There are quite a few jewels on show in the Slovak countryside at the moment. One of them, strangely, is even non-avian:
Those blue spangles on his back, it turns out, are a sign that this is a boy slow worm.
The bee eaters are … less understated:
T 
And finally, our local stork chicks are starting to get a glint in their eyes: 
The Morava today produced a bumper crop of birds of prey: some of the fields were being mown, and an impressive variety of predators spotted their chance. The imperial eagle stayed frustratingly high:
while the red kites and kestrels were much more cooperative:
A flock of storks also enjoyed the feast, following the tractor and picking off some goodies.
Our pair have not been dining on the most glamorous of meals:
but the chicks are growing fast: compare the beak length with a few days earlier:
The parents feed and guard in quite rapid rotation, changing over at least every hour or so:
And this never gets old:
The herons are increasingly in evidence:
And the little guys also deserve some attention. A song thrush doing exactly what it should:
A piece of abstract art: 
which gradually unfolds into a yellowhammer:
And as for him: 
I took a break from watching the osprey chicks emerging on the webcams from Scotland, to spend some time at our own birding hotspot: the Morava river. Imagine my surprise when I saw this fellow flapping upstream towards me:
It’s a bit late for migration, so my wild speculation would be that this is a young one, gradually establishing a migration route to somewhere more suitable than Slovakia.
“Our” family’s storklets hatched last week, and have already grown noticeably. They’re peering out:
flapping:
and are already nest-trained, aiming their cute little bums over the edge:
Summer is gradually winning out over winter here, though today the storks looked like they wished they were back in Kenya. They’re still incubating, plus whitewashing the sides of their nest:
That sparrow needs to be careful.
Their near neighbours the collared doves have already left their nest, behind the sign of a garage. Here just before they left:
Brno’s Špilberk park proved to be lively. Very greedy red squirrels:
They had to share the nuts with the jays:
And there were pretty blackcaps:
Elsewhere in Brno, nuthatches showed off their claws:
And we found a posse of black redstarts near the station:
We finally found out way to the Austrian side of the Morava-Danube confluence. While weekend crowds plagued the Slovak side, sandpipers frolicked on the other bank:
Near Schlosshof, we twice saw marsh harriers:
This long-tailed tit did some impressive hovering: 
As did an obliging kestrel:
In non-bird action, this hare got a bit of a shock when he bounded out of the hedge in front of us: 
And at the end of the day, what makes a nest a home? A bunch of grass bigger than your head, of course! 
Our Easter trip to Graz turned up a few birds that were new to us.
Blackcap:
Despite the odd appearance, I suspect that this happy little chap is a mallard underneath:
The river provided goosanders:
And, very excitingly, a dipper, dipping in the middle of town:
Schloss Eggenberg was mainly notable for its peacocks:
Honourable mention also for the squirrels:
Our latest trip to Marchegg was similarly productive. This (probably pied) flycatcher prompted us to brake our bikes rather sharply: 
We saw our first kingfisher of the year, albeit from quite a distance:
The real finds of this outing were the raptors, however. My first sparrowhawk (fairly sure):
This white-tailed eagle was hunting ducks (or at least scaring the daylights out of them):
Meanwhile a red kite was hanging around, perhaps hoping that something would come his way:
This imperial eagle sauntered over us:
The (marsh?) harrier was out hunting, making the hares very nervous: 
The stork colony in Marchegg is starting to fill up; around 15 pairs (out of 50ish) have already nabbed the best nests (generally the higher ones). We saw several stealing material from empty nests:
Then they got down to business:
The village has taken its occasional residents to heart: 
Our “own” pair are ahead of the game again, and are already incubating eggs. Newly returned birds are still on the lookout for nests, so there’s defending to be done:
And after all that sitting, there’s nothing like a damn good stretch:
The last couple of weekends have been spent either side of the Morava river, where quite a range of beasties are making their homes.
Roe deer are very cautious, but at least they’re big enough to photograph without too much difficulty:
Other beauties much smaller than that:
Hunting them are the lesser spotted:
and green woodpeckers:
This nuthatch posed a couple of metres from me and started singing away:
The yellowhammer was also quite co-operative:
Not so easy to photograph, but nice to have seen, the reed bunting:
Kestrels are easy to spot, but a bit too quick for easy snapping:
Moving up a notch, pheasants stalk the meadows and reeds:
Marchegg in Austria is home not only to the showy stork colony, but also a neighbouring village of grey herons. They’re normally hidden by leaves, but now, when the storks are just starting to arrive, they take centre stage. Fun party game: see how many nests you can spot: 
The nests themselves hardly compare with those of the storks, but they seem to do the job:
Turning to our stars, he’s contributed some very big sticks:
While she arranged the soft lining:
Awww…. And if one looks down, they’ve also provided a block of flats for the sparrows.
Spring here has got the juices flowing in the various inhabitants. At Lake Kuchajda, sex-crazed drakes are beating each other up to get access to the females. Fortunately they’re not really built for duelling, but they give it a damn good go:
https://youtu.be/GGm0GsoV1j0
After sighting our male stork last weekend, we were very keen to go and investigate the nest this Saturday. And we found:
Two slightly wind-blasted, but resplendently-chest-feathered, storks.
