Yet more snow.

We've been snowed in now for a few days - well, I say snowed in, it's more like iced in to be honest: the road outside is completely impossible to drive in our cars and we're not exactly a priority area for the gritters. Not that it matters too much, as we are both able to work from home, but it gets a bit tedious! We decided that we ought to shop for some staple foods today, so walked to Bovey - the scenic way - and did a little birding on the way. Interestingly, there is a significant movement of Lapwing and 'winter thrushes' (Fieldfare & Redwing) going on along the valley, with perhaps 150 Lapwing in a couple of wind-cleared fields and a further 50 or so heading vaguely westwards, hoping to escape the freezing weather. We must also have totalled some 1,500+ Redwing and perhaps 200 Fieldfare, all rampaging through the small patches of leaves the sun had warmed in the woods. Spectacular stuff.

Icicles beside a small roadside stream

 

Redwing fossicking on a hedgebank.

 

Lapwing and Fieldfare making the most of snow-free areas

 

Looking to Haytor from Trough Lane (pronounced 'trow lane', for some inscrutable local reason...)

Spring rolls on - boaring.

A neat blog posting, emphasising the risks of either releasing non-native species, or perhaps taking things too literally (check the date):

Dartmoor National Park ranger blog

Recent events haven't been kept up to date, but the first swallows arrived back at the neighbouring farm on Sunday 30th March, and were hotly pursued by the first House Martin of the year, yesterday. Spring is building nicely into summer, with our recent ringing in the garden showing the local Blackbirds, Dunnocks and Long-tailed Tits are there or thereabouts, with Blue and Great Tit not far behind. All looking rather pleasant, really...

Snow, snow and more snow...

As the roads over Haldon were closed and I'm ahead of my work (with some time put in this evening), we took advantage of the weather to have an invigorating - o other word for it - walk around the village. Not many birds around; Yellowhammer, Chaffinch, Meadow Pipit, corvids and Woodpigeons, Redwing, Song Thrush and Blackbird, but on our return we found the remains of a pigeon's nest (Woodpigeon? Collared Dove?), with two eggs with almost full-sized embryos lying smashed in the road. Wouldn't have made it anyway in these conditions, but it goes to show how early nesting will begin!

Our by-now familiar view, this time with semi-abandoned car at bottom of field.

Trees with drifting snow piling through the hedge, on the road heading out of Hennock towards the reservoirs

It's a hole scene...

Na admiring the patterns of light and shade on snow, or perhaps just frozen to the spot...

A less usual view of Haytor

Haytor and the Bovey valley, looking moody and dramatic

Old year out, new year in...

Brass monkeys over Hennock. You'll need to look carefully to see 'em though.

First off, a happy New Year and all that malarkey. In the grand birder tradition (why, I wonder?), here's a roundup of last year: it was great!

OK. Being more sensible... I... saw a lot of new birds, met the girl of my dreams and moved in with her, earned a bit more money than the previous year (hardly difficult, but there you go!), visited three new countries, ringed a load of birds and generally had a very happy year. Vomiting yet? I am... This year I resolve to do more of the same, though as I've met and moved in already with the girl of my dreams, I'll not be aiming to improve (much) on those stakes.

We finished off last year with a trip to Slimbridge, where we admired the birds - both wild and tame - and enjoyed watching the hardcore birder element who stride resolutely past all the captive birds, making it very clear they're not going to look at any of those things, thankyou very much. But it was nice to get some practice at female Aythyas and potential hybrids - all those Canvasback really do look like hybrids, having read up Keith Vinicombe's article (I'll link to it when I find it again). Not that I'm likely to find one, but it's nice to practice :o)

Good to see that the aberrant Moorhen is still alive - seems to survive despite the aggression of the other Moorhens around the site.

A confiding Goldcrest that was the devil's own job to photograph.

