Sunday January 14 - A change is as good as a rest

 Morton Bagot only features today thanks to John Chidwick who visited late in the afternoon and watched a Barn Owl flying around.

I chose to try somewhere else, a bit different. To do a bit more exploring. My target was Coughton Fields Lane north of Alcester, and ironically it turned out to be not very different from Morton Bagot at all.

The fields on both sides of the road have been purchased by HOEF, and were therefore the familiar fare of young plantation and rough grassland. The birds were much the same as I might have seen if I'd stuck to the patch.

Two pairs of Stonechats were nonetheless very welcome. Further confirmation that they are well distributed throughout my wider patch. It's a far cry from the 1990s when finding a Stonechat was quite a coup. 

Female Stonechat

Where the trees came to an end there was some arable farmland which gave me a Yellowhammer, a Linnet, and a few Chaffinches.

A party of six Mute Swans heading north might have got me more excited if I hadn't heard the rhythmical thrum of their wingbeats from far away. Whoopers and Bewick's fly on largely silent wings.

Back among the saplings further reminders of the patch were a pair of Bullfinches, occasional Redpolls flying over, and a single female Reed Bunting. I'm finding the latter surprisingly hard to find away from Morton Bagot.

Bullfinch

I ended the morning with two driven circuits of Alcester looking for Waxwings. Flipping things! They seem to have leap-frogged the Circle with records from Badsey and Bidford to the south, and still some at Bartley and Longbridge to the north.

Needless to say, I didn't find any.