Collared Dove

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 We had a visit from a single collared dove at our bird feeders this week. The light was going and it isn't my best ever photograph but you get the idea.


I was searching my memory banks to think of the first time I saw these birds. I could not remember seeing them as a child in Lancashire and it turns out that there is a very good reason for that. These birds were not found in Britain until 1955 when some turned up in Norfolk and they have spread out to populate most of the country since then. Before 1930 it was confined to Turkey and the Balkans in Europe although it was found further East as far as China. The birds were not introduced but spread of their own accord, helped by the tendency of young birds to spread far away from their parents.
The birds are monogamous and I found it interesting that the egg brooding chores are shared with the female sitting during the day and the male taking over at night. One factor that assists their spread is that they can breed year round as long as the weather is mild enough.

Diary Notes
Warmer weather into the low teens today. STILL no sign of frogspawn! Curlew calling. Last nights cameras showed a badger heading South on the old railway line at around 2300hrs and a glimpse of a stoat in  the camera near the house at 1900 hrs.
I made a foray with my bat detecting equipment at dusk but couldn't repeat my success of the night before with no bats found. It's curious that there were no bats. Perhaps the ones I located the previous night had been making an experimental outing and failed to find food (after all I am not finding moths).
The first of the wood anemone showing near Smardale Mill


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