We were slightly distracted by the appearance of a white-tailed eagle, to which the couple responded with a display of mantling to protect their nest:
Courtship then resumed with a display of mirroring behaviour:
Then a little spot of grooming:
And the action started:
We were rather surprised at this point, because the ringed bird, which we had always thought was the male, was the one underneath. Zooming in on our pictures from this year and last, we found that it is indeed the same beast, numbered AE750:
A little further investigation turned up a splendid site, which catalogues sightings of storks born in Schwaben this century. It seems that our boy is in fact our girl, was born in 2011 on the banks of the Danube near Moosheim, and bred in the Burgenland in Austria in 2013 before hopping over the Morava to grace Devinska Nova Ves last year. Here’s to another successful season!
Round about now is the end of the bustard season here. For now, they’re nicely visible in the wintry fields:
They tend to favour the Austrian rather than the Slovak side of the border, so a background of wind turbines is common:
I hope they’re smart enough to avoid them.
It’s a pleasant surprise that they choose to live so close to Bratislava:
They also share their habitat with a motorway and plenty of deer: 
They are quite shy, so we couldn’t get as close as we would have liked, but we did get better pics than last year:
This may be the end of bustard season, but it’s also the start of something special. Today I spotted a familiar figure in the distance:
The ring makes me fairly confident that this is the male from the pair who we were papping last year. His early appearance would also fit with that pair seeming to have got their breeding started earlier than the other storks. Hoping his girl will appear soon….
Today we went for a wander along the Morava, which was very deep and fast after the wet winter. The reeds have not started growing back yet, which together with the many flooded areas has transformed the landscape.
The cormorants were splendid in their spring plumage, with white heads and crests, but for now I’ll focus on a couple of creepers. The more familiar is the nuthatch,which walks up, down, and round the branches with equal ease:
The star, however, was the wallcreeper, which lives most of the year in the Alps, but winters on the cliff below Devin castle. Its grey on grey is pretty good camouflage:
But when it open its wings, its showy side becomes apparent:
The latest book which I’ve had posted on Project Gutenberg is The History of the Highland Clearances, by Alexander Mackenzie. This was published in 1914, revised from a first edition of 1883; besides Mr Mackenzie’s own accounts, there are pieces gathered from various authors. These include, somewhat bizarrely, one by Harriet Beacher Stowe in defence of the Sutherland clearances.
Some of the descriptions do more than verge on the sentimental:
Flora Robertson or Matheson, a widow, aged ninety-six years, then residing with her son, Alexander Matheson, who had a small lot of land in Suisinish. … “When the evicting officers and factor arrived, the poor old woman was sitting on a couch outside the house. The day being fine, her grandchildren lifted her out of her bed and brought her to the door. She was very frail; and it would have gladdened any heart to have seen how the two youngest of her grandchildren helped her along; how they seated her where there was most shelter; and then, how they brought her some clothing and clad her, and endeavoured to make her comfortable. The gratitude of the old woman was unbounded at these little acts of kindness and compassion; and the poor children, on the other hand, felt highly pleased at finding their services so well appreciated. The sun was shining beautifully, the air was refreshing, the gentle breeze wafted across the hills, and, mollified by passing over the waters of Loch Slapin, brought great relief and vigour to poor old Flora. Often with eyes directed towards heaven, and with uplifted hands, did she invoke the blessings of the God of Jacob on the young children who were ministering so faithfully to her bodily wants….
The indictment from the trial of one of the chief villains, Patrick Sellar, is rather more powerful in its dry repetition:
And further, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time aforesaid, culpably kill Donald M’Beath, father to Hugh M’Beath, then tenant in Rhimsdale aforesaid, by unroofing and pulling down, or causing to be unroofed and pulled down, the whole house in Rhimsdale aforesaid, where the said Donald M’Beath was then lying on his sick bed, saving only a small space of roof, to the extent of five or six yards, whereby the said Donald M’Beath was exposed, in a cold and comfortless situation, without cover or shelter, to the weather; and he, the said Donald M’Beath, in consequence of being so exposed, never spoke a word more, but languished and died about eight days thereafter, and was thereby culpably killed by you, the said Patrick Sellar: Or otherwise, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time and place aforesaid, cruelly expose the said Donald M’Beath to the weather, without cover or shelter, by pulling down and unroofing, or caused to be pulled down and unroofed, the greater part of the house where he then lay sick in bed, to his great distress, and the imminent danger of his life; and this you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, notwithstanding the entreaties of the said Hugh M’Beath, and others, you saying, in a rage, when it was proposed that the said Donald M’Beath should remain, “The devil a man of them, sick or well, shall be permitted to remain,” or words to that effect.
One aspect which is made clear is the length of time over which the clearances were carried out. The earliest reported here are from the late eighteenth century, the latest around 1880, while the bald “Statistical Statement” provides tables showing the decline of populations in most areas continuing down to 1911. Although there were protests against the clearances from the earliest days, they had essentially no effect on the actions of the landlords.
t