Walking at dusk

A short post today, I just wanted to share a lovely walk I had on a less than lovely day (cold and cloudy, but dry). I'm not really a morning person (it's a big effort getting up and out for sunrise!) but I do enjoy walking at dusk, and there's often lots to see. I left about an hour before sunset and dallied around the fields, just noticing what was happening. Binoculars are essential - it's hard enough to spot things in the failing light and any help you can give yourself will definitely pay off. I'd have missed the partridge and probably the fox without binoculars, and the hares were rather distant too! Images are all clickable for a closer look.

 

I was hoping (but not really expecting) to find a hare or two, and ended up seeing a fair bit more!

Mild weather and bumblebees

I am rather enjoying the current warm spell, though I'm wondering how much longer it will last... I've already seen a butterfly (though it flew by too quickly for me to identify it, maybe a small tortoiseshell), and the birds definitely seem to be in springtime mode, with various individuals flying around with nesting material.

The problem, of course, is that insects that have been dormant in the cold of winter become active, and if they can't find enough food they will struggle. So it's a great idea to have things in your garden that will help them out - mahonia is one. It flowers from January through to about March, and provides an early supply of nectar and pollen when there's not much else about.

It seems to be a tough enough plant - in my garden it lives in front of a row of tall conifers, with all the shading and moisture problems they bring, and still thrives. In the sunshine there were at least half a dozen honey bees visiting, plus a couple of buff-tailed bumblebee queens.

There's lots of information online about pollinator-friendly plants for the garden, including this from Friends of the Earth.  With a little planning you can have wildlife-friendly flowers all through the seasons!

A visit to Welney WWT

Having checked the weather forecast (which was looking surprisingly good!), I decided to take a day off this week to visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) at Welney. The reserve is on the Ouse Washes, washlands which take up floodwater from the River Great Ouse and keep safe vast areas of farmland and settlements. The WWT manages about 3 of the 22 miles of the Washes, and the visitor centre and reserve are well worth exploring.

The Ouse Washes is an SSSI and a Ramsar site, and is a massively important area for wildfowl. The WWT staff gave a short talk about the reserve and the organisation (in the comfort of a very nice heated main hide), and according to this there are currently around 76,000 waterfowl present across the Washes. Amazing.

My main reason for visiting Welney - other than it having been on my list of places to visit for such a long time - was to see Whooper swans. These swans breed in Iceland and overwinter in the UK and Ireland, making the journey across the North Sea in one non-stop flight (nearly 1800 km to the Ouse Washes); counts here are generally up in the thousands. The swans feed in the surrounding fields during the day, and fly back onto the washland to roost and, at Welney, for a top-up of grain provided by the WWT, who also ring and monitor the birds. As well as the Whoopers there are Bewick's swans: smaller and shyer, and fewer in number.

Another must-see bird for me at Welney is the Black-tailed godwit - the species here is the focus of a project to increase their numbers. They were present, but the flocks were too far away for me to get a good view, other than the spectacle of them all in flight, put up by a passing marsh harrier.

I had great views of the Whooper swans on the lagoon in front of the main hide, and an absolute bonus for me was the huge number of Pochards that were there too - I have never seen so many all in one place! Most were males - the females fly further south and overwinter in France and Spain. This is yet another species in decline, and the WWT are undertaking research into this. For my part, I just loved watching, drawing and painting them - they are perfect little blocks of colour.

 

I could have spent all day drawing the wildfowl here - maybe I should have! Next time...

Snowy tracks

Well, we had some snow here but not much! Just enough to cover the lawn while still letting the grass to poke through. And it didn't last long - it had mostly melted away by lunchtime. There was enough, however, to show some interesting tracks across the driveway...

So, out came the nature journal, along with my little three-legged fold-up stool in an attempt to keep me out of the snow. I measured the tracks so I could draw them life-sized, although a certain amount of melting was already happening...

