A complete Cranford Park Little Owl and Kestrel over load

Sue is not an early bird, though I may have converted her after what we saw this morning.

 

We were at Cranford Park at 7.45am looking for the Little Owls. Within 45 minutes Sue spotted one flying into a tree with prey. Neither of us have ever seen one eat, so for the next few minutes it was complete verbal silence and concentration as our cameras went into 'gunfire' mode, taking snap after snap after snap. I've selected the best that I took below. They have been heavily cropped and lightened though.

 

 

 

Well you can only imagine the silly grins on our faces ! What a great thing to experience, though maybe not for the poor mouse though.

 

John arrived just fifteen minutes after the Little Owl flew off. Sue had to disappear for an hour, so after John and I briefly scanned the trees for the owl without luck, we decided to go and see the Kestrels and resume our owl search when Sue came back.

 

The Kestrels didn't disappoint either. Just before coming in to the park earlier this morning I'd seen Lorraine and Ginny the dog, and Lorraine said the Kestrels had already been seen on the grassy paths so John and I headed there first. And there they were.

Juvenile on the left, adult female on the right.

I could not get all three birds in focus, but at least I got three together.

 

You could always tell which birds were juveniles by how they landed in the tops of the shrubby trees.

 

 

Watching them hovering and practising their 'swoop' was brilliant. I really could watch these birds all day.

And we managed to see five Kestrels all at once, though no photos as two were flying and three were on the ground. But it does look like both the adult male and female were still staying fairly close to their three off spring.

 

While John and I were immersed in the Kestrels, there was a call next to us and up came a Skylark. I don't normally have any luck photographing these beauties as they soar so high up, but this one only rose to head level and even I managed two half way decent photos.

 

 

We made our way back to the owls as I desperately needed a cup of coffee, and John had kindly (with a hint from myself of course) bought a large flask. He makes a mean cuppa. Sue arrived shortly after, with Jasper the bird-dog, and just as we were chatting and supping coffee a Little Owl flew in and landed in the next tree. None of us were quick enough to grab a photo, and it was soon off to another tree.

 

 For the next few hours it was 'find-the-owl', and several times we succeeded. Sometimes the owl was too high up the tree, or had it's back to us, so we didn't always get photos.

 

But sometimes we did.

 

 

I still think there are only two juveniles, and they are almost 'teenagers' in age. I managed just two poor photos of two birds....

 

A juvenile just hidden by leaves on the left, and a possible adult on the right

One (an adult I think) in top left corner, and a juvenile in bottom right corner.

But we did at last see three birds together. Sadly I didn't manage to record it, but hopefully John or Sue got a photo of all three that I could post on my next blog.

 

Shortly after the sighting of three Little Owls both John and Sue (and Jasper) had to leave.

 

 I stayed on as I had set myself two targets. To find a native honeysuckle and get a cutting to hopefully grow in my garden meadow at the bottom of the Marks Mansion estate, and to get some seeds from one of the many wild foxgloves that grow in the woods. And I got both.

 

There are two varieties of honeysuckle growing at Cranford Park. I don't know the name of the one below, but carefully took a cutting anyway.

 

 

and the one below is the one I've been after. Lonicera periclymenum. I carefully took two cuttings of this one, and will pot them on when I visit Marks Mansion tomorrow.

 

 

I also found some gorgeous foxgloves and gently collected the dried seed from the bottom of the flower spike.

 

Also abundant at Cranford Park at this time of year, are these perennial sweet peas. They are very tall with thick upright stems, so as I was in the collecting mood, I carefully took some seed heads too.

 

So a very enjoyable and productive day. To finish off my blog, a couple of 'black mail' photos........

 

 

and one of Jasper after he became bored looking for Little Owls, and decided to have an afternoon nap under the bench :)

 

and lastly a thank you to Gina for helping me identify the honeysuckle and sweet peas.

 

Operation Garden Meadow - Part 1

At home I don't have a garden, I just have a long concrete balcony and a small square concrete yard. I grow some plants in pots, but not too many, and over the years I've sort of lost interest. However, since I've been visiting almost daily at Mums, sorry I mean Marks Mansion and its grounds, for the last few months, my interest has started to peek again.

 

Whilst in my bird hide at the bottom of the 'estate' my imagination started to grow. The whole area was covered over by membrane and had become a bit of a tipping ground. It measures roughly 18 ft long by 9 ft wide, give or take a few inches.

 

 I could make the area so much better, thought I. After some carefully worded conversations with the Lady of the Manor, it looks as it my dream may come true. Mum's agreed to give me half the grounds at the bottom of the garden. The other half she will plant up as a semi-shade garden with her own plants and planting design.

 

I have made a few rough sketches of how I want my half to look, and the next time I do an Operation Garden Meadow blog post, I'll include my rough sketch and a proper scaled drawing. But for now, you'll have to make do with my photos and words.......

