My concentration on adding records for the 10 km circle around our house this year has meant that I had rather lost track of how well or otherwise things have been going at Morton Bagot. So a week or so ago I added up how many species I'd seen there this year and established it was just 100. At the weekend Black-tailed Godwit and Greenshank improved matters, but several woodland residents were still missing from the list. This morning I decided to walk along the road to Bannams Wood to try to further rectify the situation.
It wasn't long before I came across a tit flock, and eventually added Marsh Tit and Coal Tit to the patch year-list although I must admit both were done on call only.
Once I'd got back to the usual circuit it turned out that todays results were to be similar to last week. There were now two Whinchats in the scrape field, while the farmer has reflooded the nearest flash resulting in an increased count of Teal and the single Garganey returning from presumably being unidentifiable on the furthest flash on Sunday. The waders were squeezed to the edges once more and I could only count eight Green Sandpipers and four Snipe.
Rather belatedly I decided I should try to take another photograph of the Garganey for posterity, but found I was unable to relocate it. Presumably it had swum too close to the nearest edge and was now out of sight.
Faced with the prospect of no photographs to post, I was rescued by a couple of odonata. A female Willow Emerald and a male Migrant Hawker posed nicely.
 |
| The female Willow Emerald is a little fatter in the abdomen than the male |
 |
| Like most Hawkers you have to be lucky to see a Migrant Hawker settle |
No comments:
Post a Comment