Sunday 11 November 2012

5th-11th Nov - Patch Tick!!

After last weeks late Swallows and House Martin things slowed down a bit on birds flying through this week, although the 5th saw 4 BRAMBLING flying north and about 12 FIELDFARE. The 7th produced a calling LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER and 30 REDWING. The Lesser Spot called again early on the 9th, when a single CROSSBILL flew east. SISKIN numbers sort of improved as up until now I have managed ones and twos, so a couple of flocks of 10 were an improvement. One of those flocks was this morning (11th), also this morning I managed a KINGFISHER by the moat and 3 GREEN WOODPECKERS were in lake field and as I tried unsuccessfully to stalk them and get a photo, a flock of 6 small geese caught my eye flying north-westish, these, to my surprise, turned out to be EGYPTIAN GEESE (104) a new bird for the patch!! only the second new bird this year after the heard only Golden Oriole in the spring.

Egyptian Geese

With a few days being a little milder we did record some moths, I forgot to mention last week that Steve had a GEM only the 3rd record here from memory. This week we added a couple more moths for the year, DECEMBER MOTH, MOTTLED UMBER and SCARCE UMBER, other moths included BARRED SALLOW, 9 SPRAWLERS on the night of the 8th, when there were also 19 NOVEMBER MOTH.
Below are a few random images from the last week.
Another Yellowhammer

Random Bale!

Dunnock


Goldfinch

Another Yellowhammer!!!!!!!


Goldfinch

December Moth

11 comments:

Tammy said...

Congrats on seeing the Egyptian Geese! Beautiful series of photos! Great colors on the Goldfinch!

Marianne said...

Damn, if I'd known you needed Egyptian Goose for a patch tick I'd have swapped you some of our local ones for a couple of your Yellowhammers :)

Lovely photos, especially love the Dunnock with the blurry wire pattern behind it, and the one of the leaves.

Maria said...

Great variety of living creatures!

Jason K said...

Well done on the Egyptian Geese Alan. They would be a lifer on my patch too.

Greenie said...

Alan ,
Well done with the Egyptians , the fez certainly makes the ID easy doesn't it .
As Marianne says , we take them and the Parakeets for granted , but it's not the same all over .
Nice selection of shots too .
BTW - is 'random' related to Gareth , the Tottenham flyer ?

Alan Pavey said...

Hi Greenie, it could be especially if that Bale starts rolling it would soon gather a similar pace ;-)

Warren Baker said...

Egyptian Geese have flown over here on a very few occasions Alan, not this year though,.........Yet!

Nice set of random photo's :-)

ShySongbird said...

Lovely photos again Alan. I used to be able to keep up with you on Yellowhammer sightings but have not seen many this year. Well done on the Egyptian Geese.

Rohrerbot said...

A moth?? Brrr....how in the world does that little thing survive? You had me a Egyptian Geese....what a wonderful surprise! And the Yellowhammer reminds me of a Yellow Warbler. Cool shots! And exciting. I would be have been extremely excited just to spot the geese!

Helma said...

Very nice pictures again and also all a bit in the fall colors. Only 7 of the picture Putter I find a bit too dark but the other pictures are a joy to watch :-)
Regards, Helma

Russell Jenkins said...

They are pretty cool looking geese and love that Dunnock picture. The Yellowhammer is really lovely surrounded by the berries.