What have you seen

well blow me down with a feather, look what it says online

"If you are lucky enough to encounter a rare sighting of a Redwing in your garden,"

was never any good at bird spotting, well not the feather kind

Had a stroll around Burton reserve today. Quiet on the bird front but did spot a Hairy Curtain Crust! 

I'll let you "google" it.

Had a walk towards our village yesterday afternoon and the one small Lavoir has some old reeds at the one end and out flew a Moorhen not seen one around here before and we have a few water features around the village also the frog and toad crossing is ready for use a few years ago a lot of construction was done as the crossing goes under a road and a small lane is shut at one end so the frogs and toads can go down a ramp and under the road and come out the other side into the old nursery on their way to the large Lavoir they use every year.

Just had 3 Red Kites flying over  and then behind them 7 Common Cranes and they spent s few minutes circling around to get more height before flying north again now got a stiff neck watching them but great to see.

Also this morning noticed we had a casualty by our Lilac bush a dead Jay so perhaps the Sparrowhawk had got at it but got disturbed and flew off so I took the Jay and put it over our wall to the field next door so it will not stay there long as we have had a lot of neighbours cats around the last few nights.

I think our migration is on the way.  Over the last couple of days we have had 12 x Robins and up to 20 x Blackbirds in our garden.  Driving along the A47 from Yarmouth there are hundreds of starlings sat on wires and thousand of geese in the fields along the road

Frogs! A couple of days ago we had the first frogs in our garden pond. This was three weeks earlier than 2023 and 4 weeks earlier than 2022. Normally they come on the first damp and relatively warm night but this year it has been wet and fairly warm for a week or so prior to their arrival. Whilst I like frogs I don't really want as many as I usually get, 80+ last year. They really poison the water in the pond and 40+ clumps of spawn is a bit much although the tadpoles do provide food for the goldfish. The fish that the frogs haven't killed off that is.  

They, frogs, newts and toads need all the help than can get. Our pond has never been poisoned by them, never heard of that happening. Can you translocate some spawn, John? Don’t forget that if frogs can produce just two to adults in a life time from all that spawn they have done well. The odds are really against them, particularly these days.

The excrement from 80+ frogs in a pond that is only 330 gallons does the water no good at all. As for translocating some of the spawn, our county wildlife trust argues against this as it can / does spread disease from one pond to another. Red leg is just one of the diseases easily spread. But I do agree with you, they need all the help they can get but there are limitations in what we can actually do.

Frogs do not feed at all during the mating season or even when coming out of hibernation and as such will not cause little if any issue at all with excrement. Once they have spawned most will leave the confines of the water anyway. Yes and you are right, possibly It would be unwise to translocate spawn to areas already populated for the reason you suggest. Best left to do their own thing then.  

Spotted in my garden this morning feeding off my flowering Daphne shrub a Hummingbird Hawkmoth  it paid a couple of visits during the morning, I was surprised to see a "hummer" so early in the year as I thought they were a summer visitor from mainland Europe.