Tuesday 18 November 2008

WRENS, ROBINS,SONGTHRUSH, MISTLE THRUSH, and DUNNOCK all sang this morning as I walked to work, no doubt some of them were already claiming there territories for the comming spring.
This afternoon was a bit brighter than yesterday, and my walk over to Migrant Alley was much more pleasant. A good size flock (for my patch) of YELLOWHAMMERS were along the fencline/new hedgerow, at least 24 flew out as I neared. The adjacent Maize stubble had a mixed flock of at least 20 each of SKYLARK, MEADOW PIPIT and LINNET. The next field on, sheep pasture, had a corvid flock numbering over 100, mostly ROOKS but maybe 20-30 JACKDAW as well.
A very quick walk over to the lake, through the tree nursery produced virtually no birds at all, a GREEN WOODPECKER and a PHEASANT, whilst at the lake a GREY HERON and 8 MALLARDS were seen. Not surprising really with all the work going on removing the young tree's, and the Gardener of the large house adjacent the lake, on a mission to chop down and burn every tree in the garden!
It was getting dark, but I thought i'd watch the sunset back over at Migrant Alley, I sat and watched the PIED WAGTAILS fly in to the Stubbles, then on to the green house rooves, later as I passed the green houses on my way home I counted 60+ flyover SW from there,towards Tonbridge. There was no entrance for the birds to gain access to roost in the greenhouses, and the ones that I saw trapped, or seemingly trapped, were no longer visible. I'll have a talk with the guy's who work there, and find out the situation re- letting out roosting birds.

Above: One of the Yellowhammers at Migrant Alley
Above: A Male BLACKBIRD in a Hawthorn.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Hi Warren,
It looks like you did a nice walk. Quite a good number of species. I walked Sunday in a small area closed to Reykjavik and only saw few birds such as redwings, blackbirds, redpoll and golden crest... Well plus plus a gyr falcon.. Unfortunately the light was bad and I could not take pictures....

Ken. said...

Hello Warren.
Your lucky to live in an area with good numbers of Yellowhammers. It's certainly not a common bird these days.couldn't send a couple my way, could you ??

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Warren: The yellow bird reminds me of a sparrow that has been tinted yellow. Neat shots today, check out my Cardinal.