 

This is just after I started the clear up. A lot of lopped and pruned branches had been left in a pile. The whole area is covered in membrane held down against the wind by a few randomly placed slabs. The two chairs on the left are starting to rot. There's a compost bin in the far left corner with a huge buddlia 'tree' growing behind it. On the fence there is ivy and a very old clematis Montana. Not shown in my photo is a very established forsythia and nettle patch behind the chairs. On the top right of the photo is an old tree, variety unknown at the moment, which has three trunks. To the right of that there is the start of Mum's little rockery and the raised beds which include a step up to the rest of Mum's 'estate'. My half of the garden starts where the two white refuse bags are, all the way to the fence. Behind the chairs, nettles and forsythia is a chain link fence which borders Mum's garden from the horse field behind it.

 

After the main clear up - chopping up the pile of pruned branches. I took up four garden waste bags plus added lots of greenery and some small chopped up twigs to the compost bin. Have also started a leaf litter bin, which is a third full already.

The compost bin, a compost soil holder and the leaf litter bin are now all in situ on the left hand side. Looking better already.

Four bags of woody garden waste (and my little hide behind them). You can also see the step down in to this part of the estate on the left hand side.

Compost bin, soil holder and leaf litter net bin.

The two black trays are what Mum used to use to stand gro-bags in. I'm going to sink the trays in to the ground, fill them up with gravel and make two little paths for access to the compost and leaf litter bins.

The log pile as it as at the moment. I'm going to restack the logs with some old curved terracotta tiles underneath and hopefully attract some slow worms.

I had to have a nosey at what the soil is like under the membrane......

and its not bad at all !!
 

The unknown three trunk tree got a hard prune today. I like the shape of it so will plant a native honeysuckle at the base and let it grow up the trunks. The clematis to the left, also got a hard prune. I like clematis Montana so have no plans to remove it. The buddlia 'tree' also got a hard prune, but I've kept as much green as possible as there are buds coming through. The ivy on the fence I'm going to leave. Some of it is already almost half way up and I'm a big fan of ivy.

This morning I finished positioning all the un-used slabs that we could find. The area to the right of the slabs is my new garden ! You can see from the photo that at about 10am this area is in dappled shade.

Another view of how the path will look. I'm going to take a few inches of soil up al along the length of the path so the slabs lay snug to the ground. In between each slab will go pebbles and gravel, with maybe an aubrieta or two to soften the edges.

Mum had been saving these to build an insect house.........so after collecting a few other bits from around the garden......

I made it for her. The bottom bit is for our little toad. I found him in the compost bin again this morning.

And what am I going to grow in my own little part of the Marks Mansion estate ?

 

 A small garden meadow.

 

It's too late to start planting now, and as the soil is so good I don't need to dig it over yet or even plant green manure to try to replenish any nutrients. I'm going to leave the membrane down over autumn and winter, plant my honeysuckle when I eventually source a native one I like and can afford, start looking for any native seeds like honesty and digitalis and concentrate on the permanent structure of the garden. This includes setting the path in the soil, filling the gaps with pebbles and creating some sort of border (maybe with up turned bricks). Also making a seating patio area, where I can put up my hide or where we can add a couple of chairs. We also need to create a high-ish border by the chain link fence so we don't lose any soil in to the horses field, but which will contain the robust forsythia and the nettle patch - we already have a plan in mind.

 

Then in April 2015 I can plant my meadow.

 



Great news from Cranford Park

Late yesterday afternoon I had just got out of the bath, was snuggly dressed in my pyjamas and logging on to Facebook, when I saw that my friend Sue had been to Cranford Park and got photos of some juvenile Kestrels. I cursed myself for not having gone there myself (and silently cursed Sue for not phoning me whilst she was there), and so after changing my plans for today I found myself in an almost empty park at 8am this morning.

 

Why was I cursing so much ? Last year due to the bad spring we had, our resident Kestrels fledged their young much later in the summer and I missed it. I swore that this year I wouldn't do that.

 I spent many many many hours during February, March and April monitoring our male and female Kestrels. I watched them bonding and mating, I eventually found their nest tree and I saw them often mobbing any Red Kites or Buzzards that dared to fly over the nest. Then my Mum was diagnosed with Cancer and for a couple of months I neglected Cranford Park to concentrate on looking after Mum during her treatment. Thankfully she is now slowly, but surely, feeling much better.

 

I had done my calculations for guessing when the juvenile Kestrels would fledge, and guess-timated it to be around the first week of July.

 

Well I was wrong.

 

Judging by Sue's photos, the juveniles were already out in the open grounds, often perching on the tree guards or on the grass path ways. Sue also photographed the adult male, and although he was keeping an eye on his 'teenagers', he wasn't feeding them. And the juveniles had no sign of any 'fluffy' feathers. They all had adult feathers. So at a rough guess, I reckon they possibly fledged from the nest about two weeks ago. Which means if you want to go and see them, I would recommend you do it sooner rather than later. It wont be long before our juveniles start exploring further and further away, eventually finding new territories to call their own.

