Saturday 21 March 2009

The weather is still holding fine, and although there was a frost early on, it soon turned into a warm day. The early frost seemed to put a dampner on the bird activity, as the actual numbers of birds were low, but the day list reached a respectable total of 44. My search for the first Blackcap of the year was not successful, I sat and listened for 20 mins, in the most likely place - by the lake, but none was heard, in fact there wasn't much song at all, just the common birds, WREN, ROBIN DUNNOCK, BLACKBIRD, SONGTHRUSH and various Tits and Finch's.

There were still some winter birds about, SISKIN in the wet woods, also some FIELDFARE and REDWING were in a lone oak at the tree nursery, where they were flushed off by a male SPARROWHAWK that went over slowly. Migrant Alley didn't produce much, just 2 SKYLARK a MEADOW PIPIT and a few PIED WAGTAILS, the ploughed field has now dried out, and doesn't seem to be attractive to the birds anymore! One bird that was more obvious today was the CHIFFCHAFF, at least 6 were heard singing at various places around my patch, always a cheerful sound.

So all in all a quiet walk, but thats not too unexpected for this time of year, many birds are leaving my patch, and not too many are arriving yet. For a change, tomorrow i'm going off to Boughton park with the KOS fieldtrip, it doesn't start till 9 o'clock, so i'll have a quick look round Migrant Alley before i go.

Below is a male LINNET, it's just coming into breeding plumage, you can just see it's breast getting the red pigment.
Below is a CARRION CROW, this bird was right at the top of a tree ''cawing'' loudly over it's territory.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The migrants are all over, apart from yours & my patch.
Have a good day tomorrow, Warren.

Chris said...

Hi Warren,
yeh it looks like the migrants are also coming up in Iceland too, tons of oystercatchers, redshanks and other. although today the snow came back and you have again 10 cm of snow on the floor. So I did not go out today. At least you did and got a nice day...

Kelly said...

...our winter birds are starting to depart also. Slowly, the migrants are arriving. I've heard the Indigo Buntings have already started popping up, but I haven't seen one yet. The photo of the Linnet is very nice.

ShySongbird said...

Nice list of bird observations Warren. Lovely photo of the Linnet, also loved the Robin photo on your previous post.