muggle not Posted May 23, 2018 Share Posted May 23, 2018 (edited) On 5/21/2018 at 1:27 PM, Hayley said: Great pictures! I would love to see a bear with her cubs! I can never take a good picture of the birds in my garden. I only have my phone and it just doesn't focus quickly enough. We have had some lovely birds in the last few days though. My favourites are the robins, blue tits and goldfinches I have a little mystery that it might be worth mentioning here, in case anybody has an idea. A couple of weeks ago I went to the Cotswolds with my boyfriend and a friend of ours. The wildlife there was amazing, we saw a whole herd of deer and a little muntjac deer, I'm not knowledgeable enough to identify all the birds we saw but there were a lot! But we were walking in a forest when my friend stopped and motioned for us to look up a tree. I just saw something dart up the other side of it as I looked but, although we stood watching for quite a while, nothing appeared again. So I asked my friend what we were looking for and he said it looked like a squirrel, but it was black and white! Specifically, he's absolutely sure it had a white section on its tail. He thought it might be some kind of escaped exotic pet, but there was an obvious squirrel nest further up that tree (which is where I assume it disappeared to) so I do think it was a squirrel. I googled black and white squirrel, on the off chance that whatever the thing was might show up and, weirdly, found a story on the mail online about a woman who had seen both a very rare white squirrel and a black squirrel in the same tree, in the Cotswolds! It could be unrelated, but it seemed an odd coincidence. I also wondered if it could be a varied stage of albino. I know this can happen in birds because I remembered seeing a display of blackbirds with varying levels of albinism in the natural history museum on a school trip, some only had patches of white feathers but were otherwise black. So, does anybody have any suggestions on what the 'black and white squirrel' was? When I was a youngster I would spend many a day in the woods with friends playing. It was common for us to hike 5 miles or so. In all my time though I have never seen a piebald squirrel. On 5/22/2018 at 12:38 AM, poppy said: I bet they all miss you, Muggles Did you have a photo one time of the bear in your porch?? poppy, I probably miss seeing them more than they miss me. When we lived in our house in Virginia it was probably our most enjoyable time. We loved living there. Ok, I will post 4 bear pictures and then will stop boring you all. I named most of the bears that visited our house. Here are 4 bears that I named. See if you can put the name with the photo.. Trouble, Posing bear, Looking bear, Lazy bear, Edited May 23, 2018 by muggle not Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppy Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 9 hours ago, muggle not said: Ok, I will post 4 bear pictures and then will stop boring you all. I named most of the bears that visited our house. Here are 4 bears that I named. See if you can put the name with the photo.. Trouble, Posing bear, Looking bear, Lazy bear, Their names in the same order as the photos? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muggle not Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 1 hour ago, poppy said: Their names in the same order as the photos? No, I mixed them up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Pixie Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Lazy, Trouble, Posing, Looking ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muggle not Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 I will wait 1 or 2 more days to see if there are any others that want to take a guess at the names before confirming them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeleine Posted May 26, 2018 Share Posted May 26, 2018 I heard a cuckoo today, first one for years, possibly ever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willoyd Posted May 26, 2018 Author Share Posted May 26, 2018 1 hour ago, Madeleine said: I heard a cuckoo today, first one for years, possibly ever! Aside from that one I saw a couple of weeks ago, I've not heard or seen one since. They're getting rarer and rarer, but then we're busy wrecking habitat as fast as we can! I remember when....the cuckoo was one of the markers of spring, when we heard them regularly. I've been sorting out my recent photos, so here is a small selection. The owl is the one mentioned above in #6. The others (swallow, treecreeper, mandarin duck) were all on the same walk. I took loads of the swallow posing beautifully in the sunshine, mostly sat calmly viewing the world, but this one showed just a little bit of the beautiful tail pattern they have. The mandarin took me completely by surprise, sat on the weir at Otley. They breed further up the river, but are less common along this section; a bird that people are more familiar with in exotic collections and parks, but actually quite a rarity in the wild. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeleine Posted May 27, 2018 Share Posted May 27, 2018 (edited) They're lovely pictures, well done. I also saw a swallow yesterday, sitting on a telephone line. And we managed to startle a deer when we were clumping through the woods! Edited May 27, 2018 by Madeleine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virginia Posted May 27, 2018 Share Posted May 27, 2018 My neighbors. They inhabit the lake adjacent to my backyard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athena Posted May 28, 2018 Share Posted May 28, 2018 Willoyd, those are some great close-ups of those birds! Virginia, that's pretty special! Great picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muggle not Posted May 29, 2018 Share Posted May 29, 2018 On 5/23/2018 at 6:40 PM, muggle not said: When I was a youngster I would spend many a day in the woods with friends playing. It was common for us to hike 5 miles or so. In all my time though I have never seen a piebald squirrel. poppy, I probably miss seeing them more than they miss me. When we lived in our house in Virginia it was probably our most enjoyable time. We loved living there. Ok, I will post 4 bear pictures and then will stop boring you all. I named most of the bears that visited our house. Here are 4 bears that I named. See if you can put the name with the photo.. Trouble, Posing bear, Looking bear, Lazy bear, Ok, the names that I gave the bears in my photos: photo #1 - lazy bear photo #2 - posing bear photo #3 - trouble photo #4 - looking bear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppy Posted May 30, 2018 Share Posted May 30, 2018 9 hours ago, muggle not said: Ok, the names that I gave the bears in my photos: photo #1 - lazy bear photo #2 - posing bear photo #3 - trouble photo #4 - looking bear Lazy Bear looks like he's just wrecked the bird feeder and Looking Bear looks like he's too lazy to reach up 😊 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.