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| This Fox, seen at the College Grounds, was a bit shy in posing for my camera :-) |
A bright and sunny morning was tempered by a cool wind, making it feel more like March than May. This didn't bode well for finding the Spotted Flycatchers over at the College Grounds, and it proved to be another fruitless search for them, they wont arrive until it warms up a bit and the insect food source picks up.
Maybe it was the cool wind that kept many birds silent and hidden up today, as I found it hard to winkle out the 42 species found in the 3 hour circuit of my patch, which is a well below par tally for mid May.
Not many highlights could can be mentioned for the outing, a BUZZARD flew from the Wet Woods as I approached them, and a group of 4 BULLFINCH were in the Scrubby Woods, where of the summer migrants, only two CHIFFCHAFF and a single BLACKCAP sang.
Few other summer migrants were heard or seen today, just one WHITETHROAT sang at the Greenhouse Grounds, two SWIFTS flew over Migrant Alley where the local SWALLOWS fed low over the sheep pasture, Cuckoo, Lesser Whitethroat and Turtle Dove all once regular songsters in years past, seem to have arrived and moved on again this year.
A an hours Sky watch from my usual seat added a passage HOUSE MARTIN, and a LONG TAILED TIT pair that fed in the hedge behind my seat to my days species tally, a KESTREL was also added, which was the last species seen today, and just the second raptor species for the day, from six recorded over the last two visits.
The biggest surprise for the morning overall, was finding a HOUSE SPARROW at my garden feeders, the first since March and just the third record for my garden of this once very common bird this year.
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| House Sparrow, a real scarce bird in my garden now |
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| The House Sparrow is the 23rd species this month recorded at my feeders, which is a record species tally for May |
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| One more from The Sparrow :-) |
I also took these photo's from the Garden, just as I was leaving for my patch walk at 06:00hrs, some nice light around then :-)
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| WOODPIGEON |
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| Woodpigeon |
8 comments:
Really like the Fox photo Warren, very nice.
Who would have believed years ago that a sighting of a House Sparrow in a garden would be a bit of an event. Quite sad really.
Jealous! Lovely fox, Warren! Typical.
Phil,
It's very sad indeed, I used to have a flock of 30-40 sparrows at my feeders a decade ago :-(
Christian,
As I said on my comment on your blog, I only occasionally get a fox image, today I got lucky, bit of a coincidence :-)
Warren ,
If your orchids had flower spikes or buds/flowers , they are most likely to be Early Purples .
I haven't seen a Common Spotted with a spike yet .
That photo sums the fox up nicely, a beautiful shy cheeky creature
Beautiful fox shot Warren... it is so beautiful to see them behaving like naturally even if it's not in the middle of nature... Love the wood pigeon shot too!
That's a brilliant photo of the Fox Warren, I'm sure it was convinced you couldn't see it hiding there, so funny :-)
Well done on the House Sparrow!
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