Brief Roundup

It's a been a quiet week, the highlight was a Raven being mobbed by a pair of Sparrowhawks at Ogston Reservoir. Doubly exciting for me because I cycled out there, making the big crow #108 for my carbon neutral list.
You know it sure is fun to be keeping a new lifelong list I can regularly add to, well, at least for now.

As part of their eastward spread, that area of central Derbyshire is a great spot for Raven, just enough upland and just wild enough too for a thin breeding population. It has to be thin really, Raven territories are BIG and they keenly exclude all others of their own species.

Otherwise, like I say, very quiet, so I'll direct you to an interesting blog entry about Blue Tits feeding their chicks brain food - spiders containing an amino acid called taurine, which helps to develop the mental faculties of the young. Read more here, it's one of those, who'd of thought(?) pieces of research.