Sunday 27 January 2013

The final full patch walk of the month was nowhere near as productive as yesterdays walk, mind you, it was blowing a near gale, with showery rain being blown through the area. The rain and cloud did disperse after 10:00hrs, but by then I was finishing my visit!

Only 37 species were recorded in the 3 and a half hours I was out, with very few highlights, one of those was seeing that the Lakes had finally thawed out, attracting a pair of MALLARDS and 3 MOORHENS. Of the more scarcer Woodland species, only GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, BULLFINCH and COAL TIT showed up, but the latter was at least singing  :-)

KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK were up hunting around the Tree Nursery and Greenhouse Grounds, and over at Migrant Alley FIELDFARE, STARLING and REDWING had gathered on the sheep pasture along with a few BLACK HEADED GULLS, the only species noted flying over today were LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL, HERRING GULL, SKYLARK, SISKIN and MEADOW PIPIT. What a change from yesterdays visit, no two days are the same at this time of year!

The Garden Feeders were also strangely subdued in the less cold weather, but I did at least get my only photograph of the day here, when a MOORHEN wandered in, this was a different one from last week, this was a younger bird, not yet in its full black plumage.
Moorhen
Moorhen

7 comments:

ShySongbird said...

Great captures of the young Moorhen Warren :-)

Did you do the RSPB count? I left mine until today and with the snow all gone so had my 'special', extreme weather visitors, just one of the Blackcaps remained loyal :-) other than that it was the 'usuals'. 8 Greenfinches were the most prominent species and it was good to record 4 House Sparrow.

Warren Baker said...

Hi Songbird,
Did my count too, but my garden visitors were well down on recent days :-(

Anonymous said...

Same here Warren..my garden feeders were struggling today.

Ken. said...

Hi Warren.
I have just come back to your blog as I wasn't sure if I had left my comment, I am sure I did going by your kind comment on mine but looking at it right now it seems to have got lost.
Anyway you did well on your final full patch walk today. 37 being pretty good. I hope the next few days of January are good to you and you manage to pick up a couple more species.
Nice picture of a Moorhen in your garden.

Marc Heath said...

Not long and its February. You have not done too bad for January by the looks of it.

Adam said...

nice bird

Alan Pavey said...

A great list on Saturday Mate, we're still sorting out stuff so only managed a quick walk Sunday, will post it later. That Sparrowhawk was a lovely shot :-)