27th June.....Poppies.

As I came out of Chesham today, the Poppy field was still drawing in the sightseers.

Most seem content to view from the road, but by the looks of the fence & the trampled crops others haven't.

Four Painted Lady butterflies & loads of Meadow Browns along the farm track this afternoon.
Don.

24th June..... Second Coming.

The arrival of this current spell of warm weather has heralded the return of our House Martins, with a pair excitedly inspecting one nest & a single bird at another, hopefully they'll remain & start breeding, not departing again as they did earlier in the spring, after a brief stop over on 3rd May.
Looks as if another Blackbirds nest has failed, as a predated egg found in the garden.
Goldfinch still sitting tight on their nest.

A Chaffinch has just begun singing daily from the top of the Silver Birch in our neighbours garden.
A pair of Dunnocks are feeding recently fledged young in a neighbouring garden. While at our place our pair are nest building again, picking up beak fulls of our dogs fur from around the back door.

One of my favourite wild flowers: Toadflax is just starting to flower in the front garden, many years ago before I knew better, I always thought it was a species of Orchid, as it has such delicate looking petals.

This Bee has found it to Bee a good source of nectar, as it made a Bee line for it.

Don.

 

23rd June..... Western Turville Reservoir.

The dam at Western Turville Reservoir is looking colourful at the moment covered in wild flowers.

Attracting several Azure Damselflies.

Down at the far end a Common Tern patrolled back & forth fishing along the edge of the reed bed, as I watched it from my vantage point on the dam another flew in above my head from the Aylesbury direction, the two fishing together for a while, next time I scanned in that direction the incoming bird had disappeared.
Out on the water a lot of loud 'honkin' came from a family party of Egyptian Geese as they made their way towards the jetty, where what I presume to be the male aggressively announced the family's arrival.

                                                      The 'honkin' continued along with a spot of preening.

The pair of Mute Swans & their seven cygnets were quietly going about their business as their name suggests, as were two broods of Coots. A Reed Warbler continually flew to & fro from a patch of reeds. Four Swifts hawked insects low over the water, heard a Grey Wagtail.
Watching the 'floatiller' pass.

As I reached the roundabout at the western end of the Wendover Bypass, I noticed a handful of Pyramidal Orchids growing on the grass verge & what looked like a Common Spotted Orchid. Moving out into the Vale, scanning from various gate ways came across these two Hares close together.

Don.

16th - 21st June.....More Orchids & Poppies.

16th.  Once the rain had stopped this afternoon I checked the grave yard at The Lee Church for Orchids, finding 76 Common Spotted Orchids growing between the graves, seeing them in flower you can appreciate why this spot has a BBOWT conservation award. At another site in the village 106 Common Spotted Orchids were in flower, along with a Painted Lady battling with the windy conditions. I don't usually feed the birds during the summer, but after all the rain last week have been doing at bit of supplementary feeding, which has attracted a juvenile Coal Tit. A pair of House Martins calling low over our house this evening is an encouraging sign.
18th. Marsh Tit & Great Spotted Woodpecker put in an appearance at the feeder, along with plenty of young Blue & Great Tits, they've had a good breeding season.
19th. Pleased to find three broken House Martin's eggs below the nest on the neighbouring house, how the birds escaped my watchful eyes I'm not quite sure, as they've not been obvious during the day, possibly with one bird incubating the other has been leaving early in the morning hawking insects over the nearest areas of water, returning in the evening, when I'm writing this stuff.

21st. Stopped briefly to check the Grass Verge Nature Reserve at the Shardeloes roundabout, as I happened to be passing, where a Buzzard sat surveying the scene.

Estimate at least a couple of Hundred Pyramidal Orchids in flower on the verge, last year counted over seven hundred.
Kestrel swooped very low through the garden. Where a recently fledged brood of Robins are constantly calling. A pair of Dunnocks feeding chicks in the nest in a neighbours Laurel hedge.
The Poppy field on the road out of Chesham towards Great Missenden is looking more impressive than ever this year, guess it's the continually spreading of the seeds from the previous summers, it's a dangerous place to stop, but that hasn't put folks off, as seems to be turning into a local tourist attraction, also a couple of fields looking fine near the Firecrest pub out towards Wendover.
Don. 

22nd - 30th June..... Swift Awareness Week.

https://www.swift-conservation.org/

Locally there is an event in Aylesbury:
Date/time - Tuesday 25th - Saturday 29th June at Bucks County Museum Church Street Aylesbury HP20 2QP during museum opening hours -see https://www.buckscountymuseum.org/museum/ for information
Organised by -Aylesbury Museum, Natural History Dept


The Aylesbury Secret Swift Information Pop-up

A small pop up display aimed at increasing awareness of swifts, those joyous summer visitors.
Learn what the museum has done to help “keep the skies alive” (and what you can do too).

Another in  Princes Risborough:
Date/time - Saturday 29th June from 6pm - 7:30pm at  Literary Institute, 37 High Street, Princes Risborough, Bucks HP27 0AE
Organised by - Risborough Environmental Group (REG) in conjunction with Chilterns Conservation Board.


HELP RISBOROUGH’S SWIFTS!

Dr Andrew Lack, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Biology at Oxford Brookes University, will be talking about the Oxford Swift City project and the book that his father David Lack wrote – Swifts in a Tower.

The evening will start at 6pm with the talk, followed by a walk around town looking for swifts and their nesting sites. Those who would like to carry on after 7.30pm may like to gather for a swift half at one of the local establishments.

18th June.....Ringing Red Kite Chicks.

Today I had the opportunity to tag along with Pete & Mike as they ringed nestling Red Kites in the Wycombe area. Both licensed ringers, Pete's been involved in the Red Kite release project from it's early days & has been climbing up to nests for the last twenty odd years. This year alone checking in excess of fifty nests.

Spent the day on a couple of large estates.

Along with Jill & Ivy in the back of the Land Rover, we set off down hidden tracks & byways connecting the nest sites.

On arriving at nest tree, the thing to do is to first check for spatter (that's poo in polite terms), on nearby branches & on the ground below, which is evidence of youngsters above, don't want to waste time & energy scaling a sixty foot tree for no reason. Nest is the dark blob near the top left of the tree.

With nerves of steel Pete scales the tree & once secured:

The chicks are lowered down.

Where their vital statistics are noted:

Weight.

Wing length.

Care is taken when correctly fitting the ring.

The first nest held two 6 to 7 week old chicks weighing 980 & 680 grams & with wing lenghts of 305 & 260mm respectively.

It surprised me how calm the birds remained, lying motionless as the process is carried out. Three more nests held single chicks, while three nests were adjudged to have failed. It is thought that a shortage of food is the most likely cause of these nest failures. Nowadays broods have dropped to an average of 1.3 chicks per nest, down from 2.1 chicks back in the early days of the release project. Broods of 4 chicks used to be recorded occasionally in the the early days but it is now unusual to get a brood of 3 and most nests have a single chick. With the birds exercising a kind of natural birth control, due to the amount of food available to sustain the population.

Two more birds were ringed at ground level & noted in the book, while Pete ringed a single bird in an inaccessible nest. Ironically one nest was situated in a Pheasant release pen.

This looks like the fun bit, coming down.

Female Red Kites moult as they incubate their eggs, which would make sense with all that sitting around going on, this is one of several feathers found below the nest sites.

While on out travels we also noted a pair of Ravens, with several Chiffchafs & Blackcaps singing.

A distant white Pheasant.

Brown Hare, several Fallow Deer one of which was dragging a heavily clubbed hind hoof, a single Roe Deer & a Fox.
Don.










Pete's eye view of today's nests:

Nest's found earlier in the season with some interesting items (seems Shakespeare's words ring true) :

Images Copyright : Pete Stevens.