Well, we’ve been swatting like good little scotties. Oh, you were thinking about us doing homework to learn stuff, weren’t you. No, no, no! We Scotties know all the stuff that is to know! What we mean is SWAT-ting. We’ve been SWAT-ting in our own garden.

It’s not that the forest we walk in everyday isn’t of interest, it’s just nice to let you know what goes on in our own garden.

So, the second brood of blackbirds fledged a couple of weeks ago now – there’s some pictures we got Mum to take for us. She’s getting better at photography, but that’s ‘cos we’ve taught her stuff!

The Wood Pigeons have made a nest of some kind in the Laburnum tree in the front garden. Mum thinks the lady Wood Pidgeon might be thinking about laying an egg or two. We hope it’ll be safe up there as the nest just looks like a raft – I suppose they know better.

The Wrens fledged whilst we were camping at the beginning of the June. Mum was disappointed not to see them go, but she’s got loads of photos from previous years – once you’ve see one, surely you’ve seen them all! Shhh ….. she’s not got Scottie Sense like us.

Mum treats all the birds with home made fat balls. Sometimes I think she forgets that it’s us she should be concentrating on us!

The Robins have been feeding their fledgling. Seems funny to us as all the baby birds look a lot bigger than their mama’s and papa’s.

Our neighbours are equally mad about wildlife – they have resident hedgehogs; this makes mum unhappy as they only pop into our garden very infrequently. She says is ‘cos of us that they don’t spend too long, although they make no bones about eating our cooked chicken she puts out for them.

We seem to have attracted lots of bees that swarm around our woodpile. This has at least kept Gus away from munching on a log or two, although there’s evidence that he’s still raiding the woodpile, bees or no bees.

Scottie Round-up

• Mum likes wildlife and sitting in the garden watching it
• This means we get to sit outside and watch it too
• The Birds get special treatment from Mum as well. How very dare she!
• We get to see lots of baby birds
• No hedgehogs though
• It’s fun Swat-ting in our own garden
• You should try it!
• Let us know how you get on?

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.