Woke up a bit late this morning, so decided a walk around the London Road patch, to see if there was any evidence of migration on offer, arrived at about 6.30, the first field had a flock of Greylag Geese in it, some Mallards in there as well! The hedge along the bottom of this field has been grubbed right out back to the stream, not sure why, but a lot of good habitat destroyed to gain an extra 10 foot of field, which as it's on a heavily used footpath won't be that productive anyway!! Maybe there is a plan to open up the stream or something, who knows? But it looks pretty brutal at the moment!
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| Grubbed out hedgerow presumably will be removed at some point |
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| Greylag Geese |
The piles of cut scrub, were being put to good use by the birds, with a flock of Blue Tits, Great Tits and Chiffchaffs foraging in them, also Dunnocks, Robins and a couple of Blackbirds present. Bit of quality in the form of a Common Whitethroat, a male Blackcap and the highlight a Spotted Flycatcher!!
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| Chiffchaff |
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| Spotted Flycatcher, as usual the camera decided to focus on the leaf rather than the bird! |
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| Another Chiffchaff |
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| and another |
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| Scruffy Dunnock |
Well after this promising start things went downhill pretty quickly, I walked the Glades, all round the Patch, down Church Lane, up to the Vineyard, down the hill and back to the first field for very little reward. A couple of Jays, a Great Spotted Woodpecker, a few Tits, including some Long-tailed Tits, heard some Nuthatches, heard and had brief views of 4 Mistle Thrushes, a Kestrel sat on a wire pretending to be a Pigeon, another Common Whitethroat, couple of skulky Song Thrushes and a few Swallows all I could muster, on the whole way round didn't see or hear a single Finch😢
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| Greylag Geese |
Back in the first field the piles of cut brush again proved productive, can't help thinking I should have just stood here for the 2 hours would have saved myself a walk and probably seen more!! Usual suspects here, though no sign of the Spot Fly, but did get a nice smart Lesser Whitethroat, a Kestrel flew through as well!
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| Lesser Whitethroat |
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| Robin |
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| Kestrel |
On the way home, impulsively I decided to cheer myself up with a visit to the Langton Lane Dung heap😄 This had a lot of growth on it including a large Sunflower right on top, but produced a nice Northern Wheatear which posed okay, may have been 2 birds present though I never saw the two at once, when the bird appeared at the other end of the heap it seemed thinner and had a brighter supercilium but this may have been the light or my imagination, was also a brief visit by a Yellowhammer and a flock of 10 Goldfinch, unusually they were all Juveniles, I didn't see an adult at all!!
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| The impressive Dung-heap Sunflower |
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| Possible second bird, seems slimmer with brighter super? |
So a pretty dull morning and I was home by 9 o'clock, where I cheered myself up by making an Organic Chocolate Cake with Buttercream and Loganberry Jam, which is tasty as!!
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