Thursday 2 April 2015

It was miserable and wet this morning, so my patch walk was postponed for a while until the worst of the rain had passed, at least the wind had eased from recent days!

Not getting out until 08:15hrs means the best part of the day had gone, however a walk around the Wet Woods and Scrubby Woods did provide me with the regular species missing from yesterdays visit, I added TREECREEPER (48), NUTHATCH (49), BULLFINCH (50) and MISTLETHRUSH (51), plus a bit more of a surprise, a TAWNY OWL (52) that hooted twice from its roost in the Scrubby Woods.

A pair of MANDARIN DUCKS (53) flew over the main lake, alighting into the Wet Woods, but nothing was of any real note on the lake today that wasn't seen yesterday.

A walk around Migrant Alley didn't provide me with the Wheatear that I had hoped for, just a dozen BLACK HEADED GULLS, 5 HERRING GULLS and 2 LESSER BLACK BACKED GULLS were of note. The LITTLE OWL was at roost in the Greenhouse Copse, and the KESTREL pair were around the Greenhouses.

A 90 minute sky watch from my seat, looking for a migrant Swallow was pretty fruitless, although I did get to see quite a few MEADOW PIPITS as they continue their northward journey, also a couple of YELLOWHAMMERS went over, plus BUZZARDS were on every horizon again  :-)

I might just get out for an evening stroll if the weather holds out  :-)

This SPARROWHAWK saved the day photographically, as it alighted on my garden fence this afternoon, allowing a quick couple of snaps, I had the camera pointing at the Woodmouse at the time!

Sparrowhawk


Woodmouse, just before the Sprawk arrived  :-)

3 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Thats some Sparrowhawk shot mate, top quality.

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Great sprawk and your mouse is a darn-sight better than my mouse today!

Cheers

DaveyMan

Pete Woodruff said...

Excellent images of the Sparrowhawk Warren.

We had one landed on our fence post yesterday too, it had one of 'our' House Sparrows in its talons....BASTARD.