Saturday, September 11, 2010

Jumble Hole - 2:00PM

A quick walk round found 2 goldcrests moving with a tit flock, a treecreeper in my garden with another tit flock (another new garden tick), a bullfinch, a flock of 35 goldfinches, a male kestrel, sparrowhawk, and a raven over Erringden being harrassed by jackdaws.

A real 'treat' was an almightly battle between a smallish rabbit and a stoat on the pennine way on Underbank. It lasted for some 30 noisy seconds, but the rabbit finally escaped and the stoat ran into brambles.

A neighbour claims there are black rats around - is that possible?
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5 comments:

Muxy said...

I think Black Rats are extremely rare in Britain now. When I last read the only sizeable population was on the Isle of Lundy. I think they are much more likely to be Brown Rats whose colour can vary wildly and there ceratinly are plenty about at the moment. You never though know your neighbour might be right but I would think unlikely.

4:04 pm
Jeff Cox said...

Your garden list must be impressive by now Matt. I know the general area where you live and that there are trees and woods all round, although there are large fields to break thenm up, but I'm a bit surprised Treecreeper is a newie?

6:54 pm
Steve Blacksmith said...

Irvine Morley, in 1965, stated.
"H.Pickles, in a list of the Halifax mammals 1900, stated that this species had disappeared within living memory.(Vertebrate Fauna of the Halifax Parish.)
Doesn't mean it hasn't hung on in the wilds of Jumble Hole Clough, though! Let us know if you see one, Matt. Interestingly, we used to have dormice in the upper valley, but they were also thought extinct by 1870.

9:31 pm
Matt Bell said...

Thanks for the comments. I suspect that it's just brown rats, which are present round here.
And Jeff - there are occassional treecreeper in the woods, but I've just never seen one in the garden before.

9:36 pm
Steve Cummings said...

Material that I read some time ago, if my memory serves me, Black Rats were confined to ports or docklands such as Liverpool and London. These are the Ship Rats or House Rats that brought Bubonic plague. They favoured higher areas than Browns, such as roof and attic spaces, and of course, ships. With containerisation, I think their global movements were curtailed somewhat and they don't compete very well with Browns that are more adapted to a subterranean, sewer-phillic existence. I doubt that we have them in Calderdale. As Muxy says, pretty rare now.

10:08 pm

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