Sunday 29 March 2015

Spring Stalls as Winter hangs on

The last week on the patch has been very quiet with the main high light being a very brief singing Blackcap midweek , it has not been seen or heard of since so must of been in a hurry to carry on North. I had seen a couple in the winter so it may of been a departing bird or maybe an arriving summer migrant.
Apart from that a calling Tawny Owl was the only other real high light in a week short of any other summer migrants.
So when Willow and I hit the patch on Saturday we did not expect to find anything out of the ordinary .The weather was grey and breezy with the odd shower not very spring like at all !
The only Summer migrant that we are recording at the moment is small numbers of Chiffchaffs that are passing through at the moment. A bird seems to have set up territory in nexts doors orchard and as such is in fine voice. I managed to find 4 on Saturday including a bird in hedgerow after a sharp shower so maybe it was passing overhead and had been brought down by the rain .
The winter hangs on in the form of winter Thrush with a fine flock of 150 plus Fieldfare which have been feeding in the top fields , a single Redwing was heard passing over and a Mistle Thrush was in a tree near to the cottage. There appears to be plenty of singing Song Thrush around as well.
On the pastures 8 Stock Doves were seen and 5 Skylarks were singing their hearts out in the belief that spring must arrive soon.
The trickle of Pied Wagtails continues with 6 passing over. The best bird of Saturday was a very approachable Raven which seemed quite happy for Willow and I to stop and get a good luck .They really are massive when you see them on the ground  .
The best of the rest (it was a poor morning were a Green Woodpecker, Greater Spotted Woodpecker and 3 Buzzard.
With the clocks going forward and the start of British Summer time it was only normal for it to be smashing down with rain and a howling gale to be taking place.
I was pretty reluctant to go out but Willow can be pretty persistent and lays on the guilt trip so I was out the door by 8am.
It was more of the same fair really with a single Chiffchaff singing and plenty of resident bird song going.
Winter Thrush consisted of  92 plus Fieldfare and again a single Redwing.  On the pastures were a good count of 10 plus Stock Dove and Skylarks kept on singing with 6 doing their best in the  howling wind .
A small group of gulls consisted of 15 Lesser Black Backed, 5 Herring and 1 Common Gull feeding on sheep pasture. The only other birds of note on the fields were 4 Pied wagtails.
 On the raptor font a single Buzzard was seen worming and a large female Sparrow Hawk put the fear of God into the local Blackbirds.
An unusual sound was that of a calling Moorhen ,confirmation that our birds seem to have returned for the summer .
The usual Green and Greater Spotted Woodpeckers were noted. So a very quiet week ends and with the weather not looking good it might be the same this upcoming week.
The best birds of the week for me were 2 Common Crane which visited nearby Ashleworth Ham  on Saturday evening .They were  found by local birders Alan Hooper and Steve French aka The orchard Centre Crew , a good sighting and it was nice to chat to some local birders and just see whats going on the local bird scene Alan and Steve are building  a nice list at a young site and you can find Steves blog if you visit the Gloster Birder site. Although not on the local patch it was hard to resist not going to see them .