The track-leaving culprit is a moorhen. Although we're not near a river or lake, there are ponds in the village (including one next door), as well as ditches and drains, and we have at least two resident moorhens that we see quite regularly.

Drawing this reminded me of some sketches I made a few years ago, when I looked out of an upstairs window and found a moorhen at eye level, perched up in the conifers!

The Big Garden Bird Watch 2019

Last weekend saw the annual Big Garden Bird Watch, organised by the RSPB. You spend an hour counting the birds visiting your garden, or other open space - could be a park, or school grounds etc. It's a huge citizen science project and has been running for 40 years, revealing some interesting trends over that time.

The week leading up to the BGBW weekend had been fairly busy for birds in my garden - a constant flow of visitors to the feeders in the cold but calm weather. However, the weekend saw that come to an end! The weather turned windy and the birds hunkered down.

I had planned to try some sketching - I find sketching garden birds tricky at the best of times, as they tend to be fast moving, but I'd hoped that having a good number of them about would help me get some poses down on paper. In the event the birds tended to pop up for just a few seconds before vanishing, and they tended to arrive all at once then disappear again, so I found the whole thing really difficult - need more practice!

Nevertheless, I ended up with a reasonable list even though I was watching an empty garden for most of the hour!

 

 

 

My final list was: 6 long-tailed tits, 3 blackbirds, 2 chaffinches, 1 great tit, 2 blue tits, 1 robin, 1 dunnock, 1 fieldfare, 5 house sparrows, 1 woodpigeon and 1 coal tit. No sign of the regular starlings, collared doves or stock doves!

Cold and crisp!

We've had a few days of rather cold weather, alongside beautifully clear blues skies. Perfect for walking (or running!), and for jotting down sightings in the nature journal (which I did when I got back as I'd picked up the wrong sketchbook, oops!).

The start of the walk...

 ...and at the turnaround point at the bottom of the bridleway.

Plenty to see along the way. The buzzard was perched in its usual tree, and there were fieldfares hopping around on the cricket field. Past the stables and along the bridleway I found a heap of chicken manure which had been commandeered by three pied wagtails, who were chasing insects (and each other) pretty much non-stop. Spotted another perched buzzard; this one seemed very pale, breast feathers gleaming in the sunshine, but it was a bit too far off to get a really good look, even with binoculars.

Further down the track there were lots of yellowhammers in the hedgerow, along with chaffinches and a couple of reed buntings. The stand of large trees near the end of the bridleway had a good complement of rooks flying and settling up top.

About turn and a wander homewards to thaw out a bit!

Out for a run

I have a favourite running route which takes me along a bridleway, through a village and back home across the fields, and Tuesday this week was a perfect day for  run - chilly but sunny, with the muddy ground sticky but not slippery.

I always enjoy these runs - fresh air and lots to see, and changes to note as the year rolls on. The hedgerow along the bridleway seemed to be full of fieldfares today. They flew off ahead of me, with their distinctive soft 'chack chack' call. There doesn't seem to be a lot of hedgerow bounty left - only rosehips and ivy berries. Most of the hawthorn and blackthorn fruit has already been eaten. Over in the fields to the east was a huge flock of pigeons, put up to flight by me I guess. There must have been a couple of hundred. I'm sure the farmer would be delighted...

Near the start of my run, as I headed off down the bridleway, I spotted a bit of a commotion down the track to the west - a buzzard being harassed by three crows. By the time I had looped back round towards home, three crows (presumably the same ones!) were sitting happily in a field, with no sign of the buzzard. Job done.

Although the farmland just here is arable and fairly intensive there is still wildlife to spot, even at lunchtime. A skylark was flying and singing over one of the fields, and there's almost always a small flock of finches/buntings somewhere along the way. I've seen hares here too.

Back in my village, nearing home, I finished with a loop on the farm track around the cricket pitch. There were lots of goldfinches in the hedgerow; I'd hoped to spot some linnets too, but no luck today.

An enjoyable jog all in all -  beats the treadmill in the gym any day!