Friday November 8 - A morning of surprises

 I had a definite plan for this morning. Part one was to be at St Mary's churchyard near Studley shortly after dawn in the hope that the Yews there will have attracted some Hawfinches, as they did in the last influx.

I was stuck with the same cloudy gloom that has characterised the last ten days, but at least there was very little breeze again. Sadly I was not able to find any Hawfinches, only Goldfinches, Chaffinches and a Greenfinch. But there was still a surprise or two in store.

Looking out towards the river valley I spotted a flock of ducks approaching, and it turned out that they were 23 Goosanders. The flock split, half returning downstream and the rest going upstream. A little later a single drake Goosander appeared from the north, and may well have been a new bird. Shortly after that I was under the cover of the trees when I heard the mournful call of a Golden Plover several times. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that this was a year-tick.

Back home to help Lyn rise to face the day I was staring out of the bedroom window when, irony of ironies, a Hawfinch flew passed. It wasn't a garden tick thanks to the last invasion year, but was welcome nonetheless.

Part two of the plan was to go to Morton Bagot to check out the area I had not had time to visit on Tuesday. At the flash field there were no real surprises, unless you count a single Wigeon which lurked behind the flock of 39 Teal. I also saw a few Snipe, Lapwings, and Greylag Geese.

Moving on to the scrape field I flushed a few more Snipe but didn't try hard enough to find any Jack Snipe. I also found a pair of Stonechats and flushed a Green Sandpiper.

But lady luck wasn't yet completely done with me. A flock of Woodpigeons emerged from the north side of Bannams Wood, and I know enough to make sure I raise my binoculars to look at them. Sure enough a Goshawk was in hot pursuit of one particular pigeon allowing an assessment of the size of the Gos to be made. It was clearly larger than the Woodpigeon, I would say about 15% bigger, which would make it a male Goshawk as females are larger still. I did attempt a photo, but it was too far away and the resulting image was of no use and will not be shown here.