{"id":629,"date":"2011-08-17T17:06:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T15:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/hoopoes-and-worms-in-the-fridge\/"},"modified":"2011-08-17T17:06:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T15:06:07","slug":"hoopoes-and-worms-in-the-fridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/hoopoes-and-worms-in-the-fridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoopoes and worms in the fridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May we discovered a Hoopoe<\/strong> nest site, just at the right time for us to set up a hide for our bird photographer<\/strong> guests.<\/p>\n

A photo of one of “our” Hoopoes by Eric McCabe<\/a><\/p>\n

Lovely, striking birds, which performed wonderfully for the photographers, perching on a branch with fat grubs in their bills before entering a hole in a stone wall where their nest was located. The perch was also much in demand by a local Corn Bunting<\/strong> and a singing Thekla Lark<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Hoopoe,<\/p>\n

Hoopoe from the Hoopoe hide. Photo by Jordi Bas.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

After a few weeks on a recce visit it seemed to me that the Hoopoes had left the nest<\/strong>. But surely the young ones would be somewhere in the vicinity for a while yet? I had to check that idea, so I decided to get hold of some worms to tempt them back to the hide.<\/p>\n

\"Decathlon\"<\/p>\n

A day or so later I tried on the offchance at our local Decathlon<\/strong> store. I was amazed! In the fishing section they had a fridge with several types of worms or maggots that looked ideal for the purpose! Happy with my purchase I duly transfered them to our own fridge and waited for the right moment to act…<\/p>\n

\"Hoopoe,<\/p>\n

Hoopoe, but from the wrong hide (the Montagu’s Harrier hide).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A couple of days later I was back at the Hoopoe scene, eager to see how effective the “worm ploy” would be. I placed the two classes of worms in strategic, visible places and waited. And waited…nothing. The Hoopoes had definitely moved on. And I still had two half-full tubs of worms. Some of them were left out for the Rollers<\/strong>, the rest went back into the family fridge.<\/p>\n

And what did I see just as I was leaving the drylands? A family group of no fewer than 6 Hoopoes flying together over a small patch of pine trees. OUR Hoopoes, for sure, ungrateful lot!<\/p>\n

I have to remember to take the rest of the worms out of the fridge and offer them to a local bird or two – there’s a shriek every time Florinda opens one of the pots thinking it contains pat\u00e9!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May we discovered a Hoopoe nest site, just at the right time for us to set up a hide for our bird photographer guests. A photo of one of “our” Hoopoes by Eric McCabe Lovely, striking birds, which performed wonderfully for the photographers, perching on a branch with fat grubs in their bills before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-a9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}