Waiting for Omid

Currently basically sitting around waiting for Omid (the last wild Siberian Crane in the WP) to start migrating from Iran before a whole bunch of us head out to Azerbaijan to see if we can catch up with it in the WP. This winter Omid was paired up with a captive bred female (Roya) in a last ditch attempt to save this population from extinction. More from Birdguides HERE. We currently have contacts in the wintering grounds keeping us posted and at the moment despite lots of test flights the birds have not started migrating north yet. Some valentine video of the birds bonding here. 

Not much else happening round here. A return to cold nights means the moths have dropped off again, just Dotted Border added to the year list. The bird territorial behaviour is increasing in the garden with 4 fighting Great Spots this morning , a nice singing Mistle Thrush and a pair of Long-tailed Tits are building a nest in the front garden. Not a lot in the garden this winter- no wintering Blackcaps, Siskins and just a single Redwing lately. Ebird list from today here. There was an article in Birdwatch by Josh this month about how few winter specialities there seem to be in the country this winter which could be linked to the late and mild autumn of 2022 and basically not so many birds bothering to move into the UK as simply not cold enough to worth migrating. On the upside of that it seems to be quite a good early spring for moths with the local CMR team reporting record species counts by this time of year. 

Meanwhile in the mini-zoo we have added our first coral (zoanthids) and a couple more marine fish to the reef tank. Our Giant Atlas moth pupae have also arrived and gone into an emergence chamber in the paludarium. Now on 92 species across the paludarium, tropical fish tank, gecko tank and reef tank. The Pony was put down by a vet in the week (on advice from animal welfare consultants) so that's one species less but still slowly climbing to the 100 target. 

James has planted some broad bean seeds ready to be transplanted into the mini-farm. Otherwise not much happening there yet (also not sure we should bother this year as will be moving out at some point).  

Other than that I did another session at Otmoor yesterday with nothing to write home about and also slowly getting through the Azores winter work and reports. All a bit of a slog to be honest. Be nice to get some excitement. 

Mistle Thrush singing in garden 

Great Spots fighting for territory (above and below) in the garden 

Dotted Border 

Giant Atlas Moth cocoons

New additions to the developing reef tank included the first zoanthid corals, a Firefish Goby and a Blue Damsel (aka Blue Devil fish which I soon discovered why it was called that after it killed its partner by ramming and biting it to death) to add to the Red Scooter Blenny and the clean up crew of various snails and hermit crabs.