Tuesday 17 June 2008

A YELLOWHAMMER sang it's distinctive song as I walked along Ashes Lane this morning, but apart from that, and the SONGTHRUSH'S and BLACKBIRDS singing, it was a quiet walk in. Whilst I was at work the PEREGRINE flew low over the school, a nice site, but no binoculars or camera!
When I got home I decided to split the afternoon in two, I would garden watch till 16:30 and then spend a couple of hours round my patch, well it didn't quite go to plan, as I locked myself out of the house when I left for my walk!! As the missus was away in Bexhill visiting relatives, I was well and truly bu**ered! The next two hours were spent trying to carefully break into my own house, I failed dismally and had to smash a window in the end, no patch walk today then!
The garden watch was ok though, with 31 species recorded, 16 of those came into the garden the remainder either flew over or were in the surrounding habitat, best of these was the PEREGRINE, two sightings in a day, a mile apart, and only the second time i've recorded it from my house. Three Gull species also flew over LESSER BLACK BACKED, HERRING and BLACKHEADED, the latter is not often recorded in June. A pair of MOORHEN seem to have established a territory in the sheep pasture to the front of my house, strange as its not particularly damp there, and the only water is a rain water catchment, contained in a butile liner.
The SPARROWHAWK visited the garden, missing it's target, but by the little piles of feathers I've been finding on the ground recently it seems he's back with a vengeance, I thought he had gone to pester someone else! Fledgling GREAT and BLUE TITS were buzzing around, and two well fledged DUNNOCKS were in the cover of the border, the GREAT SPOTTEED WOODPECKER was almost permanently on the nut feeder and a NUTHATCH was stashing the sunflower hearts in various nooks and crannies.

Tomorrow I will be at work all day, helping out with the school sports day, so unless I see something on the way in, or on the way home, my next entry will be on thursday.

4 comments:

Steve said...

Fantastic....2 Peregrine in a day in inland Kent!

lee said...

thats what i call a smashing day

Warren Baker said...

Steve,
I suspect that it was just one Peregrine, sighted twice.

Lee,
I thought I was just giving out Breaking news :-)

Simon said...

Great to hear about the Peregrines Warren.

I was in Halling carrying out a Habitat Survey along by the River Medway on Tuesday and had a Peregrine fly over, and then on Wednesday I had a birthday trip out to Oare and was lucky enough to spot one there!