Tuesday 17 December 2013

The decorators were at home today, so I expected to be late out for my patch visit this morning, but I was even later due to a couple of minor disasters, that I wont go into here!

In the end I only got an hour out, so went over to the Lakes, where I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of species seen there, one visitor especially made me smile - my old friend the feral BARNACLE GOOSE (57), it was with 7 of his CANADA GEESE chums  :-)  The MUTE SWAN pair were also present, as was the KINGFISHER, plus a GREY HERON and a CORMORANT. At least 1 MANDARIN DUCK was hiding under the tree overhang, and the 20 or so MALLARDS and 8 MOORHEN made for an unusually busy Lakes!

Walking back through the Wet Woods I came across the LONG TAILED TIT flock, which as is normally always the case supplied me with views of NUTHATCH, TREECREEPER, COAL TIT, GOLDCREST and GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, as they all tagged along together.

Crossing the Ashes Lane Field at the end of my all too short visit, I checked the old shack and found the resident LITTLE OWL at home, I then heard a LINNET (58) fly over, which alighted in a tree on the boundary hedgerow of the Ashes Lane Field and Pub Field, I don't get many December Linnets here, so it's good to get one on the months list.

The Barnacle Goose and Linnet take the months list up to 58 now, which puts Decembers tally in 8th place out of twelve  :-)

A final high point for the day was seeing a Treecreeper in my garden, the third month this year that this species has turned up on my Elder Tree  :-)


2 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Not a bad session at all. Nice to see you and Barnie met up for the month.

Pete Woodruff said...

Sorry to hear of the 'minor disasters' but at least you got your hour in Warren.