Friday Fun

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

The weather finally relented a little and there was no need to travel far to see the first birds this morning.

In Thursday’s howling gale I’d seen Pink-footed Geese flying over the house and dropping into fields about half-a-mile away at Staynall, an area the geese have used lately. The geese use the Staynall fields every winter in varying degrees but the meadows are very undulating in addition to having few access points or roadside stops from which to view the geese or obtain accurate counts. On Friday morning I settled for “several hundred” and promised myself another try in a day or two.

Pink-footed Goose

All was not lost with sightings of both Kestrel and Barn Owl, the owl another distant one to go with the many of late. It’s the time of year when Barn Owls and Kestrels face difficulty in locating enough of their favoured small mammal food, and hence a time when both species are forced to spend more time hunting.

Barn Owl

Kestrel

I came across a Brown Hare trying to blend in with the landscape. A passing glance might see a large clomp of earth in the middle of a rough grass field until closer inspection revealed a brown furry animal, the sleeked back ears and the large orange eye of a Brown Hare.

Brown Hare

The European Hare (Lepus europaeus), known in the UK as Brown Hare, is a species of hare native to Europe and western Asia. It is related to and looks very similar to the European Rabbit, which is in the same family but in a different genus. Hares are considerably larger than the European Rabbit, have longer ears and hind legs and breed on the ground rather than in a burrow.

The Brown Hare is predominantly nocturnal, spending most of the day in small depressions in the grass known as forms. At night the hare ventures out, grazing on the young shoots of grasses and herbs as well as agricultural crops. Quite early in Spring the animals become increasingly active and hence more visible, especially when they indulge in courtship behaviour which inspired the English idiom “mad as a March hare.”

Heading north I stopped near Fluke Hall and again near Lane Ends where fields saturated by recent rains were awash with waders almost as far as the eye could see. Best estimates came in at 1100 Lapwing, 900 Golden Plover, 850 Curlew, 450 Redshank, 22 Black-tailed Godwit, 12 Dunlin and 200 Black-headed Gull, but not forgetting a single Ruff.

Golden Plover and Lapwing

I stopped at Braides to note another Kestrel, a Little Egret and a flight of about 18 Teal, while behind the distant sea wall hundreds more Golden Plover and Curlews.

By now there was snow with hail and rain showers, the bursts sudden and dramatic enough to cause an accident near Conder Green where a car had left the bendy road and ended up a bank and half way through a hedge.

I spent the next hour dodging the weather, taking pictures at ISO1600 of the wildfowl at Glasson Dock, the 43 Goldeneye, 40 Tufted Duck and 1 Red-breasted Merganser. This week’s gales had blown the Goldeneye in from the estuary, but as soon as a canal boat started up for a circuit of the yacht basin the shy Goldeneyes whistled off overhead and back to the sanctuary of the wide River Lune.