FINCH CORNER AND STANTON PARK

I paid an early visit to 'finch corner'  this morning. Several bramblings, greenfinches, chaffinches blue tits great tits to be seen, also a pheasant. But sadly no yellowhammers or tree sparrows showed for me. 

brambling

greenfinch

chaffinch

Afterwards I went on to Stanton Park.  I put out some seed and later someone  ( a warden?) put out a whole lot more, including apples and fat balls. 

I was rewarded with visits to the bird feeder by a two nuthatches, coal tits, blue tits, chaffinches, great tits, robins and blackbird. No jay appeared for me though. 

nuthatch

blue tit

coal tit

a few snowdrops at Stanton Park

WHELFORD POOLS

I hadn't been over to Whelford for a while, so decided to pay a quick visit after school today while the sun was still shining,

I was pleased to see a variety of ducks on the lakes, including, mallard, teal, tufted, gadwall and shoveler although they all kept their distance.  Also noted cormorants, mute swans, magpie, goldcrest, redwing, blue tit, great tit, coots, moorhens and great crested grebe.

I also noted some early primroses.

LIDEN LAGOON

I decided to visit Liden Lagoon today, a place I had heard of but not been to before. It consists of a lake with path all around it and two islands. Not a particularly large lake - it took about 10 minutes to walk around- but it did have a variety of waterfowl .e.g gadwall, pochard, tufted ducks, ,mallards, canada geese, swans, heron, great crested grebe, coots and moorhens.   Also a rather strange looking mallard x indian runner duck. Previous visitors have also noted common gull, teal and little grebe but these weren't visible today. 

mallard x indian runner duck?

black headed gull

mallard (m)

a pair of gadwall making a getaway

view of the lagoon

a few of the tufted ducks

 heron with pochard in front

mute swan

some of the canada geese

early flowering daffodils

LOWER MOOR FARM AND BLAKEHILL RESERVES

It was such a beautiful winter's day today. A hard frost followed by lots of sunshine. As soon as I finished  from work, I took my sandwiches and  having filled a flask with hot chocolate drink, drove over to these two reserves on the Cotswold Water park.

At  Lower Moor Farm,  the lake was frozen, but when I put out some bird seed, the bird table soon became very busy. I had some lovely views of bullfinches, the male one stayed around for ages, as well, as reed buntings, dunnock,chaffinches, robin, blackbird, blue tits, and great tits. 

However, it wasn't only the birds that were hungry as a family of rats (2 adults and 4 young) spent a long time clearing up the seed on the ground!. It was compensated by sights of a couple of  foxes on the opposite side of the lake though!

STANTON PARK

I spent an hour or so at Stanton Pak  today, and managed to get some quite nice photos of some of the regular visitors to the bird table. Birds seen included coal tit,blue tit, great tit, robin, wren, blackbird, dunnock, chaffinch. On the lake were 11  goosanders, black headed gulls, mallards, mute swans, and moorhens. 

 

coal tit

nuthatch

robin

a group of goosanders, from the total of 11 seen

 a pair of goosanders

female goosander

great tit

long tailed tit

PENDULINE TITS

Just a quick post to say I took a trip to a reed bed near Gloucester where a pair of Penduline tits have taken residence. Unfortunatly my photos aren't very good but at least I did get a record!

                                                                 penduline tit

some of the many birdwatchers!

another shot of pendulune tit

FINCH CORNER

Some time ago my cousin Jon promised he would take me a spot known as 'finch corner' near Barbury Castle, so I was delighted to receive an email last evening suggesting we go there the next morning.
So on a frosty and sunny morning we arrived at the aforementioned spot and parked up, using the car as a 'hide'. Having spread some seed on the wooden fence posts we sat and waited. The hedge appeared come  alive with finches and we succeeded in observing 13 different species! They included tree sparrow, brambling, plenty of yellow hammers and green finches,  a few corn buntings, reed warbler, chaffinches, blue tits, great tit, robin, dunnock, goldfinch and blackbird.  A few photos from this morning are shown below.

                                                blue tit

                                                       male brambling

                                                   female chaffinch

                                                             corn bunting

yellow hammer

As we were about to leave, three roe deer crossed the fields below us and on the way back we had a lovely view of a kestrel in a tree, 

kestrel

roe deer