Suffolk Wildlife  

As we swelter through the last days of July, it seems hard to think that the swifts will soon be departing and we’ll be seeing migrant lapwings and golden plovers.  Our swallows and house martins have had a bit of a mixed year.  It started off cold and wet (remember that?) and the nests were quickly repaired.  As one of our ready made martin nest boxes has been taken over by sparrows, one pair started building a new nest, extending the semi-detached pair above our bedroom window into a terrace of three.  They never got much beyond the foundations, however.  The swallows in the car port suffered a major mechanical failure of their nest and sadly none of the young birds survived.  I had thought they were trying for a second brood, but this does not seem to have happened. 

Small passerines seem to have done pretty well; there are loads of young great tits and blue tits as well as plenty of finches, robins, wrens and dunnocks.  We had a mystery finch visit us on several occasions, a bit smaller than a chaffinch, streaked brown, with a forked tail and a dark wing bar, no green or yellow apparent.  The only illustration in any of my books that looks anything like it is an immature citril finch, but it obviously wasn’t that as they only live in places like the Massif Central and the Alps!

Our local green woodpeckers had another fruitless year as their one chick was killed on the A1120, just a few yards from where last year’s chick met its demise.  It has been quite heart wrenching over the last few days to hear the parent’s plaintive calling.  Further away from the main road, it appears that a lapwing’s nest may have been pounced on by a marsh harrier and something has been eating great crested newts, without a licence from English Nature!

Paul Collins  01728 638217

 Summer 2006

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