deesidesparrow.bsky.social
Concerned about biodiversity loss & climate change. Interests: avifauna, plantlife, books, art galleries, museums 🐦🌾📚🖼🎨🏛
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The frequency and consistency of numbers which I have seen in 2025 has led me to think the colony may be nearer than I have previously believed. The Swift Mapper app. has one nesting reference for Deeside, though several years old. I've been looking in that street, but not seen anything.
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Yes, the delivery of the bolus is proof. I've got this sense that the group of 10 swifts I see every day has bolus collection going on but I am unaware where the colony nesting is. Exception was Wednesday evening fine, blue sky but the swifts weren't visible from the garden unlike other evenings.
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Glad tidings of great Apus apus joy! 😃
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House sparrow (m.) (L. Passer domesticus) FBOMD. Phew, got that right. Unlike yesterday's wrong keying/android keyboard composition un-proofread error! 🙄 Similar to Your's, he was on the wire nearest the gable camouflaged against the grey pebbledash! 😃
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They can run and run, and flit ... but to a position directly in the way of your walk ... and then repeat! Gorgeous little birds, impossible to remain in a glum mood seeing their irrepressibility and zest for life!
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That's sounds to me comfortingly normal early in meteorological summer in your part of the world.
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It was a magic, short moment. I was walking up the road, saw the two birds get near the busy road, one taking its life in its hands and scuttling low in front of the cars. The other alighted on the wall just before I got there flapping up, singing I heard its dunnock voice, bill shape, babyishness 💕
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The silver lining you're hoping for me did occur walking home from train station! By the police station, 2 dunnocks were flying towards the road: the adult crossed at hazardous low level, the young 'un instinctively stopped on the wall. Then went up on a branch, still close & sang beautifully. 😍
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There's no excusing use of the taxonomically hopeless name Hedge sparrow! It was general in British bird books when I was a child. But Dunnock has been used for the species - which isn't a true sparrow having a totally different beak shape - for ages now. 🫣 Awful seeing error via Like notifications!
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Oh, crumbs! I've no idea how "Hedge" appears not "House sparrows" ... I can't even use the lame excuse that 3rd day running 1st bird it must have been House sparrows to wriggle out of my abject proof-reading failure. Utter brain fog. Sorry! 😞
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Hedge sparrow FBOMD 3rd morning. As I looked for the originators of the lively chirruping, I saw a whirring wings blur descending from the gable. A male sparrow dropped to the ground from ivy followed by an individual that appeared, possibly, partially dependent. Aw! 🤎🩶🖤
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At the far opposite end of the patch, in the early evening, there were some young long-tailed tits, even causing me to wonder whether these beauties might have nested where they did 4 years ago. This species' nesting cycle is very early. Possibly, I didn't notice them in 2025.
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The parents are keeping them out of sight! Whether they are within their range over the other side of the road or in the abundant greenery in the front garden I am not certain. There was plenty of chirruping in the holly this afternoon. I was trimming some other bushes with hand shears a way away.
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Yours: aeronauts sans pareil!!!
Mine: Further sightings of chirruping house sparrows across the road. A female glimpsed perched in a protected position similar to on Monday and a male struggling to hold his position above on the telecomm. wire in the gusty breeze.
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That sounds like an excellent plan! Sounds exceptional that the deer didn't have a go at your growing vegetables. " ... showed up as a volunteer ... " ❤️ love it. I'm not completely sure there may have been some goldenrod & snowberry in my parents' time. There's certainly more of both now. 😄🐝🦋
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I've got quite a bit of goldenrod - Solidago canadensis flowering from July to at least late September. This attracts much pollinator activity. 🐝🦋🙂 It is only touched in deepest midwinter so that it provides the best outcome for the pollinators. The badgers which visit me don't interfere with it! 🤞
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The neighbours! 😕 It's difficult to disregard their perspective entirely at the front of the house. I only use hand tools, with observation and caution. Also, avoiding cutting any Snowberry (L. Symphoricarpos)! It's pink flowers last Jun to Oct and are much sought by pollinators of all sorts. 🐝🦋🙂
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Yes, a lot of things in the biosphere change at this time of year at a speed which seems enhanced compared to the other seasons! Birds fledging is a pure pleasure. Some of the spurting growth of shrubs and plants in the garden here is tricky: controlling it responsibly not causing bird disturbance.
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Superb male blackbird description. 🖤💛🧸A welcome FBOMD was a female house sparrow, fluttering about a shrub adjacent to the house opposite, deep within the safety of the garden. Lots of chirruping animating the morning but nearly all from under cover.
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Good to hear of the rising generation and special for this Northern cardinal juvenile to make it as your 1st bird today! 👏😃
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Cut-through audibility of goldfinch's song had me look 1st at TV aerial near where the goldfinch was on Saturday. So 2nd day as FBOMD, pipping wood pigeon on next door's aerial (coo'd too late!) & chirruping house sparrow balanced on wire below gable.
