{"id":1095,"date":"2010-12-07T20:36:33","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T20:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/?p=1095"},"modified":"2010-12-07T20:36:33","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T20:36:33","slug":"flocking-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/?p=1095","title":{"rendered":"Flocking well"},"content":{"rendered":"

That may well sound like something James Naughtie<\/a> might stumble over on the Today programme but it’s about the birds I see on my route.<\/p>\n

It seems that the colder the weather becomes the larger each flock of birds becomes. Today I’ve seen immense flocks of fieldfares, or rather mutations of fieldfares as I wrote in January<\/a>. Also large flock of starlings, sparrows, rooks and wood pigeons. It’s the wood pigeon flocks which seem to have increased the most in size. Any field of greens seems to be smothered in wood pigeons. As I passed one such field they suddenly took flight and flew in front of the bus, it’s not uncommon to hit one bird but in the space of a few seconds I think I hit 5 or 6! They seemed to be everywhere, a couple hit the windscreen, there were several bangs on aluminium body panels and at least one hit the nearside mirror which folded back and twisted.<\/p>\n

One highlight of today was the crossing of the road in front of the bus by four deer. They didn’t suddenly appear rushing across the road but were almost orderly. I was able to slow the bus and the passengers were all able to have a good look at them. These are wild deer which I frequently see far off in the fields and which are spooked by the slightest sound or movement, yet today they were almost docile. Are they starving because of the snow and frozen ground?<\/p>\n

Today I also saw a Barn Owl flying low over a field in the middle of the day. What chance did he have of catching a mouse or vole with the temperature below zero? I think all mice and voles would be holed up and asleep. Then again one may venture out as did the other animal I’d expect to be sleeping through the freezing weather, a grey squirrel. He too rushed across the road and up a snowy bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That may well sound like something James Naughtie might stumble over on the Today programme but it’s about the birds I see on my route. It seems that the colder the weather becomes the larger each flock of birds becomes. Today I’ve seen immense flocks of fieldfares, or rather mutations of fieldfares as I wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}