It was back to the patch this morning. The recent cold snap has been replaced by much milder weather, but there was still sufficient ice to dissuade most of the waterfowl from returning.
I was joined by Dave as usual, and we followed the usual route, seeing most of the usual birds. I was pleased to see that at least one pair of Stonechats has survived unscathed. We chose not to enter the scrape field where they were, so the only Snipe we saw were four flying in from the direction of the flashes.
One major plus was a considerable increase in Lapwings. We had counted 30 flying around over Castle Farm to the west, and then found another 59 in the flash field. At least 95 Canada Geese and 21 Greylag Geese were in the field beyond, but the only other wildfowl were 20 to 30 Mallard which flew over and seemed to land on the Morton Springs fishing pool just outside my patch boundary.
Small numbers of Fieldfares, Redwings, and Song Thrushes kept flying up in front of us. One of the latter posed nicely.
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| Song Thrush |
What we were missing was any kind of year-tick, but as we reached the raptor watchpoint that was put right as a Shelduck flew over, heading south.
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| Shelduck |
The birds were generally a bit jumpy, but we couldn't see the cause until Dave spotted a large Sparrowhawk heading past. Unfortunately I contrived to miss it. Shortly afterwards we did add a Red Kite to the day-list, although they are largely ignored by smaller birds, so it was unlikely to be the cause of the anxiety.
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