Wednesday, March 19, 2008

local wildlife

Its noisy here tonight - half an hour ago there were 2? foxes shrieking outside, I haven't heard that noise before and thought someone was in trouble or an animal was being killed, it being such a piercing shriek. I managed to catch them in the beam of the big torch so they scamped off. An amazing and most unpleasant noise. Then a barn owl has been hunting and there's a whole lot more shrieking going on.
There is some woodland 100metres east of the farm which provides plenty of cover for foxes and deer. Two weeks ago a young deer was killed by a vehicle just past the farm entrance, 20 minutes later it had been reclaimed by a neighbour for lunch and dog food (sorry are you eating?).
The huge greylag geese population we have locally over winter has significantly moved on to pastures new, the curlews are here with their wonderful call and a 'swarm' of starlings were doing that fabulous sweeping dance through the sky.
A magical sight yesterday was watching two brown hares boxing in the field below the house and caravan. There is a big population of brown hare here, they are beautiful creatures. Springwatch here we come, I'll be Kate Humble rather than Bill Oddie though!

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