 

So back to today.....

 

After a walk all around the edges of the open meadow grass land, I managed just two brief distant glimpses of one of the juvenile Kestrels, but by the time I had reached both spots, the Kestrels had moved on. I wandered around Cranford Woods and checked the nest tree and the surrounding trees, and couldn't find one Kestrel. I checked the orchard and the back of the stable block, the grave yard and memorial gardens, the Headland area and the River Crane. Still not one sighting of a Kestrel.

 

Sue was due to meet me at lunchtime, so I kept myself busy watching and photographing some of the other park residents.

 

Around the Headland, the Common Whitethroats were loudly singing and after a lot of checking through my bins I found at least ten adults and six juveniles. It looks like it's going to be a good year for these migrating warblers.

 

adult Common Whitethroat

juvenile Common Whitethroat

As to be expected at this time of year, there were several species of butterfly.

 

Meadow Browns were abundant.......

 

Along with good numbers of Small Skippers.....

 

 

Also seen today were a few Commas....

 

a couple of Peacocks...

 

 

my first Six-Spot Burnet, which isn't a butterfly but a day flying moth....

 

 

several Small Tortoiseshells.....

 

and the expected Speckled Woods.....

 

 

Eventually I made my way back towards the car park for a sit down, a sandwich and a quick fag at the Information Centre before Sue arrived. I also had a wander around the oaks in front of the Centre. Last summer we had fantastic views of two juvenile Little Owls there, and I was just wondering to myself if we'd get the same views this year, when something small, rounded and brown caught my eye as it flew from a nearby tree straight in to one of the oaks. A quick glimpse though my bins confirmed my suspicion. An adult Little Owl ! My camera was on it within seconds and I managed to grab four photos before it flew off again into another oak tree......

 

 

However, it wasn't until I got home and uploaded my photos from today, that I realised I hadn't just  photographed one Little Owl, I had actually got TWO.......

 

Shame the second one was half buried behind some oak leaves........

 

I honestly did not spot it at the time, so when the original bird flew again, I followed it instead of staying with the second bird.

 Now I could kick myself, mainly because I have a sneaky suspicion the second bird could be a juvenile.......

I've enlarged a photo below of the second bird to try to explain why I think its a juvenile. Its head is mainly still brown rather than speckled, the pale rings around its eye are more rounded than the adult and don't look like the adult 'eyebrows', and the top of the the chest (which you can just about see through the tops of the oak leaves) is still brown rather than streaked. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong or if I've missed out on any distinguishing features. I'm no expert. Last years juveniles were obvious as they still had 'fluffy' feathers, but I'm starting to wonder if we've missed that chance this year, and that the Little Owls fledged sooner and we've missed the cute fluffy stage.

 

After losing sight of the first Little Owl, Sue arrived with Jasper the bird-dog. And after showing her my photo of the owl, they were both soon searching for it themselves.......

 

 

During the couple of hours that Sue and Jasp were there, we twice went back to the oaks but could not re-locate the owls.

 

Elsewhere though we did watch a Buzzard being mobbed by a Carrion Crow.....

 

 

and we eventually found one of the juvenile Kestrels !

 

 

After Sue and Jasper left, I wandered up the grass path that runs straight through the centre of the open meadow grass land. Within minutes I found all three juveniles. Sadly for the photo conscious me the birds were not all together but scattered over the park.

 

I watched some flying close to me, some practising their hover technique, one catching grasshoppers from the grass paths and some perching on the small trees within the tree guards.....

 

 

 

 

From my observations today and the hundreds of photos I took, I can definitely confirm we have three juvenile Kestrels. And I am pretty sure they are two females and a male.

 

I cannot put into words just how chuffed I am. After spending so much of my free time during late winter and early spring observing and monitoring our beautiful adult Kestrels, I have now seen today their own offspring learning how to hunt, fly and hover. As they get older their ability and instinct to catch small mammals like voles and mice will become more focused, and then they will drift off to find their own partners and territories.

 So apart from missing them actually fledge the nest, I was at least able to watch the 'teenagers' in the 'field'.

 

Precious.

 

If you want to see the juveniles, I suggest you do this. From the car park head towards Heathrow taking the most central grass path up and across the open meadow grass land. Keep checking the wooden fence-like tree guards either side and keep checking the path in front of you. Today I often watched the juveniles on the ground taking grasshoppers and crickets practising their 'mantle' skills where they fold their wings over their heads.

 

So after a fantastic, and much overdue, visit to Cranford Park, there's only one photo that must be shared. Jasper the bird-dog enjoying the long grassy edges of one of the many paths.