Writtle Wildlife Watch is back! Once more, our conservation expert Alan Roscoe has been keeping an eye on the wildlife on campus.
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"Personally, I am not a great one for cute and fluffy
animals. Giant Panda? Thanks but no. Meerkats? Raincheck. Ring-tailed Lemur?
Sorry, washing my hair.
But every once in a while you have a close encounter with
the cute and fluffy side of nature that really hits home. Back in the January
blog I mentioned our various bird boxes around the estate and I am delighted to
report we have a newly hatched clutch of College Kestrels this month, having
only installed the box earlier this year.
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| Kestrel box at Writtle College. Copyright Steve Baines. |
Under the supervision of local bird box supremo Steve Baines,
the box was checked a few days ago and we have five very healthy looking
chicks. As you can see they are quite chunky already but also a little
apprehensive of strangers! We checked
but the mother was nowhere to be seen. You have to be patient as absences from
a nestbox can be as long as two hours.
And in line with this blog’s mission to be both entertaining
and informative, Kestrels number some 45,000 pairs in Britain, although they
have declined recently leading to ‘amber’ status. The word ‘falcon’ derives
from the Latin falcis meaning a
sickle, and refers to the shape of a falcon’s talons. Now there’s a good word I
never learned in my Latin lessons."
For those of you on Twitter, did you know you can now follow us? Find us @WrittleCons.
