Woodland Families

As well as keeping my eye on the buzzard chicks I’ve also been seeing a family of wrens in the wood and the other day I was delighted to see a deer and her fawn. First, here are some pictures of Jenny Wren tending to her hungry fledglings. She may be Britain’s second smallest bird but she is feisty and fair belts out a powerful melodic song which usually ends with a trill. Wrens can produce 36 notes per second!

As well as singing wrens also make a hard tapping sound like the keys of an old typewriter hammering. Wrens spend most of their time scraping around foraging for food in the undergrowth. Mostly you have to look downwards to see them.

In contrast to tiny wrens I’ve been craning my neck upwards to observe the buzzard chicks, Buddy and Holly, getting bigger and bigger. This was them a few nights ago, Wednesday 24th June.

Yesterday, 27th June, I went to check on them again. This time one chick was standing tall, beginning to look more like an adult buzzard and possible not far from flying the nest.

One adult is always on watch duty in a neighbouring tree, I see it fly off when I enter Buzzard Wood. It perches high up on the edge of a nearby wood.

The other adult can be seen soaring over the meadows looking for food.

Finally fawns! A few weeks ago friends up the lane contacted me to say they’d seen a newborn fawn being licked clean by its Mum in a thicket in full view of their kitchen window. Of course by the time I got message and hurried up the lane there was no sign of them. Another friend said he’d spotted a young fawn in bushes next to another main pathway. Although I’d spotted a deer there before I’d seen no sign of a fawn. It’s the ideal time of year for fawns to be born and safely hidden from view in thick bushes and undergrowth. Then on a walk near the kestrel nest a couple told us where they’d seen a mother and baby deer just off a nearby path. This time they were still there! At first I thought I was seeing the fawn, but it was the doe I was seeing. Just goes to show how little I’ve seen of fawns. Here is the new Mum –

Then I saw the wee head of the fawn, so small! It was quite frisky and was jumping about around its mum. Very difficult to focus on with branches getting in the way. Annoyingly the camera focused on this tree! Guess who still needs lots of camera practice?