling around the edge of the pond.
*Shropshire isn’t renowned for its coast, or oysters!
A hare and its predators
Filmed over two nights on the same camera at a busy crossroads: a hare, a cat, a fox and a badger.
And here’s a composition of all four to show their relative sizes (the hare is closer to the camera so it looks bigger than it is).
Hare
We spotted this brown hare a few days ago running at full pelt into the distance but this morning filmed it on the trail cam undisturbed in the early morning sun. It is coming into the field (we hope looking for a nesting site) through the holes in the hedge that the badgers make. Unfortunately badgers and hares don’t mix well together but there’s not way we can let one in but not the other: we’ll have to leave nature to do its thing.
Spring is coming
Just as the winds die down, the first frogs and toads have started to gather in the shallows around the pond edge: one of the first signs that spring is not far away.
A common frog
Red Kite
The unmistakable silhouette of a red kite over Tipton’s Croft. They’re not an unusual site around Shrewsbury but we don’t usually see them overhead here. The resident buzzard wasn’t impressed.
New tenants in the Pond
Today we had a delivery of some more native English fish to join the roach already resident in the pond: some three-spined stickleback and perch. Hopefully the pond will be big enough for them all to avoid each other as much as possible, as the perch are rather partial to eating small fish.
Not everything is dormant during winter
These freshwater shrimp are having fun wriggling around upside down on the underside of the ice in the old pond.
We know: they’re not actually shrimp and probably not the native Gammarus pulex but rather the interloper Crangonyx pseudogracilis.
Amphibian adrift
Say hello to one large Great Crested Newt! Found on the floor of our garage, about a hundred yards from the pond, not very well, but perked up quickly once relocated to a more appropriate site in the undergrowth on the pond’s edge.
It’s not just owls!
The three barn It’s not just owls! Summer is a great time of year for the insects too 
Broad Bodied Chaser Dragonfly 
White Tailed Bumble Bee 
Comma Butterfly 
Common Green Grasshopper 
Common Green Grasshopper 
Dock Bugs 
Drone Fly 
Nursery Web Spider 
Sloe Bug
Ghost of a dragonfly
It’s the time of year for our dragonflies to morph from larvae to adults. Here’s the discarded cast (‘exuvia’) of the old skin, probably from a broad-bodied chaser as we have lots of those here and this cast is quite big (about two inches long).
Little Egret
The roach’s spawning has attracted some unwelcome attention (for the roach) in the form of a little egret.
Didn’t take much to scare it off but it will be back!
Spawning roach
The roach are spawning at last as the weather finally warms up. They’ve been getting all splashy in a clump of water crowfoot and have been at it all day.
Normally rather shy, today the roach are behaving like a pod of dolphins.
Our first moorhen
Having eaten all it wanted, the swan has gone elsewhere. We now have a small moorhen visiting instead. Rather noisy for its size!
Swan Lake
A juvenile mute swan arrived today, quite bold and hungry, currently hoovering up the water crowfoot (which is a shame as it’s just started to flower). Lovely addition to the pond though.
Smooth operator
Now the frogs and toads have had their fun it’s time for the newts. There are a lot of them this year, both smooth and great crested but now the water has become so clear they are easy to spot and the visiting hungry heron quite likes them for breakfast. Today only the smoothest of newts wanted to be photographed.
If you don’t want to be seen…
… choose a bigger blade of grass to hide behind.
