Monday 29 December 2014

Another fiery sunrise this morning.

This morning was clear and frosty, a good day to be out and about in the fresh air  :-) My patch visit, although not as productive as yesterday, was still enjoyable in the sunny conditions and although I didn't cover all parts of my patch I still found a good tally of 43 species.

None were on the excitement scale of yesterdays Wigeon, but there was enough to keep me interested, two of yesterdays missing Raptor species turned out today, those being the KESTREL pair at the Greenhouse Grounds and a COMMON BUZZARD that flew low over the Wet Woods, also one of the LITTLE OWL pair was seen at the Greenhouse Copse.

The lakes were frozen over, but the water fountain on the ornamental lake had kept a small area of water open, where 24 MALLARDS, the COOT pair and the immature MUTE SWAN all crammed together, there were only 2 MOORHEN seen around the margins of the lakes today though, where the KINGFISHER was seen again after an absence of 7 days.

Most of the scarcer woodland birds were seen either in the Wet Woods or Scrubby Woods, with single TREECREEPER, NUTHATCH, JAY and GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, plus 4 GOLDCREST, 4 BULLFINCH, 3 STOCK DOVES and 2 GREEN WOODPECKERS all seen.

There was an increase in MEADOW PIPITS on the Ashes Lane Fields, 30 were counted as they rose around me and a GREY HERON was seen flapping slowly over a few minutes later. 

At Migrant Alley there were fewer Gulls and Corvids than yesterday, probably flushed off before I arrived, but there were 3 Gull species present, BLACK HEADED, HERRING and COMMON GULL. Flyovers from 2 single YELLOWHAMMER, 28 FIELDFARE and 6 REDWING were the best of what went through.

I get very few CARRION CROW shots, they are very wary birds and rightly so, but this one let me get just about close enough for a couple of images


I spent some time photographing the garden birds at my feeders this afternoon, only the regular common stuff, I got lots of shots to keep the 'blog folder' full for future posts  ;-)

BLUE TIT




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