Friday, November 21, 2008

FW: PCP Thursday

 

 

From: errol newman

I had [mid morning walk round Fingers]  -

2 Gadwall (pr)

Ad male Sparr (sitting in tree)

>11 Teal

5+ Siskin

Chiff

2 Pied Wag (males)

2 Green Wood

Bullfinch

Lots of birds on/under/around the nuts

Otter - found by Magpie, not me! I found the Magpie, tho'!

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wed 19th Nov

A few hours standing in the 'rough' this morning produced 25 birds, 11 of which were new. [5 Blue Tit, 2 Gt.Tit, 2 Blackbird, 1 each Goldfinch & Chaffinch].

Not in the nets we had - 5 Fieldfare, 3 Redwing, a Chiff, 9 Goldfinch, 4 Bullfinch, ~9 Siskin, a Gt.Spot, several Sky Lark, a Kestrel and ...
a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker!!

Second best bird of the day was a Blue Tit that was first ringed as a juvenile on 29th June 2002. That makes it 6 years 4 months and 21 days since we first handled it. [National record is over 9 years]

Sunday, November 16, 2008

15/16 November

I started out early on Saturday to catch the Corvid roost leaving but was a little late. The bulk of the roost left as I walked down to Fingers along the main path. However this was quite good as I had the spectacle of 100's of Crows and Jackdaws swirling above Fingers with the backdrop of an orange dawn sky, fantastic. As I reached Fingers other smaller groups of Jackdaws were still leaving and as I rounded the corner towards Kramer hide I noticed another group heading towards me, then I noticed that the first bird was significantly larger and was being mobbed by the others, I realised it was a Common Buzzard. It had timed it's park visit very badly as a group of 50+ Jackdaws lifted off and joined the mobbing and it was lost in the swirling mass! The rest of the morning was a bit damp with little of note. Kingfishers were active again and a couple of Little Grebes were on West Fingers. There were a number of Bullfinch around Kramer hide early on. Very little wildfowl, just the noisy Teal giving themselves away.

On Sunday we had a guided walk which turned out quite damp again. I arrived early to do a quick recce and enjoyed the best of the weather and the birds, with Water Rail, Chiffchaff, Several Goldcrest (at the car park, the Rough and the bottle bank), Pochard and Tufted Ducks. We had a reasonable assortment of birds on the walk including Redwing and Treecreeper but the drizzle put a bit of a dampener on things!