Feeding time.

This rather wet morning the adult Green Woodpecker was making the most of the softened ground. The two chicks waiting patiently.

But after not too long one of them was getting very impatient and actually pecked the parent on the top of the head.

The adult was not amused.

"Just be patient you"

"and you too".

 Order was restored... Just.

In the bottom left above you can see the Grey Wagtail.

He/she has also been working hard keeping these cuties happy,

More about these another day... Elizabeth has some really cute pictures.

Today has been...

Well you have to eat whatever the weather...

Poor Green Woodpecker, soaked through...  Again its a hard life being a bird.

Think we will go back to the North West... it's been sunny and warm there today... anybody a spare boat!!!

Sheltering

Guess what? It has rained non stop all day today and at 4:00 o'clock this afternoon it became very windy and our car alarm went off twice... As I was tiling, Elizabeth went to investigate thinking it was the gusts of wind moving the car. I suggested an animal/bird may have got inside, but could not think how. The solution was a simple one... Some idiot (Me) had left the drivers side window open from yesterday morning when we stopped to talk to our neighbour... So we now have a very wet drivers seat!

The constant rain did not deter the many birds on and around our feeders once I had replenished them this morning. One poor soul had however given up....

Our friend the Green Woodpecker positioned itself under a branch of our willow.

Given the state of our garden it is not at all surprising.

It would be a case of "Water with your ants, Sir?"

It poses the question - what do the ants do when the ground is so very waterlogged? We know what our moles have done... Our hill is full of mole hills so they have obviously taken to the high ground.

Helping reduce our garden ant population.

Last year we had a pair of Green Woodpeckers  (Pic Vert in French) around the garden for most of the year. In July we noticed the two adults and two juveniles feeding on our gardens ants.

The youngster learning how to find ants from the adult. How, in July, I will never know - the ground was like concrete!

Go and find your own I'm not feeding you any more!!!

Now four months on, with the ground penetrable, all four are regular feeders. This youngster certainly appears to have got the hang of it...

 

The green woodpecker is a specialist feeder and eats about 2,000 ants a day. So with four of them at it, that should be 56,000 less ants per week. Great!! Elizabeth is always getting ant bites when she is gardening.

A frequent visitor to our garden

Since we have been living in Braye one visitor to our garden keeps appearing and aerating our lawn (if you can yet call it lawn - I prefer our area of grass and weeds!)

Green Woodpecker (Picus Viridis)

It is normally a very wary bird and although it comes close to the house it is always on the lookout, as can be seen above. We have seen two of them together several times and, rarely, a third one.

It really does dig deep as the mud on its beak in the photo below testifies.

Pity it does not eat taupes (moles) we have plenty. Does anybody know how to train a green woodpecker!!