Monday 16 January 2012

Day 3 of the bright, sunny and frosty weather, unfortunately it was back to work also! At least I got a two hour visit in this afternoon, and if I had been thinking straight I could have saved myself the walk over to the lakes, as they were obviously still frozen over! The walk to the lakes, through the Small Holding and Wet Woods, was a typical winters afternoon affair, with an assortment of Finch's, Tits, and a GREEN WOODPECKER in the Small Holding, and absolute silence in the Wet Woods, a pleasurable thing in itself on my patch!

The iced over lakes were devoid of anything but the MALLARDS, which stood out on the ice, making it creak and groan, at one point it sounded like the call of a Nuthatch! The surrounding Scrubby Woods were mostly inactive, just the odd call from GREAT, and COAL TIT. I didn't stay long and went for a look over the Pub Field from the Tree Nursery, the latter had 3 MEADOW PIPITS, back from wherever they had disappeared to over the weekend, also another Green Woodpecker fed between the rows of shrubs. The Pub Field had a nice flock of LAPWING on it, 25 in all, but no Golden Plover with them today, 14 BLACK HEADED GULLS patrolled restlessly up and down over the feeding Lapwings.

I ended up walking the Greenhouse Grounds and having a sit on my seat at Migrant Alley, the KESTREL was up hunting, and a YELLOWHAMMER flew over, but apart from the sounds of WRENS, ROBINS, BLACKBIRDS and the ever present Tits, it was in all an average sort of visit :-)

Nothing showed for the camera this afternoon, what a waste of good light!! So i'll put up the finch photo's I took in my garden yesterday. Talking of my garden, I still await the first House Sparrowof the year to visit!!

Goldfinch
Greenfinch
Greenfinch

10 comments:

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

"Talking of my garden, I still await the first House Sparrow of the year to visit!!" - me too Warren but they probably won't turn up til mid June here :-(

Cheers

Davo

Warren Baker said...

Dave,
There are still a few around the vacinity of my garden, but they dont come in until they are positively sure the Sprawk is not about - which is seldom!! :-)

Bob Bushell said...

Lovely Finches and the photos, superb.

Marc Heath said...

That hiding Greenfinch shot is nice and different. I hope to get out sometime in the week......... maybe.

Anonymous said...

I`m getting about 10 House Sparrows in the garden at the mo. Hearing a lot more though, from the back hedge at dusk. And there`s a pair hanging around last years nest site above the back bedroom window.

Phil said...

With all the great birds you get in your garden Warren, I can't believe you haven't had a House Sparrow yet!!

Rohrerbot said...

I seriously cannot believe that you don't have House Sparrows. There are so many here...and all kinds of them. Amazing the amount of Sparrows I've seen the past several weeks. I hope you get to see some soon.

Stewart said...

Hi Warren, Just been looking at your 2012 list. Out of your 60 sp you have 14 species that I have not seen yet including Greenfinch, Pied Wag and Meadow Pipit! Greeny is very irregular in our village now, can you believe that, and the Wagtails and Pipits might not be back until mid Feb...

Warren Baker said...

Hi Stewart,
Surprised that there are any on my list that you havn't got there yet. I guess thats the vaguaries of patch watching :-)

Jerry said...

Thanks for sharing these great pictures Warren.