It's been a rather disappointing few days. I thought I had a good plan, which was to visit two sites which I thought might add a wader or two to the year list.
I had seen tweets from Heart of England Forest which encouraged me to give their new wetland habitat at Oak Wood a chance on Wednesday morning. The locality is at Traps Green a mile or so north-west of Ullenhall. Its always a bit tricky visiting an unfamiliar site, and on this occasion I spent a good hour looking for the wetland before realising I had walked past it. To be fair, January has been very dry, and it may be early days in the development of the habitat. What I saw was a very small wet area with no waders or any other water birds on it. At least I found a Yellowhammer, and 26 Meadow Pipits in the newly planted woodland to take the edge off my frustration.
This afternoon I decided to spend a few hours at Great Alne, allowing me a longer look at Haselor Scrape than the normal five minute scan from the gateway. About 200 Woodpigeons occupied the field of root crops on the west side of the road, but the scrape just yielded the usual Teal (38), Wigeon (26), and Shoveler (two). A Grey Wagtail searched for food at the back of the nearest scrape.
The afternoon was lifted when I found a tiny Woodland Trust wood next to the River Alne called Coffee Pot Wood. I'm not very good at identifying wild flowers, but found a little cluster of Snowdrops and Winter Aconite, a new species for me. Enough to brighten any day.
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| Winter Aconite |
Spring really is just around the corner. Also in the wood was a Jay giving an excellent imitation of a calling Buzzard (it had me fooled for a while), and then a Kingfisher calling from a branch surprisingly high above the river.
Morton Bagot remains the best bet for waders in the Circle.
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