Tuesday 19 January 2010

More dull, foggy weather for this afternoons walk, I retraced yesterdays footsteps, and perhaps unsurprisingly saw much the same birds, the flock of mixed finch's in the Small Holding, LONG TAILED TITS with TREECREEPERS in the wet woods, more Long Tailed Tits in the scrub adjacent the lake, this time with COAL TIT, GOLDCREST, MARSH TIT and two more Treecreepers, a small group of of half a dozen or so SISKIN in the nearby garden Alders, and at least 8 BULLFINCH spread over the whole walk. I spent at least half an hour in the wet woods scanning and following the feeding tit flock, just in case a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker appeared, which it can do, albeit very rarely, but not today! The only other bird of note was a KESTREL, yep you guessed it - hunting around the Greenhouse Complex!

The lake continues to very slowly thaw, there are patches of water appearing around the edges now, the ice really has put a limit to the potential species I might see this month, like Coot and Goosander, both of which can turn up occassionally in January, plus maybe a Mandarin Duck, and who knows, - I might get a nice surprise species, but i'll have to wait a little longer, lets hope we dont get any more frosts!

Update for the garden, both Siskin and Brambling were feeding today, fantastic species to have in.

5 comments:

Chris said...

Hi Warren,
What a strange winter we are getting mate! Looks like we are starting the new year quite hard with bad weather all the time. Let's hope the biodiversity year will become better!

Pete Woodruff said...

I managed to get out today......bloody cold Warren.

Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Fingers crossed for that surprise species Warren. I`m also hoping for one.

Kelly said...

...we are stuck in the same gray fog and ice.

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Warren: We have also had a thaw and a foggy condition. I took some more photos of the blond female Mallard Duck.