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Yay for blue jay 2nd consecutive day! That's a sequence! 💙🐦😃
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Goldfinch belting out its mellifluous notes on a telecomm. cable, near the flat-topped pole hub: a desired hanging out place of bigger birds, where it may be shoo'd away later in the morning! The other usual characters in the mini avian dramas appeared later. Was busy & overlooked platform y/day! 🫣
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Joint FBsOMD male house sparrow & jackdaw, ending 3-day wood pigeon streak. Sparrow wobbling a bit in the breeze on telecomm. wire, jackdaw on pitched roof. Jackdaw then summoned to join peers in 'Top Gun' style aerial stunt close approaches on Roundhead in a nearby tree.
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The jackdaw, at the time @dauphne.bsky.social, was on the top of the gable end staring up to the TV aerial concentrating on Roundhead & probably waiting for another jackdaw! That was why the up flying sparrow aiming for the cavity made the jackdaw jump: startled! 😆
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My latest Whitethroat spot x2 on 18 May. Early a.m. but not 1st. I'd walked for c. 2hrs by the Dee!
2 wood pigeons on an aerial & on roof tiles. Then a sparrow scared a jackdaw scene! The 'daw above gable saw sparrow approach cavity late & leapt up.
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Yes, indeed. Moreover, this book is now on my reading list - thank you - I wish to both refresh on the learnings from the audio abridgement and read the rest of the content. 😃
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It was like the reflection of a white garment in an ultraviolet spectrum on the screen of a night entertainment venue or like the biblical description of the Transfiguration - take your pick according to preference/sensibility. But it was utterly unlike seeing that white collar in 99.9% cases!
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Nice one! Our public service radio - BBC Radio 4 - broadcast an audio abbreviation of 'An Immense World' back in June 2022 in 5 x 14 minute episodes. I found it fascinating. It was in my mind yesterday the way I perceived the wood pigeon's white collar!! Thought gosh! other birds see it like this!!!
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A really subtle and truly stunning rose!
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Fascinating! Enjoy your swift behaviour observations.
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Wood pigeon stood high on the ridge of a pitched house roof looking up the road, towards the SW, on a bright morning. This pigeon's white collar wasn't picked out vividly like it was on Tuesday's FBOMD in the unusual contrasting dark and light conditions yesterday morning.
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Wood pigeon on TV aerial on house opposite, during a rain shower, under grey clouds & above glistening roof tiles. But the gloomy conditions sparked a startling awareness of just how striking their white collar is. Like hi-viz in dark reflecting a headlight!
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😃 He must have been a wonderful colourful sight in such circumstances!
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🎯 the issues you list. I'm sure, whilst presently you may be in a minority in perceiving these risks, you are not on your own in holding these logical concerns. We have analogous issues here. Govt. legislating out restrictions on onshore windfarms that may see upland peat carbon sinks trashed! 😲
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That's just as well that the nest isn't, apparently, attracting attention. The Great tits will be in and out I guess! 🙂
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This is a bit similar to the low roof extensions on some platforms at Chester railway station where Passer domesticus come and go from cavities! Not being more plain/specific. The 'hygiene police' may take an undesirable interest despite no nuisance in my opinion.
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I could quip that the novelist Graham Greene would like to have seen three to bolster his numerological descriptions in some of his fiction! Yet it's sad to reflect that, as he lived 1904 to 1991, in his lifetime Greene would very likely have usually seen many swifts together in flight at one time.
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Interesting & thanks for pondering this for me. The multiple buses turning up at once adage may well be quite contextual to British cities. Traffic consequences of abandoning trams & trolley buses from the 1950s to depend for an era on mixed ICE private vehicle & public service vehicle road usage. 🙄
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Yes, the issue I felt encountered using Merlin around sunrise! It kept coming back with wren + one or two others when I could hear another bird's song that I wasn't familiar with. Repeated usages in the park woodland more successful. I'd seen the Grey wagtail. Merlin detected it from a distance. ✔️🎶😄
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Chickadee joy makers! 😄
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Sorry @carolynjane.bsky.social I've been without signal to reply! Edge of woods in garden, Merlin only reported wren and blackbird. Though I thought I could hear others! So I walked in the country park trying there. It did well to pick up a grey wagtail there though I was onto goldcrest before it. 😄
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🤣
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Many thanks for this. It seems to me likely that there is an underlying 'defensive' briefing note circulated/intranet accessible to MP's support staff, providing material to rebuff constituents corresponding with concerns on the I&P Bill, which includes this 'angle' specifically on swift bricks.
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Interesting. May I ask, was there any detail provided in your MPs correspondence on why it wasn't appropriate in all circumstances or any hyperlink to details on this specific argument providing a rationale for Labour MPs to reject the relevant amendments to the I&P Bill at the Committe Stage?
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Lone, silent jackdaw flying towards the woods a few minutes before sunrise. I had discreetly gone to the woodland edge to check what the Merlin app. made of the birdsong I could hear. Much leaf proliferation in May I couldn't see any of the songsters.
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Thanks for letting me know the time the two images were captured and also the pointer to your #BumbleBird posts. Fascinating! Yes, I'm sure there were still sounds & sights of bumbles on that patch! Watched my garden clover patch mid-pm y/day. Plenty of active pollinators including solitary bees. 🐝
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May I enquire, is there an equivalent contextual American saying to the (British) English cliché about waiting for a bus to come along and then two buses coming along at once? 🤔😁
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A first for your FBOMD for a while, I think?! 😃