Wednesday 23 January 2013

When I arrived home from work this afternoon I flushed a MOORHEN from my garden feeding station, the 28th species to use my garden this year  :-)  I thought that it had set the record for the most species seen in my garden in any one month, but looking more carefully at my stats, I see that that honour in fact goes to the December of 2010, in which 29 species visited, so I still need two more new species to set the record! Still, the Moorhens arrival has set the record for January  :-)

Whilst I ate my lunch, it crept back into my garden again, so here's a few images of said Moorhen, unfortunately in poor light and through the double glazing again.
Moorhen - species No.28 for my garden year list   :-)
Moorhen
Moorhen
After that little bit of excitement, I headed off out onto my patch. I went over to the lakes, mainly to see if they were still frozen, stopping on the way to check the Tree Nursery I watched a BUZZARD hunting, as well as a SPARROWHAWK and the KESTREL pair, so not much passerine action was seen, apart from a GREEN WOODPECKER.

The lakes were indeed still frozen when I arrived, but did at least show some signs of thawing around the edges, it will be a day or two yet before they are free of ice, giving that we get no more frosts. I decided to give the nearby Scrubby Woods a look through, and heard GOLDCREST, COAL TIT, BULLFINCH, and NUTHATCH calling, but the excitement for this afternoon was provided by a WOODCOCK (66) that flew up just yards from me, it danced its way through the tree branches and dropped back down deeper into the woods, a great bird to find here, they are seldom found without a bit of hard weather about.

I moved on into the Wet Woods, where the pools of water are showing better signs of thawing, but are still mostly frozen over, so there wasn't much about apart from a few REDWING, GREAT TITS, BLUE TITS and a GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER.

My last port of call was the Greenhouse Grounds, I wanted to check out the newly scraped muddy area, but there were workers there today, I did see lots of BLACKBIRDS on it though, with a few SONGTHRUSH, FIELDFARE, ROBINS and DUNNOCKS. I'm hoping a Grey Wagtail will drop in here at some time this month, this is just about the only species left i've got a real chance of adding to the January list now, which is up into second place out of twelve, 2 behind the January totals of 2009 and 2011. I might just get a flyover Golden Plover or  maybe a Mandarin Duck if the lakes thaw out, so it might be a record January yet  :-)

11 comments:

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Well done with the Woodcock , I was hoping for one at Sevenoaks today , but it wasn't to be .

Warren Baker said...

Greenie,
Its all down to a bit of luck finding these secretive birds ;-)

ShySongbird said...

Well done with the Moorhen Warren, it always seems so odd to see one in a garden :-)

Well done with the Woodcock too. I've never knowingly seen one unless I've flushed one without realising what it was. I didn't realise until I just looked it up that it is largely nocturnal!

Anonymous said...

Moorhen is one species that`s highly unlikely to find its way on to my garden list. Nice one Warren...and well done with connecting with Woodcock.

Warren Baker said...

Songbird,
Woodcocks are quite large birds, but dont make much noise when you flush them, if you see one you'll know what it is straight away I think ;-)

Jason K said...

Moorhen in your garden and Woodcock on the patch....now that's not a bad january day by any means mate!

Warren Baker said...

Jase,
I was well happy with that today :-)

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Hehe - someone mentioned woodcock the other day - just got the location wrong by a couple hundred yards :-)
Check the dark corners of that garden!!!!

Cheers

DaveyMan

Warren Baker said...

you did indeed mention the Woodcock Davyman :-)

Alan Pavey said...

Nice one with the Woodcock Warren, not always guaranteed on the year list here.

Stephen Mills said...

Well done with the Woodcock Warren,
Nice garden tick with the Moorhen too!