The Elusive Woodpecker.

For weeks now, every morning, I have heard a woodpecker's rhythmic drumming somewhere in the trees across the valley and for weeks now I have been trying to catch a glimpse of it, so far, completely without success. It was driving me mad. It was if the bloody woodpecker was taunting me because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find it. In fact I couldn't even pinpoint the general location because the sound echoes round the valley making it almost impossible to be sure which direction the drumming was coming from  ...... until yesterday. Yesterday, I managed to locate the general direction that the noise was coming from and even more exciting, I actually managed to spot where the woodpecker was!! I know!! So exciting. The sound was coming from a wooden pole with either telephone wires or electric cables going across the top of it. Frustratingly, the pole is a LONG way away and I don't have any binoculars so I ran off and grabbed my camera to see if I could snap a picture and zoom it in enough to see if I could get a peek at the bird. Sadly, by the time I got back the pecking had stopped and I'm guessing bird had gone so all I got was picture of an empty pole. 

This morning, while I was collecting some logs, I heard the pecking again and this time, I could actually see the bird. Having dashed back inside to grab my camera and zoomed it in as far as it would go, I was thrilled to be able to get a few shots of the pole with the bird still perched on the side of it.

This is how far away the pole is, it's the one on the hill.

And this is zoomed in a gazillion times with my camera and then zoomed in again with my computer software.

I think it's a greater spotted woodpecker because it has a reddish patch on it's stomach. 

The Birds In My Garden

This morning, as I was hanging the washing on the line before going off to the market, I happened to look up at the sky. Behind my house and pretty much all around are trees so as you can imagine, we have lots of birds. As I stood there, like a demented loon, taking in the lovely morning, a bird hopping up a telegraph pole across the road caught my eye. It was a Great Spotted Woodpecker. I know this because after it had flown away, giving me a flash of it's bright red backside as it went, I dashed inside and googled it! I was thrilled. I know we have woodpeckers around here because I hear them all the time while I'm in the garden, pecking away at the trees but it's the first time I have ever seen one. It really  made my day. It also got me thinking about all the birds we have around here and I have decided that I am going to try and keep a record of the birds I see. (I also watched "The Big Year" again recently so I'm a bit obsessed).

Picture Courtesy of RSPB

Anyway, from now on, I will be keeping a bit of a bloggy journal and posting each week about the birds I have seen in the area. First things first though, I will definitely need to buy a pair of binoculars! Maybe from a car boot sale or something because although a lot of the birds around here are quite big and easy to spot, like the woodpecker and jays and buzzards and things, some of them are much smaller and it would be a nightmare to try and identify them without a pair of binoculars (there is a teeny tiny wren that hops around outside my kitchen window and it's the smallest cutest thing you can imagine but trying to spot it on a tree a few hundred feet away would be almost impossible!!). Trouble is, I'm now straying a little further into nerd territory than usual but what the heck, most of the people who know think I'm a total geek anyway so nothing new there :-)

I'm not sure how successful I will be at photographing the birds. I only have a very basic camera so the pictures might just end up being a series of specks in the distance. Again, I guess I will just have to see what I can do but, if they are specks, I will find a nice colourful internet picture to go with the speck in the photo so at least I have a decent record of what I see. Anyway, here is bird number two from this morning although the pictures doesn't really show it's size. It's a Jay. The first time I saw one of these I was amazed at how big they are and as I said, the picture doesn't really show the size particularly well. Still, they are beautiful nevertheless. I'm sure if I had had the time this morning I could have spent ages out there looking for birds but in the five minutes I was out there these two were the ones that I saw. Anyway ....... watch this space.

Picture Courtesy of wildlifeupclose.co.uk