Jan. 30th a good day.

I met Pete Smith at the car park at around 8.00 this morning and what a gorgeous morning it was!! We headed towards Bull and Birches, there were half a dozen Redwings in the car park, as we walked across the newly planted orchard a single Lapwing flew north only the second sighting so far this year, this was followed by a Cormorant and the first of five gull species today a Lesser Black Backed Gull.

Newly planted orchard 

 As we approached an area of boggy ground a Common Buzzard flew by and dropped into a nearby tree, then there was a whirring of wings and the first of a total of 14 Common Snipe took to the air, in amongst these we were lucky to find the Jack Snipe which gave good flight views, I tried a couple shots of the Buzzard as it moved from tree to tree.

Distant Buzzard!

Pea Soup?

for two!

The wood was reasonably busy when we got in it, several Long Tailed Tits and Marsh Tits were seen and we were really lucky to find 2 Firecrests which showed briefly. Jay and Treecreeper were added as we left Bull and Birches and made our way to the lake, a couple of Mallard were sifting through the weed on the lake and were more intent on the weed than worrying about us. The lake was quite quiet there were a couple of Moorhens and a total of 9 Mallard. Moving on to the fields there were a reasonable number of gulls settled, I tried hard to find Med. Gull but failed! Pete headed off and I had a look along the hedges and found a Reed Bunting and a couple of Yellowhammers and at least 3 Bullfinches, the Skylark flock came up from the winter wheat and numbered around 20 birds. As I walked back to take in the view another Buzzard was seen being mobbed by a crow right next to them was a Sparrowhawk, when I took my bins down another bird was right above me the female Peregrine, all this in about half a minute, fantastic!! I left for home but was back at the patch walking with my wife after lunch on a nice bright afternoon, I added 3 Redpoll a Kestrel and Meadow Pipit as well as a party of 3 Buzzard to end on a total of 54 species for the day, a really enjoyable day it was to!

View across to the Greensand Ridge

This might become the Robin blog!!

See what I mean!!