Monday December 30

I was a bit late starting again, but at least I remembered my binoculars this time. What a morning it was too. The weather was unremarkable, rather misty again with a light south-westerly. A little cooler than yesterday, but still very mild. The only indication that today might be better than usual came from news of a short-staying Bewick's Swan at Upton Warren this morning. I have a theory that whatever it is which causes birds to "turn up" it happens at multiple localities on the same day, even in winter.

I started off by counting the thrushes in the paddocks again, getting totals of 206 Redwings, 22 Fieldfares, five Meadow Pipits, and 21 Starlings. Pretty similar to last time. Clearly the lack of frost is giving these birds an earthworm bonanza.

Then I decided to walk along the road. This produced a singing Mistle Thrush, and a photogenic Treecreeper.

Treecreeper

From the edge of Bannams Wood I surveyed the landscape and spotted a flock of 80 Lapwings over the flash field. This is the first flock for several weeks.

Down at pool (once again reduced to a puddle) I heard the Water Rail calling from almost exactly where I had flushed it a fortnight ago. A single male Stonechat appeared to be unringed, so was different to the two the ringers caught yesterday.

Approaching the flash field I noticed a black and white bird, which proved to be a Shelduck. Curiously, the first Shelduck of last spring arrived at the end of December too. Scanning to the right of the Shelduck I spotted an interesting looking duck. I thought I knew what it might be, but convinced myself to wait until I got closer. Arriving at the viewing point I was delighted to find it was indeed a female Pintail. The first here since Feb 2012.

Pintail

Although there were fewer Mallard than usual, the wildfowl present was surprisingly diverse. In addition to the Pintail and the Shelduck, there was also a Teal, a Wigeon, three Shoveler, and six Grey Herons.

Shelduck

I returned to the car reflecting on an excellent year. My total has reached 122 species (not including Feral Pigeon), which comfortably beats my previous best of 118 in 2011. Firsts for the site have been Temminck's Stint, Black Tern, and Yellow-legged Gull, while Turtle Dove was a personal site tick.

Next year I plan to relax a bit, do a few different sites, but will no doubt still be visiting Morton Bagot at least once a week.

Happy New Year.

Ringing news

The ringers attended yesterday and caught 61 birds, including 13 retraps. They were pretty pleased with their efforts, catching two Stonechats (their first and second ever) and two Snipe (second and third ever).

The full list was:

Snipe 2
Great Spotted Woodpecker 1
Blue Tit 27 (inc 11 retraps)
Great Tit 9 (inc 1 retrap)
Long-tailed Tit 13
Robin 2 (inc 1 retrap)
Stonechat 2
Meadow Pipit 4
Reed Bunting 1

My own birding today lasted as long as it took me to discover on arrival that I'd left my binoculars at home. I'll try to remember them tomorrow.

Friday night's moth trapping also drew a blank, despite a mild overnight temperature.

Friday December 27

Well with Christmas receding in the rear view mirror, I now have just a couple of birding opportunities to push the year list further ahead of my previous best.

This morning was a classic December day, cloudy and mild with a very light south-westerly. I further limited my chances with rather late start, but did at least get the scope out and went through the thrushes feeding in the paddocks. I counted 202 Redwings, five Fieldfares and a few Starlings.

Inspired by fellow blogger Gavin Haig on the south coast I decided to take my camera off auto and try some manual settings. The light was poor, so I wasn't expecting miracles.

Stonechat

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Long-tailed Tit

Roe Deer

The results were a bit mixed. I'll see what happens when the light is better.

Several feeders dotted about confirms that the ringers will be back at the weekend.

Highlights today were three Stonechats, a Peregrine, a Lesser Redpoll, 100 Greylag Geese, 82 Mallard, one Teal, and 15 Canada Geese. Gulls were thin on the ground; 17 Black-headed Gulls, and one Lesser Black-backed Gull.

Slim pickings indeed.

Sunday December 22

A pleasant, rather mild, sunny morning.

Dave and I targeted the Snipe Marsh in the faint hope of flushing the Water Rail. We weren't successful in that regard but did find eight Jack Snipe and 23 Snipe. This is probably the best count for the former this year.

