Saturday 6 August 2011

There was much disturbance over my patch today, mostly from uncontrolled dogs, which meant the chances of finding anything other than the common resident species was diminished greatly.

I stayed the course though, and managed to find just 44 species on the four hour visit, well below what I would expect for an August day, with no new species added for the months list.

Highlights were few, but one was watching the SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS in the College Grounds continue to feed up their young, fattening them up for the long journey south they are going to make soon, the cloudy dull conditions meant that the camera stayed at home today, so I was unable to photograph them :-(

Eleven BLACK HEADED GULLS flew over Migrant Alley, in a loose flock, the most seen here for quite some time, also a group of five HERRING GULL, of mixed ages went over, along with a single LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL. The daily visitations of the SPARROWHAWK continue, the only raptor seen this morning, although a short walk round Migrant Alley before the rain set in this afternoon, did provide me with good views of a HOBBY chasing the local SWALLOWS, but even this short visit was beset by more off the footpath doggy folk. A helicopter kept flying low over the paddocks, toing and froing from somewhere just off patch, and the barrage of shotguns from the dick head pigeon shooters continued from an adjacent field, that did it for me, i'd had enough for the day!!!

The only photo I took today was of this GREENFINCH, on my garden feeders.


4 comments:

Rohrerbot said...

Dogs and little children!!! Definitely disturbances:)

Marc Heath said...

Not exactly what you want when you are out birding. One of the reasons i am out so early as to miss all the dogs and cats!

Derek Faulkner said...

But do you miss joggers training for Marathons Marc, surprising what a pain they can be as well. Here on Sheppey we often have joggers with dogs running alongside them - can you imagine it, what is the countryside coming too!

Bob Bushell said...

You have a Greenfinch on your feeder, I don't use them any more. Pity.