Thursday 15 January 2009

There was not a great deal of excitement on my patch this afternoon, the best thing I can say is that the lake is almost thawed out! The usual TREECREEPERS, NUTHATCH'S, GOLDCREST'S and BULLFINCH'S were seen in the wet woods and around the lakeside bushes, the lake itself had 7 MALLARD and a MOORHEN, the Mallard kept falling through the now very thin ice. I went into the tree nursery, but there was no Woodcock at the fence today, however, I noticed a few feathers that it had left after I disturbed it yesterday, I didn't check the full length of wood edge, if the same bird was in the area I thought it best to leave it in peace. I checked to see if the BARN OWL was at its roost, and found it asleep in the shack, but nothing else was of note in the tree nursery.
Migrant Alley was full of birds, I counted 72 LAPWING, 18 BLACK HEADED GULL, 20-30 REDWING, around the same number of FIELDFARE, 24 SKYLARK and the odd BLACKBIRD and SONGTHRUSH. Just one MEADOW PIPIT was heard, and as the light faded two groups of 20 odd LINNETS flew towards their roost in the tree nursery.
The poor light and lack of oportunities, stopped me getting a single photo today. On the positive side,I did note that the first Blue bell shoots were breaking through the leaf litter in the wet woods - spring wont be long now!!

4 comments:

Greenie said...

Warren ,
You're lucky if the lake is amost thawed out . I stopped at Keston Ponds en route to working on the Common this morning , and only about one third , around the edges ,is ice free on any of the three ponds .
Still nothing to post .

lee said...

Hello Warren, im glad you have seen plenty of Goldcrests because i was a bit alarmed to find no goldcrests on Sunday and wondered if they had perished in the Artic conditions on Saturday, hopefully they just stayed low

Warren Baker said...

Greenie,
You'll be out there soon, I know your as addicted to the outdoors as I am!

Warren Baker said...

Lee,
I was a bit worried too! It took a while to find a Goldcrest today. I then found 4 together. LT Tits seem to be a bit scarce now though ?