Thursday December 9 - Austy Wood and The View

 It's been a bit of a frustrating week. Strong winds and gales on the days I might have got out, and other commitments when the weather behaved itself. This morning I finally donned my wellies, grabbed my bins, and took advantage of a calmer day to do some more exploring.

In the last few years a restaurant called The View has been established on the west side of the busy A45 just south of Wootton Wawen, and it provides an excellent place to park. It overlooks a small canal marina. So parking there, I walked back down the track which bisects a large sheep pasture until I got to the main road.

It was all a bit mundane as far as birds are concerned, a flock of 54 Redwings, three Fieldfares, and a Mistle Thrush on one side of the track, and 25 Starlings, a Kestrel, and a Buzzard on the other.

Once I'd crossed the main road I found the footpath which runs across a newly planted field, which is the closest you can get to Austy Wood. The field contained a few Pied Wagtails, and two Grey Wagtails, while the wood is mostly coniferous and looked pretty birdless. Eventually I spotted a Sparrowhawk, a Raven, and a few Siskins.

The edge of Austy Wood

Time to digress. Where would you go in the Circle if you wanted to see a Canada Goose? Well of course pretty much anywhere, even the marina below The View contained a pair this morning. However, this state of affairs was not always the case, which brings me to:

Canada Goose - Introduced into the UK during the nineteenth century, they were scarce in Warwickshire and Worcestershire until well into the twentieth. The date of the first record in the Circle is unclear, but the earliest I can find refers to a pair breeding at Tardebigge Reservoir in 1939 AJMartin. AJHarthan writing in 1946 referred to breeding pairs at Hewell Grange and at Tardebigge Resevoir. The first fully dated record I can find relates to a pair found breeding at Hewell Grange on May 21 1947, and since then breeding sites have included Arrow Valley Lake, Earlswood, Wythall, Shortwood Roughs, Lodge Pool, Lower Park Farm, Morton Bagot, Tardebigge, Hewell, and Batchley Pond. 

The numbers seen remained modest in the 1950s and 1960s, with peaks of 63 at Hewell Grange in September 1956, and 55 at "Redditch" on November 20 1969. This last record was before work on Arrow Valley Lake had been completed, but may still relate to the partly constructed lake.

Each subsequent decade saw more and more Canada Geese being counted leading to the two largest counts in recent years, 312 at Earlswood in October 2013, and 320 over Redditch on September 23 2017.

There seems to be every chance that this most boring of species will continue to increase its numbers in the future.

More interesting birds are available.