Henry's Wildlife and Nature

One day whilst having lunch, we saw two greenish birds. I had no clue what they were. I looked in my bird book and found out they were greenfinches, one male and one female. Greenfinches Greenfinches live in woods and hedges and visit gardens for food. In the 19th century, greenfinches were rare garden visitors because they only lived in the countryside. During the awful winter of 1962 - 1963 they started visiting gardens looking for food. Peanuts from bird tables made up 97% of their food. This is why they love peanuts so much and we now see them in our gardens more often. They are the same size as chaffinches and measure around 15cm. I have never seen these in our garden before and it is a good sign that they are visiting.

I recently went on a photography course in Hoo farm with Jessops. Pete Walker was our photography teacher for the day and learnt a lot about manual techniques of photography. Hopefully my photos will improve now! Becky, the zoo keeper, taught us about the animals, she had a wonderful relationship with them, because she had hand reared and rescued most of them. It was so fun because we got to go in some of the enclosures - even wolves! I was very tired after because it was an 8 hour course! I would recommend this course to all the wildlife photographers out there. Here are some photos and facts. Meerkats We went in the enclosure with the meerkats and they were running round our feet and investigating what we were doing. Meerkats are found in Africa and are part of the Mongoose family. There scientific name is Suricata suricatta. A group of meerkats is called a mob, gang or clan and contain around 20 meerkats.  Binturongs These amazing creatures smell of popcorn and can hang upside down

 This morning, we were having breakfast when I spotted this bird of prey on our fence. I wasn't 100% sure what it was, so we had a look and found out it was a male sparrowhawk. Apologies for the picture, it was taken from a distance inside and through the window. We've never seen it in our garden so we think it was looking for food. Sparrowhawk Sparrowhawks live in woods, gardens and valleys, if you see one in your garden it means you have a healthy garden because there are lots of birds for the sparrowhawk to eat. Sparrowhawks eat birds such as sparrows, chaffinches, starlings and thrushes. They will also take voles, mice and rabbits and if they cant find anything like this they will eat insects like beetles. They don't just go round killing everything though, they only kill what they need. Sometimes there meals are days apart. Adult sparrowhawks kill about 30kg of prey each year. I know this is a male because there plumages differs to the female. A female has a browner ba