Rutland Water - 1st June

A trip to Rutland Water, on the 1st of June 2011, was rather rewarding. A total of 57 bird species, 3 species of butterfly, 3 mammals, and 1 insect. It wasn't a fantastic day for photography though unfortunately so I just focused on taking notes of what I had seen. I have just 1 photograph here, but it's not great. The Forest Bug Pentatoma rufipes nymph isn't particularly in focus but I thought it was a good photograph to show the nymph of this bug.

Forest Bug nymph

Mint Moth

I took this photograph of the Mint Moth Pyrausta aurata in my garden at the beginning of May:

Mint Moth

Blog is back.

Tawny Owl 1

After a lot of hard work and help from Blogger my blog is now fixed so I can start adding photographs again and tell yourselves about my journey.

I've missed writing on here an awful lot, and I've got a huge back log of things I've wanted to write on here, but I'm sure over the next few days I'll be able to get back on track.

I've been bird ringing for about a year and a half now. At the beginning of May 2011, I went out with my ringing trainer and checked owl boxes where tawny owls Strix aluco may be breeding. There were approximately 10 owl boxes to check, three of these boxes had tawny owls in, and 2 had eggs. The eggs were left, but the chicks couldn't be rung because they were too young, so it was arranged to come back in 2 weeks to check.

Tawny Owl 2

Tawny Owl 3

So 2 weeks went by and I went back out with my ringing trainer. The next boxes with eggs in hadn't hatched unfortunately, and one box now had 1 chick not 2 so it was assumed due to the lack of food sources one owl had eaten the other. Looking back at past records of tawny owl ringing there has been quite a decline in the numbers this year due to the bad winter we had here in the UK.

The photograph (Tawny owl 4) was taken at the beginning of May. The Tawny owl 5 photograph is the same chick 2 weeks later.

Tawny Owl 4

Tawny Owl 5

Problems

Please bare with me, I'm currently trying to resolve an issue with my blog (my photographs will not load onto the site). I will try and get this sorted as soon as possible. Thank you.