The thing about winter is that it's slow. The pace of change is glacial, especially if your local patch consists of a few weedy fields and a couple of shallow scrapes/flashes. Yesterday Sam from HOEF went to Morton Bagot and saw a Barn Owl and a few Wigeon. So it was a golden opportunity for me to go exploring, safe in the knowledge that I'm probably not missing anything rare on the patch.
I chose Haydon Way Wood. The expected fog failed to materialise and instead I got a little light cloud followed by sunshine and barely a breathe of wind. Pretty good.
The wood is about two kilometres south of Morton Bagot and has a car-park managed by HOEF. Expectations were modest, and so I busied myself with recording every bird for their Spotter Sheet project.
The stand-out highlight came when a couple of Lesser Redpolls repeatedly returned to a plant (which I decided was Dock) totally disregarding my presence only 10 yards away. Who needs a hide when the birds don't care that you're there.
 |
| Lesser Redpoll |
I wish I could say that this kind of thing happens all the time, but it really doesn't.
The rest of the thirty-one species recorded were pretty much what you'd expect. I logged 44 Redwings, two Fieldfares, an impressive seven Song Thrushes one of which was singing, a grand total of 15 Lesser Redpolls, a Reed Bunting, a Grey Wagtail by the river, and fly-over Yellowhammer and Skylark.
There were of course plenty of walkers and dog-walkers (the car-park was almost full when I arrived), but the site is surprisingly large and it wasn't difficult to socially distance.
Perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment