Hello and Welcome to Wednesday Wings, one of the new features replacing the Daily Bird. Today’s gorgeous pics are from David in NZ, who writes the following:
This is Manu, he puts on a show for the crowd, flying from one keeper to another, untethered and outside a cage. He did go for a “holiday” for 3 days last year.
Cheers
David
I know that the birds of prey ion our local zoo tend to go on holidays as well, but generally return because hunting is too much work.
Majestic 800 year old oak tree, ©rq, all rights reserved
This week rq has sent us gorgeous photos of a majestic oak tree that looks straight out of a fairytale. rq says:
This oak is 800 years old or thereabouts and has earned the title of dižozols, which means ‘Grand/Great Oak’. If a tree adheres to specific criteria regarding trunk diameter and height and other things, it can also aspire to dižkoks status and people can send in submissions to the registry. They get marked on a map as objects of tourist interest, and also go down for preservation measures if anything happens or threatens their surroundings.
This one! Is the second tallest Great Oak in the country at 23m in height, with a trunk circumference of 7.1m or so. It is well and alive, and hosts a large number of birds in its branches, including being permanent home to an owl. It is also hollow inside, home to an unidentified bird, possibly a dove or wood pigeon or some such (see final photo, it’s dim, but there was definitely a bird hissing at me when I peeked in).
I visited at sunset, it sits above a winding creek and overlooks some farmland and marshes.
rq thanks so much. 800 years seems like an impossibly long time for a tree to live, but there it is. This is definitely a tree that I would like to see in person. There are several photos (all of them beautiful) and the rest are below the fold. [Read more…]
Hello and welcome to Monday Mercurial, a regular feature for all the critters out there. Sadly we won’t be able to keep up the Daily Bird, but we will replace it with three regular features throughout the week for the winged and furred inhabitants of planet Earth.
This is a young magpie that kept begging for food, even though it was already old enough to get over to the bowl of dogfood some campers had forgotten outside.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Another one of the swallow pics, this time being nicely framed by the reeds.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Another one of the swallows, a young fledgling that sat in the bougainvillea on its first day out.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
A Eurasian Serlin
They live at the camp site, too, and they are damn loud.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Back to the swallows. An estimated 500 pictures yielded some actually nice ones.
©Giliell, all rights reserved.
Click for full size
Collared Doves were another species that inhabits the camp site and that will come and pick breadcrumbs from basically under your feet.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
We’ve been neglecting the Daily Bird, which is a thing that cannot be.
So here’s a gorgeous Sardinian Warbler for you.
The funny thing about shooting with the 600mm lense is that I sometimes don’t even know what I’m shooting and only find out at home when I look at the pics on the computer screen.
Sardinian Warbler
©Giliell, all rights reserved
While there are few green areas in the centre, there are wonderful planted balconies and lovely squares. One thing is that apart from the pretty fountains there are water fountains everywhere that keep the population on two legs as well as four legs hydrated.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Another pigeon bath
©Giliell, all rights reserved
A quick birdie before I crawl back to bed.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The centre of Barcelona is the Plaza Catalunya. Lined on one side by the traditional Corte Inglés shopping centre and start of the Rambla, the main boulevard, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell you’ll miss it. Most tourist buses start and stop there (our shuttle bus from the camp site dropped us off there and picked us up, and so did most others), the hop on- hop off buses stop there, the metro lines do, the regional train station is under it.
Above it are the pigeons.
The fountain by night.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The fountain by day.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Did I say fountain? What I meant was “pigeon bath”.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
How many pigeons can you count?
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Camp sites are probably an El Dorado for sparrows, who know no shyness but really like breadcrumbs
© Giliell, all rights reserved.