Sunday November 23 - Morton Bagot

 Morton Bagot is settling down for winter. Dave and I wandered around this morning and saw birds we expected to see, and little more. I would say that the patch's wintering bird population comprises about sixty to seventy species at a push, and we saw forty of them today.

Of course you are unlikely to see all the birds present in a couple of hours, so to brighten the experience it is preferable to see at least some of the harder to find ones. Thus our star bird was probably a Jack Snipe which I kicked out of cover in the scrape field. Typically it rose silently from close to my wellies and landed again about twenty metres behind me. Too quick for a photo, and I was not about to disturb it again.

We also saw three Red Kites (Dave had them in the air together), three Stonechats which may well attempt to spend the winter here. Any prolonged cold snap could be disastrous for them as they are highly insectivorous. There were still 55 Teal and a Wigeon on the nearest flash, and two Common Gulls (unusual here) flew south.

Goldfinch and Stonechat

A flock of 180 Woodpigeons flew over Bannams Wood, but more unusual was a group of about sixty feeding in the leaf litter at the edge of a sheep field next to the Morton Brook. When the land here was all agriculture, pre-HOEF, we used to see thousands feeding on recently tilled land. 

One other slightly unusual sighting related to at least one Grey Wagtail. They do turn up every autumn, but rarely remain later in the winter.

Finally, the ringers have had a couple of interesting controls. Blue Tits tend not to move very far, but one caught at Morton Bagot on 13 September 2025 was controlled at Kemerton Lake, near Bredon Hill in south Worcestershire on 9 November 2025, a distance of 34 kilometres.

Their second control was a Redpoll ringed on the Yorkshire coast at Kilnsea on October 7 2025, and caught at Morton Bagot just three days later on October 10 2025. Although its tempting to speculate that this bird had originated in Scandinavia, most Lesser Redpolls travel from within the UK, so it is just as likely to have been migrating down the coast before heading south-west to be intercepted by Tony and the team.