Sunday 21 February 2016

This morning was overcast dull and windy, with short bursts of drizzle being blown through.

In the poor conditions, very little of note was found, the female KESTREL at the Greenhouse Grounds was the only raptor found today and once again there were no gulls on the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, just flyovers from HERRING and BLACK HEADED GULLS, there were however 50 60 FIELDFARE out there, along with 100ish STARLINGS, but I found not one Redwing with them today.

I was pleased to see both the MUTE SWAN pair and the COOT still at the ornamental lake, the only other noteworthy sightings on the water were 6 CANADA GEESE and the GREYLAG GOOSE x Canada Goose hybrid family.

At least 4 MEADOW PIPITS were back on the pasture at the Ashes Lane Fields, not much else to report from my patch though, plus i've run out of photo's!

4 comments:

Derek Faulkner said...

It was a pretty windy and unpleasant late afternoon on the Swale NNR doing a Harrier Roost Count till dark. Only managed one ringtail HH going into roost.

Warren Baker said...

Do you do the count alone Derek, or is there a gang of you ?

Derek Faulkner said...

There are four counters on Sheppey. I do the Hen Harrier roost site on The Swale NNR (Marsh Harriers rarely roost on the reserve). Another guy stands on the hillside at Leysdown above Capel Fleet and counts what we call Capel East (he had +30 Marsh Harriers roost in the reed beds there last night). Another guy counts along Capel West and one other counts on Elmley. There are also other counters in both Kent and Essex, all doing the count at the same time.

Warren Baker said...

Thanks for that Derek :-)