Tuesday 13 December 2011

Heavy overnight rain ceased before dawn today, and the strong winds abated somewhat, leaving a gusty and partially cloudy afternoon for my patch visit. The stormy weather seems to have blown what few birds were being seen, elsewhere!  Remarkably few passerines were seen, making it eerily quiet through the Small Holding and Wet Woods, just a JAY and a GREEN WOODPECKER broke the quietness.

On reaching the lakes, the usual MALLARD were seen, some of which had ventured out from the overhanging branches, the first time in a while I've seen them at ease, I counted twelve on the main lake and 4 on the small lake, but once again the ornamental lake was empty.. A GREY HERON dropped in whilst I was scanning the main lake for a Kingfisher, and up above a SPARROWHAWK circled over. The Scrubby Woods didn't hold much at all, no feeding flock was seen today and it was down to a few REDWING, BLACKBIRDS and SONGTHRUSHES to fly up in front of me, making out to be a Woodcock  :-)  I left a bit disappointed at the lack of birdlife, and tried my luck over at the Tree Nursery and Pub field, the former had 10 MEADOW PIPITS, and a hunting KESTREL, but little else, although the tail end of a fox was seen disappearing into the shrubs. The Pub Field had far fewer LAPWING today, just 15 were counted, they had probably been flushed earlier in the day, 10 BLACK HEADED GULLS criss-crossed the field, and as I left for home a CORMORANT flew over towards the lake area. Not a very exciting visit, to say the least!

4 comments:

Jason K said...

Sounds about as exiting as mt patch visit today Warren.

Warren Baker said...

Its always the same at this time of year Jase, not time enough to get stuck in properly, and most of the time not light enough! :-)

Anonymous said...

More exciting than my patch visit, today, Warren.

Kelly said...

...you don't sound too excited, Warren! (More exciting than my day, which was spent in meetings and doing errands. The only birds I saw were sitting on wires as I drove past them!) The photo of the Blue Tit from the previous post is stellar! Way to go...