New brood of ducks in July

Taking a walk by the canal yesterday, 2nd July, and I was surprised to see a new family of ducklings swim past. The ducklings must have been no older than 2 or 3 days old. It does seem quite late in the year for such a thing to happen.

With the milder winters that we are having now, I'm sure there's planty of time for them to grow and prepare for the winter months. There's lots of food around now and it just does not get as cold as it used to.

The othr thing I noticed on my morning stroll is the number of birds of prey now flying in the skies of Wales. There is definately a lot more buzzards arround than 20 or 30 years ago. On the other hand there is a lot less song birds. Whether this is just a barren year for songbirds or part of a pattern is too soon to say but the countryside deffinately sounds quietr than last year.

One of the things I've observed increasing a lot over the last few years is the incidents of crows attacking buzzards. This mobbing as it's called is something that has always happened but it does seem to be that it has increased. Now either I'm getting more aware of incidents or it is actually increasing in frequency.

Crows are highly territorial and will join together to deal with possible threats and this is one way of dealing with buzzards - and any other bird of prey - that ventures too close to a crow family territory.  There does seem to be increasing numbers of crows and  buzzards over the last few years so I guess the opportunity for this type of clash has increased.

Let's hope it is due to increasing numbers of both species of birds rather than reducing area of habitat and other resources that are  bringing the species into extra contact.