Rickling Green to Rickling Church

Saturday 21/1/2017
In fields both sides of road
Fieldfare 50+ Lapwing 30+ Golden Plover 20+

Sawbridgeworth 18th Jan

A morning walk round the patch. Write up with "atmospheric" photos here.

Patch record number of Cormorants.

Of note:
Little Owl - 1 in same field as last year.
Meadow Pipit - 1 in usual rough field.
Cormorant. a max of 13. A record number for the patch. Not good as the patch cannot support this number. They were flying around a lot - I assume the more regular places are frozen over.
Great spotted Woodpecker drumming!

pm - a Little Egret in the stream by Southbrook. It fished away quite happily despite my standing only twenty yards away.

Garden in the snow

Friday 13/1/2017
Eighteen species of birds visited the garden on Friday in the snow
Starling - Fieldfare - Chaffinch - Blackbird - House Sparrow - Goldfinch
Robin - Wood Pigeon - Bullfinch - Dunnock - Collared dove - Coal Tit
Blue Tit - Long-tailed tit - Magpie - Feral Pigeon - Great tit - Wren

2000 Woodpigeons.

There's always something to see on the Patch, even when there's nothing to see. Today it was a sky filled with Wood Pigeons. I didn't see what put them up. There was some shooting in the area, so may have been that.

Counting was hard, but by the old technique of counting ten in singles, counting a hundred in tens, then counting hundreds, I got to 2000.

Here's a couple of pictures. I think the first has 800 in - this wasn't the only flock in the air - and the next shows some of the birds in the trees.

Flock of about 800 Wood Pigeons

Wood Pigeons in tree tops behind Pishiobury House

Other birds seen included several Yellowhammers, a few Meadow Pipits, a Reed Bunting, and a couple of Little Grebes on the river below Feakes Lock.

Bishops Stortford garden

Tuesday 27 December 2016

Male Blackcap in garden in bushes and then
on bird bath

Pincey Brook Marsh, Hatfield Broad Oak, 27 Dec

a crisp morning walk.

selected list:
Wigeon 1 female a first for me at this site.
Teal c40
Little Egret 2
Common Gull c20
Lapwing 18 flew over high NE
Grey Wagtail 1
Kingfisher 1
Snipe 1
Fieldfare 2
Reed Bunting 1
Goldfinch 5
Buzzard 2

Sawbridgeworth to the old airfield Christmas Eve walk

Turned left out of my drive instead of the usual right. Followed Soutbrook up to the west of Sawbo, then up between the rivers Orchard and West Road, across to West road and back down to Tharbies - some really good trees and hedges here - through toward the high ground then up the very minor road/track that cuts across to the north end of Allen's Green. Right into the huge field, up to the piles of grain in the field, across to Shingle Hall Farm (SHF), down the road to Tharbies again but east into the north of Sawbridgeworth and then home.

Highlights were:
Golden Plover - 44 in the usual field south of SHF with c140 Lapwing.
Fieldfare - 2 flocks, 1 of c110 at Tharbies and one of 78 at SHF. Conceivably these may have been the same birds.
Blackbird. Odd ones and twos, eventually totalling 35 for the whole walk
Collared Dove 46 and Yellowhammer c50 at the grain piles.

Otherwise Kestrel 4, Buzzard 3, Meadow Pipit 16 at SHF, Song Thrush 6, Bullfinch 1m at Tharbies, Great-Spotted Woodpecker 1 called at Tharbies, Skylark 6 by the grain piles.

Also a distant smallish deer at Mathams Wood. Quite dark brown. No idea what species.