Saturday 9 January 2016

The sky had a few blue patches just before sunrise, but the sun rose into increasing cloud cover, which brought frequent showers from 08:30hrs onwards.

Just a couple of hours were spent out on patch, overnight rain had replenished the large puddles and re soaked the already sodden fields, where I didn't find the hoped for snipe, unfortunately !

No new species were added to the year/month list, in fact I didn't record much of interest at all, the best of what visited were, a GREY WAGTAIL that flew over the Ashes Lane Fields, a pair of CORMORANT fishing at the lakes and a mixed flock of LESSER REDPOLL / SISKIN at the Greenhouse Grounds.

Song from MISTLETHRUSH, SONGTHRUSH, DUNNOCK, ROBIN, WREN, GOLDCREST and TREECREEPER made the walk more pleasurable, all very springlike, the only sign that it is in fact still winter was the sighting of 18 FIELDFARE that flew over the Wet Woods, they were fleeing a large female SPARROWHAWK!

Despite the weather being poor for decent long patch walks, the current year/month list is exactly where it was on this date last year - 56 species  :-)

No chance of any photo's today, so here's a few images from my garden feeding station from yesterday.


Up to three of these GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKERS are visiting

As are at least one pair of COAL TITS

6-10 GOLDFINCHES feed daily

Plus the Lesser Redpolls are still visiting, at least 10 are now sighted daily

They are reasonably approachable with the camera

Hopefully they will stay around into early march, when I want to get some images of the males in their breeding plumage  :-)

4 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Some nice blog brightners today Warren. I'm going to struggle for any type of photo at Nethergong I think. Not that i'm complaining, something will turn up soon for a photo!!

Warren Baker said...

Marc,
Its not easy for photo's, especially when you want some quality with them, i'm just glad Ive got the garden feeders!

Wilma said...

Good birds in your garden.

Pete Woodruff said...

Long live the garden feeding station Warren. We get good numbers of Goldfinch daily on the sunflower hearts, but Redpoll has to be on the rarity list for us.