A dull, cloudy morning. Still quite cold, with no obvious breeze. All the flashes and pools are still frozen following the freeze up earlier in the week.
There didn't seem to be very much change in the birdlife since last weekend. The winter thrushes are continuing to strip the hedgerows. Numbers are very hard to assess due to their tendency to fly off en masse, only to regroup in another hedge elsewhere on the patch. However, at least 90 Fieldfares, 50 Redwings, and 15 Blackbirds were involved.
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| Fieldfare |
The stubble field by the pool contained a big flock of Woodpigeons which took flight while I was still some distance away, and later repositioned themselves in various trees all over the area. This was a bit of a shame because my photo produced a count of 466, which is not too far short of my highest estimate for the site.
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| The Woodpigeons |
It seems unlikely that every Woodpigeon feeding on the patch was in this flock, while some are obscured by trees, so there probably was an opportunity the set a new record. To be fair, there may also have been a few Stock Doves in with them.
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| Stock Dove |
The flash field contained 64 Teal standing on the ice, while three Snipe flew around.
Later on I walked into the high pasture field west of Netherstead. It contained 22 Meadow Pipits, 140 Starlings, and more thrushes. From here I could also look west, seeing two Cormorants and a dozen Black-headed Gulls, before several flocks of Greylag Geese flew over.
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| Greylag Geese |
The cold weather has meant that insect activity is all but finished. However, several small spiders kept attaching themselves to me, and I couldn't resist photographing one of their webs.
Rather an attractive structure. I have no idea which species the tiny money spiders clinging to the web were.
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