I got round for a full patch walk eventually and found a good tally of 46 species, but nothing new was amongst them, there were some good numbers of birds about though, with Migrant Alley holding over 200 BLACK HEADED GULLS, among them were 2 HERRING GULLS, 2 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS and a COMMON GULL, while on an adjacent field there was a mixed flock of winter thrushes and STARLINGS, hard to count them all but a conservative estimate of 500 wouldn't be too far out, FIELDFARE and REDWING were about equal in number, the STARLINGS tally was nearer 150, they were all flushed off anyway when the students arrived :-(
The LITTLE OWL pair were in the Greenhouse Copse, where a pair of BUZZARDS were also sitting, over in the nearby Greenhouse Grounds just the male KESTREL was seen, but later in the visit the female was seen along Ashes Lane.
Nothing different on the lakes today, MUTE SWAN, COOT, MALLARD, MOORHEN, CANADA GOOSE, GREYLAG GOOSE and a CORMORANT were the species present, but it was nice to hear a CHIFFCHAFF singing from the bankside vegetation.
The woods were mostly quiet in the cold greyness, with the likes of Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay, Nuthatch and Treecreeper all avoiding me and only singles of COAL TIT, BULLFINCH, and GOLDCREST were found, a couple of LONG TAILED TITS were seen collecting nest material.
Few flyover species were seen during the visit, the best of those being SKYLARK, YELLOWHAMMER and PIED WAGTAIL.
When I got home I happened to glance out at my feeders, then out into next doors garden, where I was most surprised to see a RED LEGGED PARTRIDGE ( 71,62) This is a species not recorded on my ''seen from the house'' list, and brings my sightings for said list to 95 for the 16 years Ive lived here, although I was a bit miffed at not getting onto my actual 'seen in the garden' list, after all I'm the one supplying the seed!!
No photo of the Red Legged partridge, but later in the day the sun came out, so I snapped some images from my garden the brighten the blog.
Great Spotted Woodpecker - where was it during my earlier patch visit ? I also had a Nuthatch come in, so I must not have be looking hard enough this morning!
DUNNOCK
Starling
Long Tailed Tit
GOLDFINCH
6 comments:
RL Partridge, I didn't realise that people ticked them. Here on Sheppey we just class them as birds thrown out in their thousands each year and not "real" wild birds and so never record them.
There are a few breed around here in the wild Derek, so I record them as I see them, which is not very often, maybe once or twice a year.
Fair enough, round here we have thousands of plastic pheasant and Redlegs and so they are never recorded. One year when the farmland put out 2,000 odd reared Mallard we even stopped recording them for a couple of years because our counts were too artificially high.
........Derek, there should be a law against releasing any captive bred bird/animal into the wild. God knows what impact they might have!
In general your right but do you include Red Kite and Sea Eagles in that comment.
Post a Comment