Black cap

 The rain is coming down heavily today, but that does not stop the birds from looking for food. This black cap female was busy eating rowan berries when I saw her and managed to get a couple of photos before I got raindrops on my lens.

Nuthatch

 The nuthatch is a funny and very lovable bird. As you know from my previous posts, I see them a lot, and usually they walk around like in the second picture, while from time to time they behave like the one immediately below. Not sure why it is doing it, but it can be because it is itching, a need for cleaning its beak or listening for insects moving in the rotten tree trunk.

Öland in September

Young starlings gathering before they fly south to warmer regions.

Our beloved wagtail left several weeks even months ago, but this one was happily jumping around in Kastlösa.

Ottenby is a very well-known nature reserve on the southern tip of Öland. Amazing numbers of birds fly over Ottenby on their way south and a research station has been established to catch and put a ring on some of them. 

 

The colors are changing

 Most trees are still green, but the colours are slowly changing. I thought of it today when a took a picture of a nuthatch and saw the colours in the background. 

Lesser spotted woodpecker

 The lesser spotted woodpecker is really very small to be a woodpecker. I first mistook this female for a nuthatch, but when looking at her through my camera, I could see what it really was. A welcome guest since it is not very common. Unfortunately the light was not the best and I did not manage to get close enough to get a good picture. 

Brambling

The pictures below are neither sharp nor is the light sufficient but since it is the first time I have seen bramblings in Svångemåla, I have to let you see them :)

One more cute bird :)

It is a marsh tit sitting in a  Robinia pseudoacacia that grows on our plot. I took at small plant in my parents' garden, and it has adjusted well and is now a small tree with wonderful flowers in spring.

Cutest bird in Svångemåla right now :)

 This is a young robin who has not got its full colours and looks a bit scruffy, but I still think it is, by far, the cutest of all birds that we have here right now :)

Short-toed treecreeper

As long as I can remember, I have been told and believed that the nuthatch is the only bird in Sweden that can go head first down a tree trunk. I was therefore surprised and excited when I saw a short-toed treecreeper going both up and down with its head first! 

It is amazing how difficult it is to spot it thanks to its colours that are almost identical to the bark of most trees.

 Someone hinted that I might just have turned the picture upside-down to create the impression that the bird is going head first down. First, I would never ever do anything like that and secondly, I am just as surprised as the rest of the area of Ornithology, but unfortunately I have no picture of the whole tree, but the picture below shows a bit more of the environment and to me, it is obvious that the tree creeper is going down head first!

Amazing experience!

 When out walking next to our plot I heard a big bird in the sky. I walked a few more meters and saw what I think were two buzzards circling high up in the sky. I tried to follow one of them and was surprised when it suddenly, more or less, stopped and dived towards a smaller one below it. Since I was following the larger of the two, I got a couple of shots of the two together and was very surprised when I looked at the photos on the computer. One of them is actually flying with its feet towards the sky! The quality of the photos is not the best, but if you click on the picture it will at least be a bit enlarged.

This shows how far away they were. 

Enlarged, it looks like this.

The bird flying closest to the ground seems to look up and realize that it is in danger.

Within a fraction of a second, the darker of the two attacks and the lower manage to turn around and fly upside down! I still do not know if it was a game, training or a real attack.

Black cap 2

 The black cap is  not a bird that makes many people excited. It is grey, small, and its song is not spectacular in any way. Still, I just love it and watching it eating in the bushes is great fun.

Mr Black Cap...

and Mrs Black Cap.

Blackcap

 The blackcap loves the elderberries!  It is so fun to watch them jumping around in the bushes looking for the best ones to eat :)

Two favourites

 Two of my favourites have visited our plot recently. The first one was a wagtail that suddenly landed on top of our car. It was not the resident couple but a couple of very young ones that were fairly unafraid of me. 

The second favourite that showed up today was our resident robin. It is around most of the time, but looked a bit different today. Not sure why, but its feathers seemed a bit out of order, and it had some strange black stripes under its beak that I have not noticed before. I hope it is feeling OK.