Thursday 17 November 2011

A much brighter afternoon, with some sunny spells, making it feel quite warm, enabled an enjoyable patch visit, well most of it enjoyable as you'll see!

I set off along Ashes lane and through the Tree Nursery to get to the lakes, I didn't see a great deal in the Tree Nursery, just a GREEN WOODPECKER and the KESTREL up hunting. Looking over the boundary hedge at the Pub Field I saw at least 60 BLACK HEADED GULLS, which suddenly took to the air, the culprit for their panic was a large female SPARROWHAWK going over.

I arrived at the lakes, not expecting anything at all after yesterdays shooting incident, and sure enough the ornamental lake was completely empty, the walk to the main lake takes just a minute, and on arriving there I scanned the lake and was very surprised to see a superb male GOOSANDER (62), what stunning birds these are!  This is only the second time Goosander have been recorded here in November, the other record was of a female last November, seen on the 12th and 13th. There were unsurprisingly fewer MALLARD about, and only two MOORHEN were seen. After the Goosander was flushed off by a noisy pair of rather corpulent ladies in the adjacent horse paddock ( now the leaves have gone there is little cover from this area)

Anyway, I lost interest at the lake area,  :-)   and decided to go over to Migrant Alley and see what was on the wheat grain I have put down, I was disappointed to see just 2 YELLOWHAMMERS fly off when i arrived, but I was more than happy at hearing CROSSBILLS in the sky! I looked frantically up into the blue, and was well rewarded with my best ever views of this species as four flew low over, I could even see the red colouring on the lead male bird , brilliant! I hung around until the light started to go, and saw a couple of SKYLARK and a MEADOW PIPIT go over, plus a LITTLE OWL called from the nearby Greenhouse Copse, also, nice to see, was a flock of 24 LAPWING heading over and dropping onto the Pub Field. The last birds seen were the flock of 30-40 LINNETS, heading to roost at the Tree Nursery.

Goosander - superb! As you can see i had to shoot through the bankside vegetation, making for a difficult photo  :-)

Goosander

Some of the Pre -roost Linnets

12 comments:

Lancs and Lakes Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Copy and paste the URL warren - it just worked for me = GWE over Hadlow this arvo

Cheers
Davo

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Another eventful afternoon .
Nice shots of the male Goosander, stunning is the right word .

Warren Baker said...

Davo,
i'll try again mate!


Greenie,
It looked better in real life :-)

Rohrerbot said...

Incredible shot. It looks so beautiful around your area. The pics are wonderful. Great camera shot.

Warren Baker said...

Thanks Rohrerbot, :-)

Bob Bushell said...

The Goosander is a quality find. I love it.

Mike said...

Great looking birds Goosanders and nice pics too, Mike.

Anonymous said...

I agree, you did the bird justice with those images, Warren.

Phil said...

Fantastic Goosander shots Warren.

Mike H said...

Hi Warren,

Have to agree with the many. Great male Gooseander and shots to match well done.

Alan Pavey said...

Goosander, great stuff! I'm not going to hold my breath for that one! You've done well for those this year.

- Yvonaut -
Das sind Raphael und Yvonne
said...

Sehr schöne Bilder!
Liebe Grüsse und ein schönes Wochenende
Yvonne und Raphael