yesterday i had put some steak n kidney pie crusts out for the magpies and jackdaws in the afternoon .
the bird table is the shed roof.
about 9pm i noticed one of the sammisons very busy moving bits to a safer place by dropping them over the edge to gather later. considering the exposure on a shed roof after dark i can only assume that snk pie is a prize worth risking all to get .
the use of gravity was rather interesting i had not seen that with the sammisons , going by the noises from below there was some team work going on.
i suspect drop and collect was in use, clever.
I was working at bagging logs yesterday and this rather magnificent cock pheasant was making a row out the back of the store. It seemed completely unbothered by me even though I was throwing logs in its general direction and the bagging tray makes clanging and rumbling noises as I tip it to get the logs into the bags. It was there for ages, and by the sounds of things later we have several pheasants setting up territories in the woods. They may be feral, but in the past we have had shoots in the area, so they could have been bred for that. Very colourful and very vocal birds though.
Might be interesting. They must have just arrived yesterday as today it was quiet, so they must have been setting up territories. Now is the time when walking through the woods quietly meditating to oneself results in a shock as a pheasant rises squawking in front of you!
For some reason the pheasants have fallen silent. Perhaps they have now all got their territories and have shut up as they may also have attracted foxes, buzzards, kites, and other animals that fancy a good fat cock pheasant for dinner. They are certainly looking rather magnificent in full mating plumage.
gz
Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Posts: 8687 Location: Ayrshire, Scotland
Posted: Fri Dec 14, 18 8:46 am Post subject:
I found this on the pavement in Hanmer Springs.
It is the HuHu beetle, the heaviest longhorn beetle in NZ.
The Wikipedia article on it is good...and recommended by Pete McGregor a naturalist, ecologist and photographer from Pohangina near Palmerston North.
Both interesting. I had to look up both the beetle and the junco as never heard of either. We do learn a lot about the natural history of other parts of the world on here.