Sunday 18 March 2012

Sunday 18th March

This is more like it, two trips over today, although it was nearly dark before I returned this afternoon/evening. This morning Joy and I completed at circuit even though it was raining. We were rewarded with a couple of Sand Martin.

Met up with an old friend who was out walking his dog. As it was that cold and wet, and he had wrapped up accordingly, I didn’t recognise him at first, but when he spoke that Rochdale accent came through sending my memory banks into overdrive.

Bird wise there was flock of around 20 Siskin feeding in the alders but little else in the rain. This winters storms and Severn Trent have taken a toll of the Reservoirs trees. There are quite a few down, the largest of which in Warbler Corner took some of the fencing with it, also gone is the tree that held breeding Marsh Tit a couple of years back. Walking along the north shore a couple of gaps have appeared as trees have come down. There is a gap on the south shore but I’m not sure how that happened!!!

Anyway back to the birds. This evening there was an Oystercatcher feeding at various locations along the west shore – a couple of my friends who read this blog who live in the South of England (Stan) and the East coast of Scotland (Stuart/Winston) will be wetting themselves at the mention of Oystercatcher but it is not a common bird at Shustoke with early spring being the optimum time of year. There were also 14 Goosander, 15 Wigeon, 2 Shoveler, c.20 Pochard, 4 Gadwall but yesterdays Teal appear to have pushed on. It was nearly dark by the time we got back to the car with the only other birds of note being a Sparrowhawk and a couple of Mistle Thrush.

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