Seaview Wildlife Encounter

So this time last week i was on the Isle of Wight visiting Seaview Wildlife Encounter, the day started off cloudy but eventually the sun came out and i even got a little bit of sunburn.

There are free ranging ducks that will eat seed from your hand! and Geese (I was a little less enthusiastic about feeding these lol)

 Common Shelduck

 Ruddy Shelduck

and one of the many ducklings.













Barnacle Goose, These were quite nice to feed, they didn't eat my fingers, much.

 Barnacle Geese Goslings

 A Canada Goose, didn't feed this one by hand.

And a Mute Swan, definitely did not feed this one by hand either!

















Other birds: Chilean Flamingos
















Pink backed Pelicans
















A male White Peacock!

He's so pretty he deserves two photos :)

And a Blue fronted Amazon parrot

Isle of Wight holiday

From the 8th July to 13th, I was in the Isle of Wight, we were meant to be camping but due to all the rain we have been having that was not to be, so we had a caravan instead. The Isle of Wight has red squirrels and after several days of not seeing any we went to a reserve called Alverstone Mead which has a bird hide and apparently the squirrels come up to the hide and we were not disappointed: 

The squirrels took nuts from our hands and sat for photos, it was brilliant! 

The camp-site was a little disappointing wildlife-wise and all we saw were Jackdaws and Wood pigeons, so I don't have any other wildlife photos like I did with my last holiday. So instead I shall post some pics of the places we went and what we saw.

Great spotted Woodpecker

I have literately just come in from the garden with photos of the a juvenile Great spotted woodpecker that just visited our feeders!

Have just had the female parent visit so i am going to spent a lot of time outside today i think lol.












Edit: They visited again and i got some more photos

The female adult

And a closer pic of the juvenile :)


Other visitors to the feeder whilst i was sat outside have been: A greenfinch, a male chaffinch, two juvenile robins, a great tit, a blue tit and an adult robin :) not bad for 20 mins.











Edit2: What i have been waiting for has just happened:

Both woodpeckers on the feeders at the same time! and an extra bonus is mum feeding the youngster! I am not going to get anything done today lol

Ducks

Not much has been happening bird-wise here, but here are some of the frequent visitors to the garden:

The pair of Mallard ducks that live on our rooftops from spring through summer, have been coming into the garden and eating the bird seed I put down. They also enjoyed our tiny frog pond when we had that warm spell.

The Male had just spotted my cat behind me, hence the 'alert' look.

We have been having heaps of fledgling starlings stripping the fat logs/cake/coconuts i put up, 15-20 at any one time have been spotted!

The Great spotted woodpecker briefly visited the feeders last week but i haven't seen it again, heard it but that's all.

Great Tits

In our neighbour's garden on a Silver birch tree they have a bird box, which for a few years have been used by Great Tits to nest. They are nesting again this year and when one of the adults goes in to feed them you can hear the babies! its so cute, can't wait for them to fledge. Here is a pic of one of the adults coming out of the house:

Holiday

From the 24th March till today i was on holiday in Devon. We had fantastic weather and saw quite a lot of wildlife:

Had a few visitors to outside our caravan (aided by the peanut feeder we put up)

Here's a Great tit taking a whole peanut.









As well as the Great Tit there were two Blue Tits that visited but only ate from the feeder.

Another visitor after the peanuts was a crow, they are quite pretty up close.










And of course a squirrel, who at one point probably would have come in to the caravan had there been peanuts on the floor.


















This morning as we were packing a Jay was spotted in a near by tree but didn't come closer so i couldn't get a better photo.

The caravan site had a few lakes which had some ducks on that i had not seen before, Tufted Ducks!

Another bird from the lake is a Cormorant, stretching its wings

And the last bird that i spotted that i hadn't seen before is a Teal, there was a pair but i wasn't able to get any closer as they seemed to be quite a shy bird.









So there is all the wildlife i saw whilst on holiday. I am quite pleased that i am able to tick off another couple of birds in my bird book.

Buzzards

Yesterday was a lovely day and a great day for buzzard spotting, went for a walk and saw three!

First off the 3 buzzards were all flying together but then 2 of them paired off and went a completely different way to the last one (which is missing some feather as you can see)

Here are the pair.

Also on the walk i spotted a bird i hadn't seen before, i believe this to be a Reed Bunting as it matches the description in my bird book, but i could be wrong.

Saw the Kingfisher zim along the river but wasn't able to find where or if it landed on any branches to fish, heard a Green Woodpecker and saw a pair of Little Grebes.