Nature

[Hannah]

Mouse filmed tidying up man's shed every night

That mouse is welcome to move in with me! I offer a warm room and always enough crumbs on the floor.

[Boatbuilder]

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

I don't recall Enid ever writing about octopuses!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-60516908

[Courtenay]

Wow, I wonder what Pip the Pixie might have made of those? He did once have a very scary encounter with a jellyfish, but I think that's as close as he got!

[Boatbuilder]

I thought that was a recent story but see it's from February 2022.

[pete9012S]

Drew back the bedroom curtains this morning to see a large fox in our garden.
Rushed for my camera, but it had moved towards the bottom the garden when I managed to take these pics..

[Wolfgang]

Was it a fox on the run?

[Anita Bensoussane]

Lovely! Foxes sometimes made a mess of my old garden but I used to like seeing them all the same!

[timv]

I saw the first primroses of the year on Sunday 28th, in a sheltered garden in Lymington. A record for this part of the South coast? (Snowdrops, though, appear if it's warm enough weeks earlier.) Huge flocks of Brent geese on the creeks and fields around the 1978 FF series filming site at Hurst Castle - but it's noticeable that when there are large flocks of both Brent geese and Canada geese on our local marshes they usually keep carefully apart! A few from one breed will mingle with or feed near a larger flock of the other breed, but two larger groups always keep well apart - usually with a hedge or ditch between them. Around 300 to 400 geese in some flocks.

[Katharine]

I have a tub in my garden which contains primroses and they've had a couple of flowers for weeks.

We had a sharp frost for a couple of nights and they died off, but there is another one showing now.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

On a particularly sheltered grassy bank, I saw primroses just before Christmas!

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Christmas presents 2024 sorted. I shall be getting everyone a UV torch!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68301119



Two weeks ago, my conservation group were happily bashing and burning gorse on a nature reserve 500 yards from the edge of Poole Harbour.
Except that I was discussing Very Important Business with a couple of friends.

Suddenly, I noticed a Very Large Thing flying slowly towards us.

• Red Kite? No, tail wrong

• Buzzard? No, although it was circling, the wings were wrong

“WHITE TAILED EAGLE” I yelled

Everyone then stopped what they were doing to look up at the approaching Thing, which was clearly looking back at us. It circled over us twice, decided that our biscuits weren’t to its liking, and soared off back towards the harbour.

Happily, Bob, who knows about these things, could confirm that it was indeed an eagle.

Unhappily, a lady whose glasses turn dark in the smallest amount of sunshine, didn’t see it at all!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm glad you saw the white-tailed eagle, Viv.

The UV torch sounds fun!

[Katharine]

Recently I was walking round the lake at the University of East Anglia. I had reached one end of the lake and had stopped to admire the view down the lake when I was startled by a noise above my head.

It happened so quickly that it was hard to process what actually happened. My initial reaction was that some kind of small missile had just whizzed through the air, not that I have any experience of such a thing. I looked up and saw something black hurtling through the air which looked as if it was a bird, but much too big for a blackbird.

I hurried towards the lake, expecting to see a splash in the water, or something swimming on the top, but there was nothing there. Typically my camera had just run out of battery, and I felt I wasted a couple of minutes hunting for the replacement in the bottom of my bag.

When I eventually got the camera working again, I spotted something in some trees, and managed to zoom in enough to see two fairly large birds in the top of one of them. One of the birds appeared to be complete black and I managed to get a reasonable photo of it stretching its wings.

I think it may have been a cormorant in the tree, and I'm assuming that was what had whizzed over my head. Whether it dived into the water and I missed any signs of it, or whether it swooped through the air straight to the tree I don't know.

A quick Google shows it flying by flapping its wings, but whatever it was seemed to whizz through the air, but it all happened so unexpectedly and quickly that I can't be sure exactly what happened.

I'm hoping to go back again soon, and will keep a sharp look out to see if anything similar happens again.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

whatever it was seemed to whizz through the air, but it all happened so unexpectedly and quickly that I can't be sure exactly what happened.

A genuine UFO

Some lovely photos here - the one with the raven could have been taken by Jack Trent
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-68543633

but the slime-mould is 160 images