Saturday November 12 - "Feeest"

 I was up early this morning to see whether the exceptionally mild weather had resulted in any unusual moths in my moth trap. The upshot was that I found 12 moths of eight species, three of them new for the year. 

The best species though, was a bird. At around 08.00 I had finished looking at moths and was about to go inside when a distant call stopped me in my tracks. A couple of seconds later, and much louder, I heard "feeest" and looked up to see a chunky pipit bounding westwards. It called again and I had no doubt at all that I was looking at either a Rock Pipit or a Water Pipit. Unfortunately the two calls are very similar, and although I thought it sound strong enough to be a Rock Pipit, I couldn't be completely certain it wasn't the rarer species. I certainly wanted it to be that. I tried playing some on line recordings, and some of them sounded indistinguishable from one another to me, so I am resigned to leaving it as either/or.

The three new for the year moths were a rather tatty Acleris sparsana, a splendid Feathered Thorn, and my first Sprawler since 2019.

Feathered Thorn

Sprawler

This morning I also planned to resume the exploring. I had identified a route from Bouts Lane, near Holberrow Green which took me eastwards to Cladswell and back. It was very sunny and mild day, and it turned out that the landscape was a mixture of horse and sheep pasture, with a couple of arable fields and a small scrubby wood.

Obviously I didn't see anything rare enough to rival the Rock/Water Pipit, but it had its moments. Redwings abounded in the hedgerows, with smaller numbers of Fieldfares. The proportion was 261 to 15. A party of 15 Linnets had found a small market garden by one of the farms to feed in. About 50 Rooks and a similar number of Jackdaws fed in the horse paddocks.

Redwing

Rooks

There were also a few minor surprises. A singing Chiffchaff near Cladswell, single Siskin and Redpoll flying over, and a pair of adult Herring Gulls which flew around me, calling loudly.

Herring Gull

The arable areas produced a handful of Skylarks, Meadow Pipits, and best of all up to four Yellowhammers.

Yellowhammer (backlit unfortunately)

Sadly this species looks to be following Tree Sparrow and Corn Bunting into local extinction.