I was birding alone today, the weather forecast having wrongly suggested it would rain. In fact it was just cloudy, but still icy under foot with patches of frozen snow remaining.
I chose to walk into the marsh (the old pool field) and successfully flushed my first Jack Snipe of the year, along with two Common Snipe. I was also pleased to find a single male Stonechat, and went on to find at least two more perching on the plastic tree guards in the adjacent field. There were also about 20 Meadow Pipits and a single Skylark in there.
It's always good to see that the Stonechats are surviving the cold snap, and with milder weather on the way I'm optimistic for their future.
Another species which struggles in the cold is Lapwing. Initially it appeared that only eight remained on the flash field, but later on a swirl of birds included twenty-one more.
The big flock of birds were mostly corvids, at least 800 estimated, along with 180 or so Woodpigeons. I searched for any sign they had been flushed by a raptor, but although I did discover two Red Kites drifting in, I suspect that the cause of the melee may have been something else.
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