Saturday 13 November 2010

Curling up to sleep

The marshes seem to have held on to their birds for a while this year, with the black-tailed godwit seen again today, a dunlin briefly popped in, and this common sandpiper still continues to hang on:


A varying number of redshank also is frequenting the marshes and Watton:



But the curlew flock is growing – these were some of the 108+ roosting on South Marsh East tonight.


Also around the marshes at dusk were at least 4 water rails – heard but unseen. The area shown on South Marsh West in the posting below contained at least 2 of them.

On the D reservoir the mediterranean gull has been showing to anyone with the patience to find it – seen again tonight by Martin.

A commotion was taking place around O reservoir tonight with this song thrush being one of many sp including a great spotted woodpecker all mobbing a pair of tawny owls who eventually emerged:

Also in the semi darkness was this roe deer (ISO1600 and 1sec exposure!):

Other reports have included more buzzard and kingfisher sightings today, along with a lesser redpoll in D woods, siskin, bullfinches, sparrowhawks, a merlin on the approach road and good numbers of fieldfare moving through. Best bird however was last Saturday though – a yellowhammer! (thanks Doug!) another one for the list…

A stoat was hunting the centre meadow too today – and quite likely the same one seen by Mandy in the houses the other day ‘This little fellow ran up the corner of our house as I sat in the lounge this afternoon. He had a good nose around the nest box and eaves, before investigating the trellis - luckily, I had the camera right next to me so I managed to snap him’

This may account for reports we got of two mustelids in a tree last week near east pond being heavily mobbed by passerines. Stoats never cease to amaze either with their ability to climb or swim – as in Tony McLean’s pic below from a few months back:


Also congrats to regular Howie Speight who also got a kingfisher shot on autumnwatch this week (if you hit the red button at the end). Tony has also been getting some shots of the kingfishers too today – although maybe that’s not a term to use when reading his reports…

Finally now I know what it is like to be a vole as this kestrel came to roost in the tree directly above my head at about 4:50pm before all light was lost: