With the persistant Gale and occassional Heavy Showers of yesterday
our options were pretty much limited to being
Confined to Barracks!
However, with our commitment to Mothing we had to venture out
even if only to release anything caught but spurred on by the finds during of that foul weather.
The 'tongue in cheek' wander started with relatively small beer as one of the proud parent
WOOD PIGEONs
of a third brood from the Lime Tree nest right next door to
Slight Return II
was not to be moved, and equally the second whack of juvenile
HOUSE SPARROWs
strutted their stuff
not paying me a blind bit of attention
(seemingly having fallen in line with everyone and everything else!)
Having always had something of a soft spot for the species,
their comming of age came when catching one a couple of weeks ago!
At the Irrigation Pond the parent
MOORHEN
continued to feed the new arrival
with the images getting no better
in fact seemingly marginally worse but not a bad video clip?
We rather dipped-in with another
COMMON SANDPIPER
just happy to pose
as we made the most of it
all donations gratefully recieved
under the circumstances of weather!
Another poser was another
MOORHEN
reluctant to move, and yet another feeding high in a
SALLOW BUSH.
Not at all unusual as they will happily nest and roost in such places
but nonetheless intreguing to see a
Water Fowl
half way up a tree.
LITTLE GREBE
can prove difficult to capture if/when feeding veraciously
as was the case on the day, hence you only get 10 seconds rather than the allowed 20.
With a total blank 'bird-wise' on the Heath it was left to a new arrival
AIRBUS
to make up the numbers while finding
this part of the livery being 'memory jerking' - continued below!
The rest of the morning's action was confined to the
Solar Panel Compound
where immediately the unusual happened.
Herring Gulls alight here on occassion with Lesser Black-backed being far less frequent
but we have never ever witnessed a
BLACK-HEADED GULL
doing so!
Nice to see, but stranger things have happened!
Next up was a species we rarely take time to 'click' although in the
right being absolute scorchers,
we are referring to the humble and much maligned
MAGPIE
just look at that blue sheen.
The memory was jerked back to a visit to Merced in California, USA, by no means a first visit to the country, and again with the lovely Sue, and once again having 'dipped' (missed) the ubiquitous
YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIE
As if to rub salt into the wound, on bording the Greyhound, in the dead of night, coach bound for Seattle we fell into conversation with the lady behind us and the subject came up.
A resident of the city, she did say her garden is always 'full' of the things and would be willing to delay her journey until the next day, accommodate us and more or less guarantee the TICK!
Had it been daylight we would have readily accepted the kindness, but the
Moment was Lost with the Magpie still remaining a 'bogie bird'.
As if something of a sop, or compensation, since then their own sub-species of Black-billed Magpie, always considered Pica pica the same as our own, has been elevated to
Single Species Status.
A wind blown
COMMON BUZZARD
did share its ablutions with us and in this clip we feel it looks rather coy but
"yes, we did see you"!
Finally, and on leaving we did spot c2
WHEATEAR
with this one continuously performing this kind of
Looking Up for Raptors Action
while the other mostly sat still on a
Solar Panel
before flying off to
find its own post.
OK nothing blistering, but from what was considered a 'duff day'
a certain amount of excitement and a lot of enjoyment.
HERE'S HOPING FOR A TOMORROW!
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