Saturday March 28

With a pretty dire weather forecast for tomorrow morning, I wangled a quick early morning visit to make sure I got at least one dry birdwatch this weekend. It was still very grey and the south-westerly wind was stronger than I would have liked, but wasn't going to affect my main mission which was to sketch Canada Geese.

About eight Canadas were present, mostly on the pool, but also spending time in the flash field.

It is probably just as well that I was focused on sketching these Geese, because there was precious little else worthy of note. The flash field contained 20 Teal, eight Lapwings, two Redshank, and two Green Sandpipers. It also contained the owner of the field, Steve Green, who drove up on a quad-bike and we had a very pleasant chat. I already knew he was very keen to conserve the field for breeding waders, but I learnt that he had largely created the habitat himself with the support of English Nature. Evidently it had been a poor arable field when he moved into the farm in 1986, and he set about turning it to pasture and then by damming and managing the springs created what I call the flashes (I think he would prefer to call them scrapes). It is great that there are landowners like Steve around who are so interested in the preservation and even creation of wildlife habitats.

He still doesn't want anyone wandering around the field though, so visitors take note.

A Little Grebe was trilling from the main pool, and was obvious when I first took a peek, but then did its usual disappearing trick. I bet its been here since last Thursday, and we just missed it last weekend.

My walk back produced a couple of photo opportunities.

Muntjac

Wren

Back at the road I checked out a flock of 30 Jackdaws because Mike had reported a "Nordic" Jackdaw on his patch at Middle Spernal in the week. All the ones here looked like "Anglo" Jackdaws to me. Other birds seen locally include the Goosanders, which made a second appearance at Middle Spernal Pools this week, and a pair of Curlews a fortnight ago at Haselor Scrape, seen by John Coombes.