Sunday proved a quiet morning with not a great deal of new stuff following a couple of hours trawl around local spots.
When I arrived at Knott End the tide was in but hadn’t brought much in the way of variety: 700 Oystercatchers, 190 Redshank, 6 Turnstone and 4 Knot the sum of the waders, unless you count a Grey Heron wading through the water. When all the birds panicked, the Oystercatchers running back towards the safety of the water’s edge and the Redshanks flying off upriver, I knew a Peregrine was about. The Peregrine appeared from the Preesall direction then made a single pass and turn above the beach before thinking better of it and heading north. Best photo I could get into the sun and in the ten seconds the bird gave me.
Passerines were even harder to find, the Pied Wagtail with a gammy leg first noted here last winter, and 2 Goldfinches on the Niger seed I’d left recently in the hope of keeping the Twite happy, but no sign of them.
I decided to give the Fluke Hall environs a try and it proved quite productive in terms of species if not numbers. Towards Ridge Farm the Greenfinch flock has expanded to 100+, the Skylarks and Meadow Pipits to 15+ and about 10 respectively, with 4 Reed Bunting, 2 Pied Wagtail, 10+ Tree Sparrow and a Little Egret.
In the wood I heard the call of a Brambling from the tree tops, couldn’t locate the bird in the autumn leaves, but did manage to see a single Mistle Thrush, 2 Fieldfare, 12 Long-tailed Tit, 1 Nuthatch, a Song Thrush, 200 Jackdaws and 50+ Wood Pigeon. For anyone unsure of a Brambling’s autumn contact call, click on the Xeno Canto button to hear one. For those who wonder why birders seek out Bramblings, there’s a photograph below from a year or two back.
On the extremely wet fields between Fluke and Lane Ends I counted 40+ Redshank, 3 Black-tailed Godwit, 800 Lapwing and 18 Whooper Swans. There’d been a lot of Whooper Swans flying either inland towards the mosses or back out to the marsh. As I arrived at Lane Ends, JR told me of 300+ whoopers from a dawn start, together with a count of 10,000+ Pink-footed Geese. Good work Jean.
That was the end of my morning apart from heading back via Pilling Moss where I noted 3 Kestrelwhich included a pair together, 900 Woodpigeon, 2 Yellowhammer and some of the Whooper Swans out on a distant flood.
Back home and picking up apples from the garden for freezer storage and hopefully garden thrushes, I noticed a hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus snuffling through the fallen leaves. I’m not sure when hedgehogs are meant to hibernate but soon I guess. Me I’ll just hibernate to somewhere warm for a few weeks in January, better than spending two or three months under a pile of old logs.
Back soon on with more spikey tales.
This week is linking with Anni and Stewart again, plus Weekly Top Shot
This week is linking with Anni and Stewart again, plus Weekly Top Shot