Today was the first long walk I've done since the holiday, it was a bit grey but quite mild. After no winter visitors yesterday some of the first birds today were Redwing and Fieldfare, just a handful of each, there were also a couple of Goldcrests again in the car park. Pete the Warden and Steve Broyd were checking the moths, I dropped in on them and they had added two species today, Grey Shoulder Knot and Engrailed, there were 17 Oak Beauties today and 39 Small Quakers, I'm not sure on other numbers but still a reasonable amount were recorded today.
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| The first few Daffodils start giving some colour |
Back to the birds and although there was no big surprises the species kept coming, a noisy flock of around 70 Linnets were seen and while watching these a Chiffchaff called, possibly the same one as the other day it still didn't want to sing though! 6 Canada Geese flew north and at least 12 Lesser Black Backed Gulls mainly flew north. Yellowhammers again sung from several spots on various hedges and 3 Reed Buntings were near the stream, as I walked up the hill to look across the valley a nice flock of at least 60 Siskin noisily passed overhead. As I looked across the valley 2 Greylags flew west followed by a single Cormorant also a flock of over 100 Black Headed Gulls flew south. Finally a look at the boggy area near the entry road produced 5 Common Snipe.There was no sign of the Stonechat today but that was probably too much to ask. I walked from 7.00am until 11.30am and managed 54 species this morning, which was more than I thought the total would be.
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| Sorry, couldn't resist another Yellowhammer |
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| One of the two Greylags flying over |
3 comments:
Sounds like a great walk! Nice daffodils photo; always lifts the spirit when the daffs appear.
You had a good walk there Alan, 54 species sounds excellent to me! I saw a Yellowhammer yesterday but it was perched so far away it was only just identifiable so no chance of a decent photo, yours is lovely. I do like the first photo with the daffs, it's beautiful.
Glad you managed to get a closer photo of the Stonechat on the previous post.
Hi Rach, I was surprised how the species numbers added up at the end of the morning, I was only wandering aimlessly as usual!! :-)
Hi ShySongbird, 54 is definitely better than my average walks, I'm glad you saw Yellowhammer, hopefully it will pose for you next time :-) The gardens are great at Sissinghurst and this is usually my favourite time for them.
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