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A total of 22 members and guests joined Andrew Bluett over three evening visits to the Forest of Dean on 18^th and 24^th June and 9^th July 2015. Each meeting began at 9.00 pm with Nightjar activity commencing soon after 9.30. The site visited held two pairs of birds which gave good sightings of flying birds approaching to within 10 metres of the group several times and long bouts of “churring” song.

The warm still evenings did encourage the local Mosquitos to be troublesome but not seriously so, and at the first and last meetings groups of Wild Boar of various ages and sizes were seen near the car park. Song Thrush song punctuated the waiting before Nightjars became active and the clicking of a Stonechat was heard on all three occasions, Woodcock were notable by their absence for most of the time with only a very few roding passes; a young Tawny Owl was heard calling from the denser part of the forest at all meetings.

The Nightjar flights were visible easily when traversing the backlit sky but less so when low down and skimming across the vegetation; one male bird sang regularly from a particular Silver Birch Tree and could be picked up in a torch beam, most especially when the eye caught the light and reflected it back.

At two of the meetings members with Bat detectors were able to locate and identify various species for the group.

Walking back to the car park was rather uneventful at the first two meetings but on the third meeting, a number of variously sized Toads were discovered along the forest track, most of them small and no more than 18 mm long. A rather suspicious rustling in the undergrowth was a little un-nerving until the light of torches brought to bear revealed two Fallow Deer rather than the expected Wild Boar.

My thanks to all those who took part and for those who were not able to attend the meetings, you should get another chance next year..!

Photographs of male Nightjar courtesy of Ken Cservenka – note the white patches in the wings and tail identifying males and a short video by Andrew Bluett at the link below.

Nightjar 2015 Video Clip

On Friday 3rd July @ 7 p.m. Red Kite was spotted circling  over bungalow in Winchcombe Gloucestershire  before heading off in 160 degree  SSE direction.  No mistaking the shape witnessed via binoculars.

Cath Symons

In my back garden in Warden Hill, Cheltenham I have used an old white Belfast style sink to create a water feature.  This has been in-situ for around 5 years, so I’d say is ‘mature’.  Initially I filled it with rain water, placed in some local rocks (to allow larger animals to escape if they fell in) and then ‘kick-started’ it with some water from a local pond (which included some pond weed and a few snails).  For the last couple of years I’ve noticed the moults of damsel flies and this year just happened to be outside recently when I noticed the latest nymphs climbing up the reeds and changing to adults.  They are not brilliant photographs (I’d left my good camera at work and these are from my iPhone), but are not too bad.  I think they are Large Red Damselfies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula).  It just goes to show that nature will find a way!

This is a still from the recording of our nestbox camera this morning. We saw a woodpecker flying to it and poking his head in. When we played back the video, there he was. Luckily the chicks were just out of reach of his beak.

He tried a second time, and interestingly this time the chicks kept low in the nest with their beaks closed.

The mother was back within seconds of him leaving.

We have over a dozen nest boxes in our 1.5 acre garden at Woolaston. For the fourth year, Stock Doves are nesting in a kestrel-design box fixed to a shed wall where squirrels find access more difficult.

This year, for the first time, we have nuthatches in one box. There seem to be two chicks nearly ready to fledge (24^th May 2015)

It is a larger box than my standard tit boxes. Internal dimensions are approx. 30cm high at front x 15cm deep x 10 cm wide. After woodpecker damage I nailed on a new ply entrance, still enlarged by the woodpecker. The nuthatches have added mud above the entrance to seal it  and have also adjusted the entrance size and shape  to  make it downward sloping inside and a little smaller.

The nest is made from large pieces of thin bark from our paper-bark maple. They must  have struggled to pull them through the entrance hole.

David Priddis

Most of us are aware that Red Kite are being seen more often across the county as each year passes so that a sighting is now perhaps a little less exciting than just a few years ago. However, once in a while something more than a simple sighting and record occurs, a good example of that is seen in the two photographs below from David Priddis, better known as our resident Bat expert in the Forest of Dean. David has seen Kites over his home patch of Woolaston Common before, but this bird is clearly carrying, and was observed eating whilst in flight, a large Rat, probably a Brown Rat (R. norvegicus) on Friday 17th April.

The diet of Kites is usually said to be small birds, mammals and invertebrates with carrion (often road kill) thrown in but unless this bird found the Rat already dead, it must have managed a kill which is no mean feat against a resourceful, agile and feisty animal.