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Bluebells

A walk this morning took in Cowcroft Wood again. Bluebells are now out but not in any great numbers, there are wide areas where they are just in leaf. I must read up on wild flowers, I recognise the celendine and primroses, both giving fine shows but ther are others that I can't identify.
On the birding front the walk was mostly the usual suspects, tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons and assorted corvids. I heard skylarks and pheasants, it was very striking how far the pheasant's call will carry. The high spots were a green woodpecker in the wood and house sparrows in Ley Hill. The sparrows seem to concentrate at one end of the village where there are a lot of privet hedges.
Red Kites are no longer unusual although always special but the number circling over Great Missenden on Easter Day were striking. I didn't make an exact count but it was the sort of sight that I used to associate only with the villages along the escarpment from Chinnor down towards Benson.
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