S.W.A.T. is here!

Yup, Mum’s now given us yet another name : SWAT Squad. SWAT stands for Sparhawk Wildlife Adventure Team. She thought it up this morning on our usual morning walk. We do have to give credit to theBBC Springwatch team, as we heard them first use the term “adventure team or crew” we don’t remember precisely, (too busy cleaning our feet!) but SWAT works for us and SWAT it will be.

So, what will we be SWAT-ting about. Well, we see lots and lots of wildlife on our morning walks. And we want to bring those sights and sounds to you guys as well. We also see plenty more dogs chasing sticks and balls, which disturb the wildlife – not good, really. We boys are “Wildlife Adventurers” and we walk quietly and stealthily through the woods “hunting” wildlife to “capture” on film. We’ve got loads and loads of it, or really Mum has ‘cos we’re too busy stealthily sniffing around, and our camera angles are all wrong!

Mum was going to create a “category” called “summer sounds”, but we’ve convinced her that that is restrictive – what happens to our collection of sights in the winter? She finally saw the point and has agreed that SWAT will be able to cover all that we come across, not only on our own patch, but when we go touring in our motorhome.

Her “summer sounds” collection began last week (we’ll cover others in a later blog), so for a starter for ten, here’s what we’ve either seen or heard over the last several days of our morning walks:

• Family of Jays (Mum tried to get a picture, but all she got was trees – the Jays are in there somewhere, finding them will be like the old competition of “spot the ball” so we won’t bore you with that picture)
• Two Swans returned
• Long tailed tits
• Green Woodpecker
• Heard a Cuckoo
• Heard a Peacock : the peacock lives in the village. Apparently it has landed on our roof! Good job it didn’t drop into our garden – they are big birds!

• Heron
• Nuthatch
• Heard a pheasant

So all in all, a very productive SWAT-ting – what busy little Scotties we are!

We would love to know what you see on your regular walk. All you need do is drop us a comment – it’s free, we don’t bite, and you’ll have fun sharing your stories.