Wednesday 27 August 2008

Dull was the weather, and dull was the walk in to work, followed by more dullness when I walked back home again!
I thought about doing a garden birdwatch for the afternoon, but the thought of maybe missing a migrant tempted me back out again. I walked through the tree nursery, and saw nothing but a GREEN WOODPECKER, the Barn Owl wasn't home, and the hedgerow leading up to Migrant alley had just a DUNNOCK in it. At Migrant Alley itself my hope of a migrant or two were not fourth coming. The cretin shooter was again blasting away, across the valley 300m away, I looked through my bins at where he had placed his decoy birds, and saw a pigeon, spiral down, the sound of the shot reached me a second or two later, the poor pigeon fell to the ground and flapped about for a minute or so, not quite dead. I hope the bloke has a fatal car accident on the way home. Harsh ? well we all have our own opinions.
Anyway, his shots put up, in my estimation, over 1000 Corvids. ROOKS, JACKDAWS and CARRION CROWS filled the sky, ive never seen so many! The only other birds of note today at Migrant Alley were the LINNET flock, the STARLING flock, over 100 strong, and a dozen or so PIED WAGTAILS. Lets hope things improve tomorrow, and this stubborn cloud breaks up a bit!

Mixed corvid flock. This pic shows just a section of them, I couldn't get them all in the frame!

At home I sat and watched the feeders for a while, just the usual Tits and Finch's and this colour ringed HOUSE SPARROW.

5 comments:

Steve said...

Blimey Warren...that is a bit harsh!

Warren Baker said...

Steve,
The shooter passed me on the way home, I recognised his 4x4 from the field, I saw all his gear in the back. he was an old bloke. Made me think he should maybe have mellowed in his age. I like to think people reap what they sow. Sorry if I offended you mate. ;-)

Travis said...

Nice post. Keep up the good work.

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Warren: I love the shot of all the birds in the air. Why does the sparrow have those orange rings on its legs?

Warren Baker said...

Hi fishing guy,
The rings on the legs of the sparrow were put on by the local ringer. I am helping him do a study on house sparrows. Each bird has 3 plastic colour rings on its legs. we can identify each sparrow that way.