Friday 9 January 2015

No rain this morning, so I carried out a 4 hour full patch walk, in which a rather low species tally of 39 was recorded, Coal tit, Bullfinch, Long Tailed Tit and Greenfinch being notable absentees, in fact the latter species hasn't been recorded away from garden this year yet!

I did get to increment the year list by one today, when a skein of 34 GREYLAG GEESE (56) flew over, well I did end my last post by asking for any kind of goose.........now what about a Waxwing  :-)

Other notable patch birds seen today; a single flyover YELLOWHAMMER, 8 flyover FIELDFARE, 17 MEADOW PIPITS at the Greenhouse Grounds, the KESTREL pair also at the Greenhouse Grounds, a single BUZZARD over the Wet Woods, NUTHATCH, GOLDCREST, TREECREEPER, REDWING, JAY, GREEN WOODPECKER, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER and a singing MISTLETHRUSH at the Scrubby Woods, plus a KINGFISHER on the nearby main lake, with the COOT pair and immature MUTE SWAN on the adjacent ornamental lake.

The year list is already falling behind last year, which by this date I had 59 species, this is mostly due to the lack of winter birds, where are all the Siskin and Redpoll this year ?

A few fleeting glimpses of the sun early on this afternoon gave me a chance to photograph the Nuthatch's at my garden feeders, but the Great Spotted Woodpeckers arrived as the sun went back in, I took some photo's of one anyway :-)

Nuthatch



Great Spotted Woodpecker



9 comments:

Glasgow Birder said...

Same as always regards your pics, Warren....ACE.

Warren Baker said...

Cheers Dean.............I'm never perfectly happy with them!

Noushka said...

You complain about sunlight.... but I see pics here of birds bathing in sunlight!!! LOL!
OK, just teasing, I know how bad it is on the British Isles, I truly feel sorry for you and all my English friends...
At least here, one day out of 2 or 3 is sunny.
Lovely photos of the nuthatch and the pecker, both regulars at my feeders too :)
Keep well, Warren and good evening!

Warren Baker said...

Hi Noushka,
Yea, had an hour or so of sunlight here, I even achieved a shutter speed of 800 at one point LoL

Unknown said...

Super images love the Nuthatch.

Pete Woodruff said...

Yes....More excellent images Warren.

I'm getting the impression you are a hard man to please, but these pleased me no end I can tell you.

Warren Baker said...

Cheers Anthony :-)

Warren Baker said...

Pete,
I'll be the first to admit my bird images have improved over the years, but I reckon i could do better :-)

Pete Woodruff said...

OK....I accept your comment about the improvement over the years, and nothing like trying to do better Warren.

Keep up the good work, lots of people get much enjoyment from it as you can see.