Sunday 20 January 2008

Male Sparrowhawk - Gliding Over slowly - Taunting me
This Dunnock Was In Full Song This Morning. It looks Stunning When You enlarge The Photo!

Plenty Of Teasel, But Where Are The Goldfinch, just 2 seen all weekend.

The same weather, maybe a bit less windy, but altogether different birdwise. After a slow start along ashes lane and through the golf course, things picked up at the lake area and waterlogged woods. As I was talking to the owner of one of the small lakes 4 GOOSANDER flew low, almost splashing down, but they must have seen us, and flew up and off again - a good species to have on the year list, as it is seen less than annually, in 02, 03, and 07. Also on the lake were 2 CORMORANT, a GREY HERON and 24 MALLARD. The waterlogged woods had only 1 TEAL, but also had a pair of MANDARIN, probably the same pair seen earlier in the month. I went on to migrant alley, where I was surprised to see masses of birds! FIELDFARE, REDWING and STARLINGS covering acres of sheep pasture. I set to counting but it was near impossible, I did count 500 Fieldfare in one field, and saw another similar amount in another field, so I made it a conservative 800 Min. I did head count 350 Starling amongst them, and 70 Redwing. All consevative counts as I couldn't see all the field at once, due to the undulations. I went on to the college grounds and along the stream and found a small flock of SISKIN, and walking back through the winter thrushes, a group gulls flew over, 2 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL with 2 BLACK HEADED Gulls and 2 HERRING GULL. In all 47 species were seen, a very pleasing total.With the two new additions to the month, the list now stands at 60, the best jan tally since 2003.

3 comments:

Simon said...

Thats a brilliant sighting with the Goosander Warren. Hope they're heading my way!

Warren Baker said...

Cheers Simon. I was well pleased. I was reading that there were alot of these birds in the country this year..........keep looking!!

Steve said...

Fantastic to hear about the Goosander...had one last year on my patch...hopefuuly still time for one this winter..