Sunday October 22 - Morton Bagot belter

 There is usually one day in late autumn when Morton Bagot rises to the occasion, and today was the day. It was relatively still with high cloud, and a few sunny spells.

I met Dave in the usual spot and we started our normal circuit. It was immediately apparent that Redwings were arriving in decent numbers, along with a party of Fieldfares, and lots of Redpolls. Our cumulative estimate for the latter was 90 + (I actually logged 93, but many will have gone unrecorded and there may have been some duplication.)

We also noticed one of these.

Barn Owl

But I haven't got to the good bit yet.

The recent rain has caused widespread flooding, and at the patch that meant the old pool field was temporarily looking as it used to every winter. A sheet of water at the deep end hosted 68 Canada Geese, 86 Mallard, a Teal, a Greylag Goose, and a year-tick....an eclipse drake (or maybe immature male) Pintail.

Pintail

But this was still not the morning's highlight. 

Moving on to the flash field we found this a little bit of a let down. Another 22 Teal, two Shovelers, the first two of an eventual five Stonechats, and a Green Sandpiper on the next-door Kingfisher Pool.

We carried on along the Morton Brook as Skylarks, Siskins, and more winter thrushes and Redpolls regularly flew over. It had a really good feel about it.

Eventually we found ourselves walking up to the raptor watchpoint above Stapenhill Wood. On the other side of the hedge there was a panic among the small birds, and then a small raptor shot over the hedge in front of us. I automatically called "Sparrowhawk" before realising my mistaking and correcting it to "Merlin". It was an adult male and Dave had an excellent view while I blew my chances by making a failed attempt to get a record shot. I don't know why I do this, its like a Pavlov's dog response. The result was that my only mental image was the first one in the split second I first identified it.

Anyway, it was another year-tick and the highlight of the morning. An earlier Pavlov's Dog moment saw us failing to identify a snow white bird as it had flown south. On seeing a field of cows in the south end of the patch we diverted to check them out. From where we stood we had an excellent view of the fields towards Castle Farm. No white birds could be seen although we located a distant adult Common Gull, followed a few minutes later by a second-winter bird which made its way north-east. These were the first at Morton Bagot this year.

Harking back to my previous post, where I rambled on about lists, I feel compelled to mention that the Merlin has taken this year's local list (Circle List) to 141, beating last year's total. And last year I was really trying.

All very satisfactory.