more on foot

After a cold start, good conditions with another mild calm day with 5 species added.
Out 7 hours, but only covered 7 mile

Several skeins of noisy Pinks over north during the day

Red-legged pair, several overdue Leos with a dead bird also, single Skylark, a female Peregrine appeared right on cue - giving a close up fly-by, what a beaut.
Not so pretty at Biffa & an hour peering down into the pit without scope added LBBG to bring up #81.
Tried for Barnie at 2 spots but no joy,

No Brambling despite spending a good while viewing game crops but the only thing out of the ordinary was a leucistic Reed Bunt, with good numbers of sparrows & buntings

Everything self-found so far, but i have a Waxwing tip-off, with 50 birds 4mile away.... surely i'll get one without having to resort to twitching......?

expired Leo

Groundcreepers

Had a spell at Hawthorn

Very difficult to capture images of small moving objects with my "photo-equiptment", but i enjoyed obtaining these - a Weasel came through 3 times, but he was too quick - but the Bank Vole he seemed to be after was quicker off the mark.

Lots of Greys everywhere now, making easy subjects:-

this one has taken over a regular Little Owl cavity:-

 

a few birds still coming down to feed on the old Elm log:-

Marsh Tit - the coastal denes have very good populations - they are quite thinly distributed in other wooded parts of the county.

Nuthatches are allways entertaining:-

 peek-a-boo
the only English bird which can descend a tree head first

 large hook-like rear toe

 once the Sunflower seed had gone they lost interest..

All the while i could hear Treecreeper singing, but it took me ages to work out where he was....

 "Ground-creeper" singing and feeding amongst a large ammount of fallen deadwood branches and twigs

He fed like this for well over 20 mins !

Others seen included Green Woodpecker, Buzzard, Peregrine, Goldcrest etc and although a regular Leo breeding area, i struggle to pin them down in winter due to large areas of ...... well... its called Hawthorn Dene for a reason !

On Sunday morning we went to Washington, knowing the 7th Avocet had returned from a trip to Cresswell, but were surprised to count 8, all paired up.