A glorious sunny morning with -6° on the car at one point gave way eventually to the mist rising from the valley into low cloud.
We enjoyed a short exercise walk up to the Raggalds early on and afterwards I had a leisurely birding walk along the local fields in bright sunshine.
Most fields were frozen but the south facing hills were clear of the frost.
Some great looking frozen cobwebs and plant stalks today.
I did not expect to see many birds today but I was pleasantly surprised with the sighting of a few birds now and then along the way.
Birds:-
Raggalds Walk:
2 Mistle Thrush.
Bradshaw Fields:-
2 Squawking Pheasant.
7 Grey Partridge. way off on the distant hillside.
Little Owl.
Distant Kestrel.
2 Stonechat.
A large skein of 146 Pink Footed Geese were high in the clear blue sky flying WSW towards Ogden (ish).
They were soon swallowed up in the clear sky, but I did get a few poor photos of them.
I was hoping that one of the photos might be good enough to check for a Brent Goose but the Geese are too distant on my photos to tell!!
A Brent Goose would probably have to land on me nose end for me to ID with confidence.
15 or so Gulls past in small groups.
Excellent with the Partridges John! Presumably the same group I saw a few times on Soil Hill during the summer, good to know they are still going strong!
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel.
ReplyDeleteJust what I thought when I saw them ..DJB's Partridge.
Some Partridge looked smaller than others.
Presumably this years young ones.
The Fox was on the same hillside yesterday..so fingers crossed.
Nice to hear from you.. brrrrr cold here.