birdpix

Keep seeing green woodpeckers -which is good ,not just on my home patch either.

        At Carsington today the water fowl were reaching rather large numbers with many duck species present including goldeneye,pintail,scaup and most notably as many wigeon to look at as you would  want.An injured  mute swan was being hassled mercilessly by a crow ,the Rangers were informed.The barnacle geese are building in numbers ,they are as my wife would say a dainty goose.One of those days when nothing unusual was about ,but was none the less enjoyable watching familiar birds.A rumoured marsh harrier ,eluded me as did the great northern diver and the scoters that have recently been seen here.A kestrel landed on a dead tree ,regulars at the sheepwash hide will know this particular tree,anyway two magpies immediately hassled the kestrel ,who dived into the hollow trunk persued by the pied corvids before admiting defeat and taking off in a huff.The lapwings looked absolutely splendid in the sunshine ,each time I get a good view ,close up of one of these beauties I think the same thing that they are delightful,I enjoyed watching their acrobatic ariel displays and listening to them making their unique peewit noise ,their restlessness always provides a spectacle as they launch themselves into the air en masse before circling and landing again in more or less the same spot ,maybe  a leave had fallen off a tree a few miles away and spooked them ,ironically they stayed put when a sparrowhawk swooped down onto  a nearby spit of land.Missed a kingfisher ,too busy yaking.

                 On the way to work this morning a magpie lunged at  a squirrel on a grassy bank that I was driving past at the time ,the squirrel shot into the air in a comedy fashion.Noticable is the number of buzzards around ,some of them give you cracking views.