Pictures of Wildlife.

Blue tit.

 

Hi hud,what is that you are feeding it......can you buy specific hedgehog food?

 

Cheers.

 

I would have mistaken that Reed Warbler for a Wren.

 

We noticed a lot of flying insects in our garden in the early evening sunshine last night, so I set up my automatic bat recorder and let it run all night. The bats were very active, and the system captured almost 450 valid recordings.

This one may be of interest as it illustrates some of the variety of calls from a common pipistrelle bat.


The initial low frequency bursts/pulses are social calls. They are very loud because the bat wants others to hear him/her, maybe over several hundred metres. They even overload my bat detector, so some of the higher frequency stuff above the main pulses on the frequency plot may just be due to distortion.

The lower amplitude pulses around 45-55kHz are echolocation calls, where the bat is basically looking where it is going and listening out for food!

At some point the bat detects a suitable insect, and starts to reduce the amplitude of the call as he gets closer to it, so as not to spook his prey.

When only centimetres away, he drops the frequency, reduces the call interval, and cranks up the volume ,so he can correct his flight as the bug attempts to change course. This is the 'feeding buzz'.

As you can see, this whole sequence lasts only about 1.3 seconds.

If I expand time by a factor of 15 (yes, I'm a Time Lord) the sequence is stretched out to about 15s and the frequencies drop 15 times so you can 'hear' the sequence. Unfortunately I can't post .mp3 files to this forum.

Sorry, no bat pictures at the moment ...but I'm working on it.

 

This lovely little bird has been pottering about in the garden this morning. Can anyone identify it? It's about the size of a canary.

 

Thanks for that, Owen. It's made a nice change from the usual pigeons and blackbirds.

 

I struggle with Grey Wagtails and Yellow Wagtails as they are both basically yellow.
I think the Grey should be called a Grey Headed Yellow Wagtail

 

You will need your volume nice and high to hear the quieter echo location calls:-

https://jmp.sh/jfzcBKR

 

Jay
Ruislip Common

 

Muntjac deer just off Bury Street Ruislip Middlesex

 

Saw this huge eagle yesterday sitting on the 500 foot high Palisades Cliffs in New Jersey just north of New York City

The Palisades (Hudson River) - Wikipedia

 

It could have been but he seemed too big to me. He's pretty far away in that picture. Neat whatever it was.

 

Pair of Pacific Black Ducks, seasonal visitors for around five years now.