Early spring spoils

Hello

It might be mild conditions but for seed-eating birds there isn't a great deal of food out there at this time of the year so I spent much of my day walking around and dispensing lots of food both on the ground and from suspended feeders.

Harrington Airfield was first and the flock of fifty or so Chaffinches still included a couple of male Bramblings plus the usual Reed Buntings, Yellowhammers, just a few Tree Sparrows and other regulars. There were about a hundred Golden Plovers hiding on the top fields making counting them difficult.

Kelmarsh Hall always has large numbers of birds coming for the food with tits, common finches and woodland birds dominating and a further three feeding stations corralled a mixture of amber and red-listed species.

It seems that the winter thrushes took centre stage at diurnal migration today - Jacob clocked up 443 Fieldfares and 1505 Starling moving north east over Scaldwell village and Chris down at Greens Norton counted over five hundred Fieldfares and over one hundred and seventy-five Redwings on the move. Gulls are moving over steadily and it's the return of passage adult Lesser Black-backed Gulls moving north - probably filtering back from Iberia - that has been most noticeable. Common Gulls are coming through in small groups now, often lingering to feed on wet fields with nomadic Black-headed Gulls. Larid fans will be checking these wanderers for something good from now through until early May!

At Pitsford Reservoir today the Yellow-legged Gull was again off the Sailing Club and birds north of the causeway included a Great White Egret, a few Snipe and an Oystercatcher.

The Glossy Ibis spent some time this afternoon on the Titchmarsh Reserve at Thrapston Pits but at one stage was feeding with many wildfowl on the flooded meadows between Wadenhoe and Aldwincle. Other birds at Thrapston Pits included six Great White Egrets, a couple of Little Egrets, six Cetti's Warblers, five Chiffchaffs, two Grey Wagtails, three Kingfishers, a pair of Stonechats, two Oystercatchers and a drake Goosander. About thirty Siskins were in the alders at Wadenhoe Church where there was also a Grey Wagtail.

The juvenile Iceland Gull was showing distantly at Rushton Landfill late this morning and Ken did well to locate a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker at Stortons Pits today plus a Stonechat and a male Blackcap.

Two Ravens passed through Hanging Houghton on their territorial patrol and two pairs of Stonechats remained in the valley below the village and at Stanwick Pits the Bar-tailed Godwit was still there and two Cattle Egrets were also present.

Regards

Neil M

Nuthatch courtesy of
Robin Gossage. A charismatic
bird with a wonderful extensive
range of calls and songs, and they are
noisy now as we count down to the 
breeding season!

Great Crested Grebe which appears
to be consuming a small Tench. This
is probably an unusual fish to eat - Tench
have a distasteful slime which sometimes
causes a bird to regurgitate and abandon
their prey. Image courtesy of Robin Gossage.

Bar-tailed Godwit. A very
scarce and often difficult bird
to see in the county, the current
bird at Stanwick Pits is certainly
very long-staying for the time of
the year.