The New Year's birding was brass-monkey chilling weather, so we skulked around the Exe for the day, amassing a vaguely respectable list of species and enjoying a large mixed flock of Calidris waders, Brent Geese and Shelduck at point-blank range at Dawlish Warren. My desire to see Snowy Owl overcame my reluctance to twitch, so we also gathered up the ever-dependable Judith and twitched the little bugger. Was well worth it too - a proper charmer, for all his/her inactivity. For the record, birding the Hayle estuary and Helston felt far more 'real' for some of us, and produced a nice selection of species to bolster the day, finishing off with a rather dimpsy Firecrest as the light faded.

As the famous brass monkey will attest, it's remained very - unusually - cold here in the south of England, and we've noted a complete clear-out of species such as Redwing and Fieldfare, which all seem to have headed for the river valleys. The feeders outside the front door have been literally carpeted with Long-tailed Tits at times (9 on a peanut feeder is quite a sight!) and we've been getting some Goldcrests in the garden recently, at least one of which looked to be at death's door. It don't half make you sorry for the individual, I can tell you!

Finally, and by no means least, we now have chairs for our dining table! Oh joy, oh rapture! No more camping table dinners - we are now officially a civilised household. Na might debate that last point, but it's my blog...!

The Teign just below our house. Looking very Dartmoorish, I tell you...

And in case I didn't post it earlier, a pic of the pre-roost gathering of Pied Wagtail from Kennick reservoir last year.

6th-7th December. Hennock and surrounds...

Nice weekend... We started out with a ringing session at Wray on Saturday, catching a fairly decent 20 birds. En route we had fine views of a Tawny Owl perched over the road and a couple of Woodcock beetling over. Best of them were a couple of Nuthatch and a trio of Marsh Tit, but a retrap Goldcrest from the spring was also a real pleasure. The fine and crisp weather meant the morning was simply stunning, with a light frost and almost no wind at all - quite warm enough for a handful of bumblebees to be buzzing around the ivy flowers. We also found a small patch of climbing corydalis (Corydalis claviculata) still in flower - that should have gone over in September! Bird of the day was probably the bank vole living under the stone we used as a ringing table; he/she/it scurried out to feed on a number of occasions whilst we worked.

We then headed on to Stover to meet a hashing friend of Na's, so they could apparently prepare a Christmas run. I took the opportunity to wander slowly round the lake and count the finch roost in - not very exciting, but about 250 birds in, mainly Greenfinch and Chaffinch, but a couple of Redpoll, a Goldfinch and 5 Brambling spiced the mix up.

Black-headed Gull. Not exactly rare, but nice light on it.

Some reflected pine trees in a drainage ditch: not sure whether I like the image or not. Perhaps it's worth it...

Sunday was our first attempt to ring here in Hennock, and we ended up with a catch of 47 new birds over the morning; another couple of Nuthatch and a Song Thrush probably the best of the bunch.

Nuthatch in the paw. This is a male, perhaps an adult (TF passed on some possible ageing criteria, which Svensson lacks). Sexed on a combination of rich chestnut undertail coverts and flanks (not visible in this picture) and the neat border between buff throat and white chin. The hint of a white border around the forehead also suggests male, apparently.

As I still needed some fresh air, we took ourselves off to the reservoirs to do some top-up atlassing, but again, bird of the day was a mammal: this time a Daubenton's bat feeding over Tottiford reservoir. Somewhat incongruous to see a small bat out in the midday sun over a partly-frozen reservoir!

Pics...:

Cold enough for a part-frozen reservoir. Nice patterns!

And finally a friendly Robin which attempted to mug us for crumbs. Poser.

Wray Cleave / Pepperdon 3rd Dec '08

With the luxury of not a great deal of work to do today, I headed out to have a look round Na's patch and see what was lurking there. I stopped off at the sewage works in case the Yellow-browed W. was still lurking, but no sign again. Oh well. Plenty time yet for it to reappear.

