Date: 9th March 2021
Time: from 11:15 a.m.
Weather: dry, sunny, light wind, 7°C
to 11°C
My last visit on 5th March 2021 proved to be very uneventful but the spring-like sunny weather returned this morning as did bird activity and bird song. In fact, if I had arrived on site much earlier as I normally do, it would doubtless have been even greater. However, I had to stay at home for an important phone call so my visit today did not start until 11:15 a.m.
I accessed the site as usual via the track from Larkins
Tyres which remains very wet and muddy and then, on reaching the clearing,
I took the short track through the woodland to the fencing that provides a
watchpoint to scan the field and the trees, hedges and scrub bordering it. I
spent some time here and this location provided me with most of my notable
sightings.
Firstly, I added Pheasant to my site list for the year. I initially heard the brief call of what I believed to be a Pheasant but I wasn’t entirely sure.
From memory, I have only seen Pheasant
on 2 previous occasions at the site, most recently a female on 9th October 2020, so this was an unusual record of what is normally regarded as
a sedentary species.
As I took the short track to the
watchpoint, I noticed a single Goldcrest foraging quietly in the trees.
This was my first sighting since 5th February 2021 and just a few days before the snow arrived. This tiny
species is very susceptible to cold weather so it was pleasing to see that it
had survived.
The watchpoint also provided sightings of a fly-over
female Sparrowhawk and a fly-over silent Green Woodpecker. I saw
2 additional Green Woodpeckers noisily chasing each other around the
eastern end of the cemetery. However, after sightings on recent visits of very active
Great Spotted Woodpeckers there were none to be heard or seen this
morning.
With regard to mammals, I saw a Red Fox
basking in the sun at the edge of the field as I walked through the trees to
the watchpoint but by the time that I arrived at the fence it had evidently heard
or seen me and had disappeared back in to the woodland.
I saw 2 Grey Squirrels this morning: 1 at
the far end of the field as it ran across in front of the Pheasant and 1 in
the south west of the site near the Pound Lane boundary which I managed to
photograph.
Daffodils are now very abundant around the cemetery and the Sweet Violets have now been joined by a few Primroses.
Species recorded during this visit were as follows
(heard only records in italics):
Here are some photos from my visit:
Birds = 51 (32)
Mammals = 6 (3)
Butterflies = 21 (0)
Dragonflies and damselflies = 7 (0)
Reptiles = 1 (0)
Amphibians = 0 (0)
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