What's buzzing or flying near you 2024 ?

I had a similar 'visitor' @shiney, and became ridiculously attached to him - Dave. We'd just say
alright Dave?' a la Rodney/ Only Fools.
I think he started appearing during Covid, so I was at home a lot more than normal, and he got used to me being there. It wasn't even just a handy restaurant, he would come and sit in the garden when I was out there, often on the rim of the deadheading bucket when I had a cuppa on the bench. He knew when I was coming back in from a walk too, and would be waiting on the lamppost outside the back gate, and then he'd fly in here:

Once, I was away all day on a hill, and when I came home, he was there - with a right face on him. My daughter suddenly went 'oh no, we forgot to feed Dave!'.
I still miss him. Isn't it silly?

 

I had another one this year who seemed to come and go a bit more, but I've not seen him for a while.
I heard yesterday that apparently pigeons 'work' the same way as AI, whereas rats and mice think/process in the same sort of way that we do. Totally bizarre.
It reminds me of a line in a Paul Simon song #At the Zoo- 'Pigeons plot in secrecy....'

 

The pigeons are very tame and ours waits for us to return to our garden chairs.

 

A very rare visitor to these shores in North Dorset. A juvenile Isabelline Shrike going a very long way round on it's first autumn migration to it's wintering grounds in East Africa seeing as it originally came from somewhere in the Middle East!

 

Not going to show up in a picture but the hum from the bees in the Arbutus, (strawberry tree), was really loud in the sunshine today.

 

As dusk came today we watched the rooks and the jackdaws in HUGE numbers flying around one way and then the next. The ariel displays were brilliant, never had so many of the corvid family around at the same time. They are roosting somewhere but not sure where. Very interesting to watch. As they were around the male GSW was on a perch "frozen". He stayed for many minutes and then when it seemed that the fly overs were at a stop for a minute he then flew off. Would corvids take a GSW?

 

I dunno, what's a GSW?

 

@pete sorry Greater Spotted Woodpecker

 

Ahh, yes nice bird, pretty rare around here.

 

Same with my ivy.

 

Masses of ivy behind my garden and it too sounds like a generator humming.

 

I see you have a blackbird too, like me, @Escarpment ....mine does that soft under breath practice singing when i sit near her, sometimes. It is really lovely. I sometimes sing back and I am sure she thinks it is a funny game, coming out with ever more elaborate utterances, while I try to keep up (a sort of copycat call and response!) She 'wins' every time...I am sure animals have a sense of humour.

 

How lovely. I have had a breeding pair the last couple of years, I reckon they raised 3 broods this year. They were feeding the babies on the grass right outside my window. The female is a very confident bird who will follow me round the garden like a robin if she thinks I might be turning up worms.