Sunday December 23

Preparations for christmas are starting to take priority over birding, and with the fear that yesterday's heavy rain may have made the patch difficult to get to, I settled for a late start and for parking at Morton Bagot church.

In fact the roads were fine, and the change in my normal circuit allowed the opportunity to check out the public footpath hedge which runs down to the pool. It contained 30 Greenfinches (I wondered where they had gone) and 40 Chaffinches. I also noticed that three fields below the road and below Bannam's Wood now contain tree tubes, so the tree planting really has started. In fairness those fields never really contained Skylarks in the summer so there may not be any negative impact.

The main feature of the day's visit was revealed when I reached the pool and the flooded flash. The wildfowl numbers have exploded. At least 120 Mallard took off from the pool, while the flash was a swirl of Teal and Lapwings. I managed to creep into position without losing too many, and a count of the remainder produced 167 Teal and 242 Lapwings.




A partialy albino Lapwing amongst the Lapwing flock

  While the numbers were spectacular, the variety wasn't. Four Wigeon flew off as I tried to get closer to the flock, and I counted 16 Snipe and seven Moorhens, but that was about it.

Pretty encouraging though.