Earlier, a distant swirl of 150 Black-headed Gulls gave us hope that there might be more gulls on the big pasture field, but when we finally got to where we could see properly it turned out that they had come off a distant ploughed field. A few Lesser Black-backed Gulls and one Herring Gull flew past before Dave located a possible Great Black-backed with Lessers miles away towards Redditch. By the time I looked they had gone, although I did see what may have been the flock, but too distantly to identify anything.

A couple of male Stonechats were in the usual place, while the flash field played host to over 100 Mallards, seven Teal, and five Grey Herons. A couple of Lesser Redpolls and a distant flock of about 50 probable Meadow Pipits rounded off a quiet visit.

The dragonfly pool looks in good nick for next year though.

Merry Xmas

Tuesday December 17

I threw back the curtains this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't foggy as forecast. A couple of hours later and about a mile nearer to Morton Bagot I discovered that the weathermen had got it right after all.

My plan was to walk through the Snipe Marsh (as I've now decided to call it) in the hope of counting Snipe and Jack Snipe. In fact the first notable bird was the Peregrine sitting in the dead tree.

Peregrine

As I followed the footpath down into the Snipe Marsh field I became aware of birds mobbing something in the Tawny Owl tree.

Tawny Owl

All in all things were going quite well. A male Stonechat popped up onto the hedge and then proceeded to follow me around in the manner of a Robin.

Stonechat

Then I entered the marsh and things got really interesting. The first bird I flushed was a Common Snipe, and almost immediately a silent Snipe-sized bird. I got onto it expecting to see a Jack Snipe even though it had flushed at a greater distance than they usually do. The bird I saw didn't look like a Jack Snipe, in fact it wasn't a Snipe at all. It was a rail or a crake, presumably Water Rail.

In all honesty the view wasn't great. Rear end only, no white in the wings which looked unmarked brown (as the bird was flying away I couldn't have expected to see a white leading edge), and there was a hint of buff at its back end. Almost immediately it disappeared into the juncus, and I headed towards where it had landed. There was no further sign of it.

After tramping around for a bit I kicked up 12 Snipe and three Jack Snipe in a different part of the marsh, all of the latter behaved normally, flying a short distance before arcing round and dropping down into the marsh. Inevitably the doubts started to set in, shouldn't I have seen trailing legs?

The Flash field was fog-bound and on the walk back to the church where I had parked I counted flocks of 50 Meadow Pipits, and 50 Redwings.

Back home I was encouraged by finding an internet image of a Water Rail flying away from the photographer (admittedly probably in the process of landing) where the legs could not be seen at all.

I nevertheless decided to return at dusk in the hope of hearing it call. The fog was even denser and as dark descended I only added a calling Yellowhammer to the day list. Eventually the Snipe started flying out, each one calling as they flew over. But no Water Rails squealed, so I will have to settle for the views I got in the morning.

Sunday December 15th

Mostly sunny, although a large black cloud produced a few spots of rain. A very light westerly. After feeling so uninspired by the weather and the lack of change on the patch recently that I didn't bother to go in the week, Dave and I needed a decent bird to pick us up. And we got one.

Initially it all seemed similar; three or four Stonechats in the hedge bordering the pool, Dave had counted about 200 (I forget how many he said) Redwings before my late arrival, and the Flash field gave us three Grey Herons, a Little Egret, and a few Mallard. It also contained a lot of gulls. We decided on 87 Black-headed Gulls and seven Lesser Black-backs, a lot more than usual.

This very wet autumn has left all the parts which could flood well flooded, and this often attracts gulls. However after I shouted Little Owl a bit too loudly (one flew past us) all the gulls took off and that seemed to be that.

A little later I was half way up the slope to the raptor watch point by Stapenhill Wood when I stopped to scan a few large gulls which were drifting past, and I immediately got onto a rather dark grey mantled Herring Gull type. Alarm bells rang immediately and I alerted Dave to see the bird. I was thinking Yellow-legged Gull, although the chances of claiming one on flight views seemed optimistic. Dave got onto it (it helped that the only other gulls we could see were Lesser Black-backs) and after initially only flying away it started to drift back, and get lower. Could it be going to land? We lost it behind the trees and hot-footed it to a place we knew we could get views of the large field we thought it might be in.

