Outdoorsy Shite - April Top Trumps

[GrimmaTheNome]

Rules as before - nature 'spots' fauna and flora, points for rarity (absolute or relative to where seen), seasonality, eloquence of description. Please declare if you're in forrin parts or a mermaid.

Did I cover everything?

Just a kestrel trying hard to stay on a fence post in the face of the prevailing winds up here on the Pennines.

The curlews heard but not seen as very misty.

Still no swallows.

Tufted ducks have appeared on the pond. Just a pair and I assume passing through.

Am watching the behaviour of 2 swans very closely. One of them is doing a lot of sitting. This would be big news round here as there have not been cygnats on the pond in living memory. Pair of swans only started to visit a couple of years ago.

Two pied wagtails hopping in a hospital courtyard, their black and white coats gleaming seal-like in the rain.

Its funny how well pied wagtails have taken to man-made environments. A couple of weeks ago I saw some on the Ribble, and thought, how unusual, haven't seen those other than in supermarket carparks before, its always yellow wagtails in rivers

Charming little birds - always look so perky when they wag.

There are thousands of them in the evenings in the local car park, all twittery and tweety.

Well, maybe not thousands but you know what I mean.

Hurrah - the swallows have returned to the stables - well, there was one at lunchtime, and I know that doesn't make a summer, but very happy to see it.

(I actually had a little weep, that is how tragic I am. I think it is because I go to South Africe quite regularly and see the swallows there, and I just find it incredible that they fly all that way to come and breed up on the windswept Pennines especially for me.)

Pied wagtails scrapping, I thought it was only the blackbirds, I'm living in a war zone :)

Aww Exit I also got a bit of something in my eye when I saw our swallow back. Still waiting for its mate ...

Masses of skylarks all around us. We can't walk the dogs anywhere offlead just now, but head off to the big sands nearby when we can, which is very dog-friendly.

I'm going to try again to get some swifts into our specially bought swift boxes this year. I have the CD but need a machine that will repeat the CD over and over so's I don't have to keep going up to start it again - has anyone else done this??

Africe - that would be just round the corner from Africa.

I feel a bit mean because I dread the prospect of house martens returning to nest in our house. They make their nest right by the only crack of bedroom window that isn't painted shut, so we either have to do without ventilation all summer, or open the window and risk crowds of silly birds coming in and swooping round the room while the dog goes bananas. Plus the amount of poo that one nestful of birds can cascade down the side of the house is staggering.

I know I should love them, but ... I can't.

I know, housemartins are little buggers a bit of a pain. Plenty of folk round here hang stuff from their eaves to prevent them nesting by windows.

Can you unstick another window? or are they like ours, which are only held together by years of paint ?

We have to remember to keep doors shut, last year we had swallows raised in the cottage, we've got a roof this year so it all matters a bit more. No swifts tho.

I confess I put up one of those bird-of-prey silhouettes to deter nesting last year, and it seemed to work then. Fingers crossed for this year.

One remarkable day a year or so ago, when I had both the front door and the back door open, housemartins made several flights in through the front door, along the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door. It was very gracefully done, no panic or poo. It was lovely (though also slightly sinister. When they mass on the phone wires near my house I can't help thinking of Hitchcock.)

AIBU, that sounds very beautiful and special. I wish I'd experienced it.

Where did housemartins live before there were any houses?

(Though AIBUs seem to have been taking it a bit too far, I mean outside under the eaves is one thing ...)

What was the natural habitat of pied wagtails before tarmac?

Could they have been cavemartins and lived with cavemen?

I don't remember ever seeing a swift...do I live too far west? And no eaves to our house so no housemartins either :(

Used to have pied wagtails nesting in a shed at work. The male spent several weeks attacking his own reflection in everyone's wing mirrors. I used to worry about him hurting himself so I used to hang towels over the wing mirrors each day.

Oh darling cavemartins!

I used to have a male sparrow in love with his own reflection in my wing mirror. He used to come and flirt and preen at it for hours at a time. In the end I had to cover it up, out of a very genuine fear he would starve to death before bringing himself to leave and eat.

Goodness, all these covered wingmirrors to prevent self-harming and narcissistic birds from injury"

The birds round here just perch on them for a shit

My narcissistic sparrow was pooing as well as preening. He really needed to work on his wooing strategy, I think.

Blackbird death match here this morning. They are interspersing periods of baleful glaring with little flurries of twirly, fluttery rage.

at your narcissistic sparrow Norf! This must mean that sparrows are more intelligent than cats - I put my cat in front of the mirror to see what she does, and it's nothing. Her eyes don't even register it, let alone does she recognise herself! But then, she is spectactularly dull.

I think it may be more that birds are better with visual perception than cats and dogs. My observation of dogs is that they see movement far better than static objects and rely far more on hearing and scent than sight.

Its this sort of difference that makes comparing 'intelligence' between species so difficult.

Yes that figures. I bird's sense of sight is is main weapon and defence.

Apparently though one of the main "testers" for a sense of consciousness is whether a creature can recognise itself in a mirror. There have been studies done on bottlenose dolphins in pools, and they have play and pose in front of the mirror, recognising themselves and other dolphins too. They also recognise 2D pictures of other dolphins they know. In the film The Cove (while a terribly distressing watch) there is an interesting sequence all about it.

So many different kinds of intelligence though and we try and measure it up against ours

Whats the consciousness difference, do you think, between recognition-of-self-by-sight-in-a-mirror, rather than, eg recognition-of-self-by-scent-in-field-you-walked-through-three-days-ago?

Or a sworn enemy, the terrier growls and swears at certain widdle, obviously I'm not a 00% sure but its from the poncey spaniel who lives on the way to The beach.