June Top Trumps. Pack you bird books and binoculars...

[SaggyCeratops]

I'll start. Today, I saw a green woodpecker, and got really close to a little owl. I came into close proximity to about a million mosquitoes, and have just removed a wood louse from the bathtub!

Siskens are beautiful aren't they? We had a couple here last month. Such pretty birds.

Siskins are indeed gorgeous. We don't seem to get them hereabouts (Pennines) . Fab that you've had one on your feeder, Hellhas!

My spot is one from last night - a little owl in the field next to my garden. Very cute.

Twites- N Wales coast.
Just making a barrel pond- thanks for the good idea!

hello ,just returned from Portugal and wild life to be seen IN OUR ROOM was two giant cockroaches and a grasshopper,nothing unusual you may think but we were three floors up ! We spotted little lizards amongst the rocks and then came across a massive ants nest which i was fascinated by because they were big ants and their eggs were black !!

I posted this on the other thread,so have c&p it here !

Oh ans i forgot ,in the area where we used to go to a little bar late at night there was a mother cat with 5 little kittens,4 tabby ones and 1 black one.They were so cute so i bought some tinned cat food and took it down there each evening.I think the bar owners in the little area tend to look out for them a bit so they do get fed sometimes. I tried to get pictures but they seemed to run away a lot,but im sure i have one of the black one.I will look later and see what i actually managed to get.

I have just been twittered at by a fledgling robin! I was mucking out, and he fluttered over, perched in the door and gave me a good telling off!
I had a couple of finches in my garden yesterday. They looked like goldfinches, but had a red cap rather than red faces. I cant find them in my AA Book of the British Countryside! I'll have a google later.

I have just found a lovely pair if binoclishers at a local yard sale. I can now twitch properly!

This weekend; a kingfisher, we followed it up the canal and it was fishing and dipping. Fab. Also a pair of woodpeckers and a greeb with its babies on its back.

Ooh, 2 Saggys!

An albino starling, in the garden this morning. Never seen one before!

Well, I know it isn't wildlife, but I was outside, and terribly excited! I was mooching around the paddock tonight, and a Spitfire flew over. He did a display, right overhead, then a fly past and disappeared into the distance. He was followed by a Dakota, that did the same display, ant that was followed by a Chinook.
I watched the whole thing with my new binoculars, and I felt like the display was just for me. [Grin]

An amazing cluster of tiny spiderlings in my garden. In fact two of them, in a dense piece of web between two twigs. They were all clustered tightly together but when I moved closer to look, suddenly one cluster sprang apart and the teeny spiders scattered everywhere. They were very cute and quite a bright yellow colour.

Saggy are you really the Queen?

Wow, an albino starling, that's cool so is the personal air display.

Took the dog out for a gentle stroll yesterday and saw loads of blue damselfly (I'm no good at knowing if they were Azures, Variables, or Common Blue), got loads of photos on the camera and one or two of them are actually quite good (I am going to hint to the family for a new, better camera for my birthday present this year I think). Also got photos of Common Spotted Orchids, yellow flags and Ragged robin. Saw a couple of hobbies while wandering and the kingfisher dashed up the lode in front of us.

We went to Clumber park today and spotted dozens of goslings. The parents weren't doing a very good job of looking after them but instead kept hissing at us minding our own business on the path.
There were also a few cygnets but their parents kept them on the lake.

We also saw a spotted woodpecker but not which type it was - dd2 spotted it. Then we shared our packed lunch with a group of male chaffinches and a blue tit. The kids also had fun spotting about a million squirrels.

I completely lost this thread for a while. Some weather we're having, aren't we?

I found a decomposed mass of grimness on a remote beach today. I think it was a shark. I think it was. Very hard to tell!

Silly me, I kept looking at 'threads I'm on' and thinking everyone had given up on nature , June seems to have got going rather quicker than I expected.

I'm very jealous of all the tiny owl spots.

So far this month I have seen lots of bats flying around a ruined abbey at dusk very atmospheric and today I saw this Kestrel which was very exciting. I'm not good enough at taking pictures to show that he wasn't actually 1m above that bank, that was the background he was quite high, damn you hilly Wales!

We (me + dog and child) wandered down the quarry field which used to be lifting with rabbits, and although there were none, there were two hares, big one and a 3/4 sized one. Lovely :) later we saw an adult rabbit with myxi & 3 babies, then a cheeky 'teen' sized one ( not what I called it) eating my lettuce. I've already had t use pots to stop the hens scratting them a out.

A green woodpecker and a pair of gold finches today. Other than that, I'm working pretty solidly, and haven't seen much else.
I did get a kiss from my friends Highland pony yesterday, he has worked out that if he kisses the human, a mint will be dispensed from the pocket. I think he sees us as a kind of mobile vending machine!

Hedgehog, in the garden, just now!

I need a hedgehog, can I borrow him/her? I will return him/her when they've eaten all the slugs in my garden.

I saw a roe deer yesterday when I was out on the bike - I think I startled it a wee bit as I burst out of the forest into the field.

Today, I became entangled with some silkworms! I was working at Barleylands in Billericay, and there were masses of them, hanging from a tree. They were pretty amazing, twenty or thirty hanging from one strand of silk!

Hello all. Back from the canal... wildlife a bit disappointing, perhaps due to a paradoxical combination of the water shortage causing lock restrictions on the Oxford Canal so we went on the Grand Union instead, and pissing down rain most of the time (thank goodness for Gore-tex!). Lots of the usual flora (yellow irises and waterlilies in abundance) and dozens of ducklings; one grebe in a marina; swifts and swallows. The only thing I saw which was new to me were freshwater crayfish - a dead one by a lock which someone opined was English not an American invader, and a whopper which a boy had caught and was proudly showing off to all passing boaters.