Weasel-ly recognised

I'm obviously not the only person enjoying all the voles who have woken up lately...

This lovely little fella sped across the path in front of us into a rock wall. A bit of squeaking, he was stopped in his tracks and proceeded to put on a great show, popping out of a crack in the rocks here, a burrow there, trying to work out just what these two giant squeaking voles were all about... a real poser!

If you go down to the woods today...

Well, maybe it's no great surprise...

The deep snow and freezing temperatures of a couple of weeks ago were but a distant memory today, cycling along the River Isar south from Munich city centre, where my first butterfly of the year (well, in Europe anyway!) was a male Brimstone flying across the path and off into the zoo...

The Great Tits and Nuthatches were as noisy as ever, full of the joys of the lengthening days, as were several Great Spotted Woodpeckers, chasing each other around the trees or drumming a little half heartedly.

Equally noisy were a pair of Marsh Tits: now I'm not sure if I've ever actually heard Marsh Tits singing before, or if I have it must have been so long ago that I didn't register it. But this pair put on a lovely display, torn as they were between coming down to eye ball me and paying more amorous attention to each other.

It is still too early for many other birds in the woods, to be honest. A Wren here or a Blackbird there, maybe a couple of Treecreepers, but nothing else.

However, quite a surprise was the level of activity on the woodland floor. Pretty much every time I stopped cycling, there would be the noise of scurrying amongst the fallen leaves as yet another Bank Vole bounced away. In the couple of hours I was out I saw easily 15 or more, some of whom were quite happy to go about their business with me watching a couple of metres away: clearing out their burrows, searching through the wood piles and leave litter for those nuts and seeds that they stashed before the snows came.

They weren't the only ones cache-emptying, as a beautifully sooty Red Squirrel was also patting about a little absent mindedly, wondering just where it was he left those last few beech nuts...

But entertaining though Marsh Tits and Bank Voles are, they weren't what I'd come out to find...

Back in November, when I first came out along this stretch of river I noticed plenty of tri-lobed leathery leaves of Hepatica nobilis, a flower I've previously only seen from a moving vehicle and I've been waiting ever since for the chance to come out and find the first flowers of the spring. And only in ones and twos, but find them I did.



Not far away, a sunny glade was pretty much full of flowering Crocuses, with plenty of noisy Honey Bees in attendance. Something tells me these were probably planted (as with the clumps of Snowdrops and Winter Aconite elsewhere), but they looked pretty nice nonetheless.




And finally back on the river and into the city again, where the Mute Swans are always very friendly. One pair in particular, after some displaying and general nuzzling of each other, decided to waddle up the bank and sit down next to me for a sun bathe...

Not quite so photogenic but equally appreciative of the warm sun were the first nudists of the year... now I know it's warm, but it really isn't THAT warm!

The Thaw

Great White Egret, photographed in Bulgaria in Feb 2010

Temperatures here in Munich have gone up to the dizzying heights of 3 or 4 degrees Celsius this week, and the snow is rapidly retreating.

A train journey at the weekend took me north up to the Danube (the Donau here) at Regensburg: already a big river, but a long way away from the great waterway we'll be staying on in the Delta in May! Still plenty of space on this trip, if anyone fancies it: there can't be a better opportunity to enjoy a small group trip to the Delta! And with all the snow in Austria and Germany this winter, it looks like there'll be plenty of water to spread around!

Meanwhile, a couple of nice surprises out of the train window.

First was a Great White Egret just outside Landshut, jerking along a culverted urban stream (and on the return journey, standing out in the middle of a damp field, contemplating the mole hills.), adding a touch of bright Japonisme to the snowy, grey landscape.

Further on, where a trackside stream moved through some woodland there were clear signs that the local European Beavers have woken up, with several felled trees damming the stream and bright, fresh chippings and knawings. No sign of the beasts themselves (but what chance of that from a moving train?), but exciting nonetheless: to see a European Beaver is one of my targets for my time in Munich, as they're pretty well distributed along the Donau and the Isar north of the city. The reintroduction of Beavers to Bavaria in the 1970s has been such a success that this is the source of further reintroduction projects across Europe, in Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Belgium and most recently to Knapdale in Scotland.

Isar in the snow: Munich, 16th Feb 2012

Still lots of deep snow around, but with temperatures creeping up towards zero, or even positive figures predicted tomorrow, and blue skies and bright sunshine, it's positively balmy in Munich at the moment! On the river, a handful of Goosander were looking very smart, fishing around Wittelsbacherbrücke.

With Great Tits and Nuthatches still very noisy in the trees and the sun on your face, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that spring is just around the corner... despite all the snow and ice!

Sussex awash with Short-eared Owls

News from Mike Russell in Sussex:

"Down here in Sussex, as probably many other places in the south, we have been enjoying a short-eared owl invasion. Many people have been out and about and seeing these wonderful birds at very close quarters. A good thing about short-eared owls is that they fly in daylight, particularly from mid-afternoon onwards and the likelihood is that they could stay much of the winter, assuming this hard weather doesn't cause them too many problems.

We do get visited by short-eared owls most winters but varies considerably in numbers, sometimes they are very scarce. They breed in the northern uplands of Britain and tend to move south after breeding where finding their food, mainly voles and mice is a little easier. How many we get depends on how successful their breeding season has been and how much food is available. This year has been a bumper year for voles so their predators such as short-eared owls, barn owls and kestrels have all done well. Birds from the continent also cross the channel to take advantage of the plentiful food source that is around this year.

At the Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve at Waltham Brooks, just south of Amberley up to 6 at a time have been observed, sometimes 3 sparring together where their feeding territories overlap, spiralling up into the sky in a not particularly aggressive way. They even made the local news encouraging even more people to go and see them and the item can be seen on the Trust website."

Galapagos above the waves

and another noisy video, this time the best that my phone's video camera could come up with.

Includes Land Iguanas wrestling, Blue-footed Boobies foot-waving, Magnificent Frigatebirds drumming and a Waved Albatross's first ever flight.

Galapagos underwater

Those little £50 underwater cameras turned out to be pretty great!
(best watched with the volume turned down low... my first attempt at editing a video, and it's come out pretty noisy!)

Dry land stuff to follow...