Thursday November 12 - The wrong kind of pale

 A sunny morning with a very light south-westerly. The balmy weather may have been partly responsible for the fact that there were more birders and walkers in the area than I have ever seen before.

Fieldfare

I decided to venture into the marshy area of the former pool field, and hadn't gone far before I flushed medium sized mammal. It wasn't large enough to be seen above the level of the rushes, but it was sufficiently alarming to flush a Jack Snipe, then a Common Snipe and another Jack. Needless to say I was not able to get a shot of them in flight.

I saw the first of six Stonechats here, and then moved on to the Flash field. Here, a cacophony of Chaffinch calls indicated that they were mobbing an Owl, and eventually a Little Owl broke cover. Meanwhile the nearest flash was considerably more interesting than at the weekend. It harboured 18 Teal and three Wigeon including a nice adult male.

Wigeon and Teal

A flock of 45 Goldfinches was still present in the weedy field, and a few Lesser Redpolls feeding on Mugwort (thanks to my Twitter correspondents who identified it for me.) I decided to head down to the south end to see whether the main flock was present.

By the time I got there it was late morning and the flock was found feeding close to the public footpath. This meant that the steady stream of walkers and dog-walkers who stopped for a chat were unwittingly making getting a good view of the Redpolls quite challenging. Actually I didn't mind because they were all very pleasant and had plenty of interest to say.

Meanwhile I had spotted a pale Redpoll among the flock. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of pale. Each time they flew it was easy to pick out by its pale milky tea primaries and tail feathers. It was clearly a leucistic Lesser Redpoll. I wanted to get a shot of it to prove it wasn't anything better, but it was hard to locate once it had disappeared into the crop. Eventually I had a millisecond to get a record short when it joined the other Redpolls on telephone wires.

The leucistic Lesser Redpoll to the right of normal ones

It actually didn't look as impressive on the wires as it did in flight. I think this flock will prove a draw for the rest of the winter. Expect confusion.