Wildlife in the Three Brooks Reserve

View Wildlife in Bradley Stoke - 19:25 to 20:05 on the 19th July 2009 in a larger map

The stormy weather meant that it was quiet in the reserve last night, as shown in the map above (click on the coloured icons in the map to see which birds were about - there is a different icon per bird).


This mute swan joined in with the ducks feeding on bread brought by vistors.

The ducks.....

The mallards were joined by a pair of farmyard ducks.

This plucky little youngster was in amongst the larger adults going for the bread, and would often dive in front of the older birds to get there first. He didn't show much fear or respect for his elders!

This duck family was asleep near one of the viewing platform areas, with the adult standing guard and keeping watch.

Thistles are coming to the end of their flowering all over the reserve. Here, one is being fed on by a bee type insect.

Red Arrows

The Red Arrows made one of their periodic visits to Filton airfield this weekend, flying in on Friday evening, presumably to have a technical check of some kind performed at Rolls Royce. They flew in in a diamond formation over the airfield before breaking up to land individually. They then flew in and out over the rest of the weekend.

Magpie

Magpie's are normally considered to be scavengers who eat eggs, carrion and sometimes young birds. However, here is one eating birdseed just like the other birds featured from my garden.

Blue tits

This weekend saw the visit to the garden of a family of blue tits. The young seemed intent in exploring the plants in the garden, hanging upside down and generally flitting around. The adults were more interested in feeding.

Birds and the Nature Reserve

More birds in the garden, scavenging what has been dropped by the sparrows.


Collared Dove


Wood Pigeon

Some pictures from the Three Brooks Nature Reserve from last night:-

Tufted Vetch


Cow Parsley


Ducks on the Lake




Lesser black-backed gull

A map showing where the birds were observed, and other birds during a walk last night, click on the map below.


View Wildlife in Bradley Stoke - 20:00 to 20:40 on the 30th June 2009 in a larger map

Sparrows are back

The sparrow family continue to visit the garden, with the two youngsters sticking close together. Here are some photo's of them.

Timex weather station

Disgruntled of Bradley Stoke purchased a Timex rain gauge with built in thermometer earlier this year to complement his manual rain gauge, but recently it has been giving some very odd figures, claiming a minimum temperature of -8.5C, when temperatures haven't been below 10C for some weeks, and it was claiming last night that there had been 30mm of rain when there had only been 1-2mm. Time to take it back and complain.

However, on reflection, the entire design is flawed. The rain gauge is a cylindrical plastic device which you put into the garden with an electronic device kept indoors which reads the values. The problem is that for most accurate readings, the rain gauge needs to be in an open area to avoid rain shadow effects from fences and buildings. However, this means that it is in direct sunlight. The plastic absorbs the heat from the sun, and heats up internally, giving artifically high maximum temperature readings (adding 10C to the temperature in April when working this problem out). So you then move the gauge into a shady area, but then you have the rain shadow....

A traditional weather station uses a Stephenson's Screen, which is effectively a white wooden box with louvred sides into which the thermometers are placed. The white paint reflects the sun, and the louvred sides allows any hot air internally to escape, and for outside air to get in. The Timex gauge doesn't have any of this. It is a nice idea, but the execution is flawed. Buy separate temperature and rain gauge devices - then you can site them separately as each requires without having to compromise on one of the readings.