Monday 13 January 2014

The settled weather enjoyed for the past two days was replaced by cool showery conditions today, some of those showers being quite heavy.

I managed to dodge those showers early on this morning during a two hour patch walk, where very little was noteworthy, with nothing much changing in the bird life here, so it's pretty much the same as the last few days.

The MUTE SWANS had returned to the ornamental lake, where the lone COOT was still present plus 8 MALLARDS and 4 MOORHEN. On the main lake it was just a case of more Mallards, 6 in all, along with another 2 Moorhen. The small lake had just 2 Mallard present.

A pair of COAL TITS were seen in the Scrubby Woods, giving me the full compliment of the scarcer woodland birds to be found here, TREECREEPER, GOLDCREST, NUTHATCH, BULLFINCH, LONG TAILED TIT and JAY being the others.

In the Wet Woods, I looked long and hard over the pools of water, hoping for a Teal to be present amongst the tangle of branches that cover most of the pools, but none were seen. I heard the GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER drumming again though.

I finished off the visit over at the Greenhouse Grounds, where I located a few SISKIN in the Alders, feeding with half a dozen GOLDFINCH. 5 MEADOW PIPITS and 4 PIED WAGTAILS were again seen amongst the Poly Tunnel frames, along with WRENS, ROBINS, DUNNOCKS, BLACKBIRDS and SONGTHRUSHES. I scanned the Greenhouse Copse from a distance and saw a pair of LITTLE OWLS in their favoured tree.

A short sky watch was had, hoping for a flyover Grey Heron or Common Gull to add to the year list, but just 2 BLACK HEADED GULLS and single HERRING GULL were seen going over, indeed, the sky was particularly empty today, but I did see 3 Raptor species eventually, those being Kestrel, SPARROWHAWK and BUZZARD, also, the call of a LESSER REDPOLL was heard, but I didn't see it against the sky.

Siskin
Robin
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