Friday 15 February 2008

Langdon Bay etc

A walk from the White Cliffs Car Park towards Langdon Bay quickly confirmed that a lazy 20mph ENE wind is not ideal for finding birds on the cliff top. Down in Langdon Bay, almost 100 metres below some wreckage was showing on the edge of the sea. I know that there have been some important archaeological finds in this area, but I don't think that this is part of them, any information would be appreciated.
I was both interested and somewhat jealous to seesome one down on the cliff face climbing up to the steps. It must be nice to be fit enought to get both up and down. I guess down is no problem, with the help of gravity, but up.......

In St Margaret's Bay a couple of Pied Wagtails were keeping out of the wind in sheltered areas. Something seems to have attracted the attention of this one, but I couldn't see a bird of prey in the sky.
In yesterdays post I wrote about historic records of breeding birds. The "Historical Atlas" is a mine of facts, with much information from outside the years in the title (1875-1900). If it is a subject you're interested in, then it is worth keeping an eye on the second-hand lists as it quite often turns up, and I expect that it is still on the BTO list.

Tonight the Natural World programme was about Badgers. It is at this time of year that the females give birth, although it is several months before the young emerge from their setts. The females normally give birth to up to three cubs and these may have been conceived almost a year ago. The female has a delayed implantation and they have only been growing for seven weeks before birth. The adults should be doing well this winter, because with the mild wet weather their main food, worms will have been easy to find. The ones above were a family of three, that visited our garden a couple of years ago.

1 comment:

Simon said...

Brilliant photos of the Badgers.