I've not visited one side of Na's favoured stamping ground, so took the opportunity of a combination of bright crisp sunshine and frosty weather to skate over the deep mix of cowshit and mud churned up before the stiles. Nice. The time of year and the weather argued against there being many birds there, and that was the case: a few Marsh Tits sneezing at me, the odd Treecreeper and Nuthatch sidling across the branches and a nice bright Yellowhammer were the highlights, with a standard backing cast of Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Redwing, Blackbird, Chaffinch... draw your own conclusions! Flushed a couple of Roe Deer and a scumbag squirrel (sorry, cute Grey Squirrel, if you prefer - why you'd want to, I don't know). The air was a tad hazy for decent landscape photos - and my preferred camera seems to have given up the ghost. Still, below are some offerings from the day:

A bit of frost abstract from the windscreen, before I trashed it.

Proper feather patterns last night, which is nice!

The view towards Morton' from the track leading to Wray Cleave woods

Not as dramatic as the abandoned machinery in Liberia, but an abandoned 'dozer made a nice colour contrast with the trees and the field behind.

Catch-up

Busy, busy. Having not posted for a while, this is a quick catch-up. A couple of recent ringing trips - one to London, so Na could catch up with her old ringing group. The Saturday morning's ringing was pretty decent, with over a hundred birds caught - predominantly Long-tailed Tit and Goldcrest, it seemed (a nice enough portrait of a Goldcrest from that day above). After that we froze our bums off at Staines reservoirs for the fun of it, though there was little enough to see: a handful of Ruddy Duck and a few Goldeneye were the highlight. An evening visit to a local pub for a celebratory birthday dinner with a friend, then the day was capped off with an overnight snowfall... "It always snows on my birthday..." was Na's comment!

Sunday started lazily - pelting with rain, so we stayed in bed and stuffed a late scrambled-egg breakfast; then headed back via Virginia Water (Mandarins, dogs, walkers, screaming kids...) to Exeter, for a week's house-sit whilst my parents sunned themselves in Spain with youngest sister. Uneventful week. Then last weekend we had the annual ringing session in the orchard across the road from the parents' house, in search of Fieldfare. Whilst that was relatively unsuccessful (only one FF), we did catch a good selection of Blackbird, including a bird ringed during the previous session, last November.

Back in Hennock, and the local birds have taken to the feeders on the veranda in a big way - we now have Blackbird, Song Thrush and Robin coming to crumbs on the ground, with a selection of tits, Nuthatch and House Sparrow on the hanging feeders. Garden list hasn't grown much though! Next task is to get some more atlas squares done - of which, more later...

Hennock

As it's manking with rain today, I'm posting a couple of pictures of the local area and its wildlife.

First of all, however, a very, very manky picture of the 2w drake King Eider in North Devon - partly just to 'prove I was there', partly to show he's a far better-looking bloke than he was at the beginning of this year, bless him. At the start of the year he looked very much like this (links to Birdguides website). Now he looks like this:

Or, if you want to see something that doesn't look like it was taken through a milk bottle by a myopic woodlouse, try this lot... Anyway. That's enough about top shelf birds. On to some local info. This is the sort of countryside we're living in:



As you can see, fairly pastoral and green. At the moment we're seeing a lot of corvids (Rook, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow and Jay in order of abundance), Woodpigeon and Herring Gull. As far as the smaller stuff goes, there seem to be plenty of Blackbird and Redwing around at the moment, with the usual common garden birds like Blue, Great and Coal Tit, House Sparrow, Robin, Dunnock, blah, blah, blah... We're also getting regular Grey and Pied Wagtail around the cattle in the field below us, with occasional Meadow Pipit dropping in. I'll have to start a patch list at this rate! This is the -already famous, har har - sewage works down the road:


Which holds pretty much what you'd expect: Blackbird, Robin, Wren, Dunnock, Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tit, Bullfinch, these chaps:

...and the Yellow-browed. I spent a while at the gate yesterday watching it, making sure it wasn't a Hume's YBW (no luck, more's the pity). I suppose my next task will be to try and get some pictures. Totally failed to pick up Firecrest as well - but there must be one around here somewhere, I'm sure. New for my new site yesterday were a Kestrel and a Jay.

And just for Mark, cos I'm sure he misses them, this was outside the front door about 10 minutes ago:

(Eurasian) Nuthatch Sitta europaea - it's blurred because I was photographing at 1/40th of a second through our front door glass.