Fortunately I still carry a scope and tripod, and sure enough about 30 Lesser Black-backed Gulls had settled, and there was a paler one with them. But it seemed to be a Herring Gull. I passed the scope to Dave and he agreed. Confusion. I looked again and suddenly the gulls shifted revealing the front half of a second pale gull with a white head. This was the bird. A Lesser Black-backed then stood in front of the Herring Gull, and the putative Yellow-legged Gull remained sitting down and partly obscured.

The gull flock

Second right from the crow

We decided we needed to try to get closer and started down the slope. Fifty metres on I stopped to scan, and noticed that all the gulls had stood up. We ramped up the magnification on the scope and started to believe. Suddenly the gulls started to take off, in the distance some dog-walkers had entered the field. The bird took flight (oh no), but while the Lesser Black-backed Gulls flew off, our bird circled round and landed again. Through the scope we could see its legs were yellowish. Also it had an encouragingly attenuated rear end.

Yellow-legged Gull

Yellow-legged Gull

We were happy with it. Yellow-legged Gull, the first ever seen at Morton Bagot. My bridge camera isn't really powerful enough to replicate what we could see through the scope. I've tried hitting the "enhance" button to improve the shot on the last photo, but the above photos were the best I could manage.

Pretty soon it flew off and we thought it could be going to the flash field so we headed back there. Sadly there was no sign of it, and we decided to make tracks.

Sunday December 8

A cloudy and rather breezy morning, south-westerly, produced very little of note.

The shooting has had no affect on the Mallard numbers, which actually increased to 124. On the other hand there were no Teal or any other ducks. Four Grey herons was a little more than normal.

We spotted a flock of Starlings in pasture a couple of fields from the patch and went over to count them. Dave estimated 280 to 300, but my camera counts could only muster 221.

Some of the Starlings

There were still about 85 Redwings and 40 Fieldfares, mainly in the paddocks. Our only wader was a Snipe which flushed from the strip field.

All pretty grim really.

Tuesday December 3

Light cloud at first, but then sunny. Most of the pools contained some ice. A very light southerly breeze.

The area around Netherstead was quite productive, with about 100 Fieldfares, 130 Redwings, at least nine Meadow Pipits, a pair of Stonechats, and 24 Linnets around the paddocks. It wasn't just me watching them. A Sparrowhawk appeared twice during the morning.

Sparrowhawk

I continued on my usual route, sidestepping a photographer who seemed intent on getting shots of a second pair of Stonechats. Further down the same hedge a couple of Song Thrushes paused briefly.

Song Thrushes

The pool looked peculiar as ice which had formed overnight was left high and dry as the water has continued to flow away through the pipe.

The nearest I came to an unexpected sighting was a drake Wigeon which had joined the 12 Teal and numerous Mallard.

Wigeon

Later on I spotted three Mallard corpses lying on the ice, so clearly some duck shooting took place yesterday.

Sunday December 1

I'll begin this post by referring to a year-tick I got the day before, from the car, on my way into Birmingham. Half a mile south of the M42 junction I noticed a flock of about 30 Golden Plovers wheeling around over a large cultivated field. Yes, its true, that really was a year tick. They haven't occurred at Morton Bagot this year, so I hadn't seen any.

This morning was bright and sunny with a very light north-easterly. No amount of staring at the horizon would induce any Golden Plovers to fly by, so we had to make do with what was available on site. The paddocks which in April had provided a stop-over for two Ring Ouzels was now covered in rather less unexpected thrushes. We counted 195 Redwings, 90 Fieldfares, and a few Starlings along with one or two Song Thrushes and Blackbirds.

The rest of the morning was even quieter. Just two Stonechats remain, a couple of Snipe, about five Teal, 53 Mallard, and a lot of geese.

Greylag Geese

We counted 140 Greylag Geese and had estimated 50 Canada Geese before the latter disappeared.

Stonechat

In a last ditch attempt to see something more interesting we stumbled around in Stapenhill Wood. Our only success here was rescuing a Song Thrush which had become caught in the fold of an old Pheasant pen fence.

My only other decent bird today was a Peregrine, not at Morton Bagot, but seen from a car while I was heading out of Redditch to collect my Mum.