Chiltern Birder

With all other sources of exercise forbidden I was starting to feel that my usual half hour round the local fields wasn't quyite enough. Today I turned left into the lane instead of right and went into Cowcroft Wood. A green woodpecker was very audible but didn't come within sight. Just as I entered the wood, however, I did see a treecreeper working its way up one of the trees. Naturally it didn't stay still long enough for a photo. Some of the old brick clay diggings are very impressive, filled now with so much regrowth that they could be mistaken for natural features. Without any sense of scale from people the photo doesn't do the view justice. I took a zig zag route through the wood comingout by the trig point, which must have been among far less undergrowth when it was used for surveying. Walking past Ladies' Wood I heard a buzzard scream, which makes a change from the kites, a few seconds later it circled overhead before vanishing behind the trees. On ...

There are times when parts of Cowcroft Wood feel more like the Buckinghamshire Bayou although a rather chilly one today.. When I stopped to look at this fallen tree I disturbed a large bird of prey. It was difficult to get a clear id through the branches but I think a buzzard rather than a kite. There wasn't much visible in the way of birds otherwise apart from some corvids on the fields but I did disturb a roe deer. I have seen them in fields by Bunn's Lane and several times in Codmore Wood but this was actually the first time that I had seen one in Cowcroft. What was striking was how quietly she ran. I don't know if landfull has started at Meadham's Farm but  landscaping of the surrounds has been done:   I still think that the old clay pits, cut into the side of the hill, would have been a better site for new housing than on green fields behind Hilltop. 

Heard my first cuckoo of the year today. I was walking along the edge of Cowcroft Wood and could hear the bird calling, probably from the thickets on the other side of the brickworks. In the woods the display of bluebells was magnificent and other woodland plants were making nice displays elsewhere. Earlier this month I had half a sighting of a badger. Driving late at night towards Missenden I just glimpsed the animals hind quarters as it scuttled into the hedge.

The starlings are starting to appear now and I saw a party come down to the ground feeder and clear out the dried mealworms in seconds. They don't seem much interested in the suet pellets despite loving the fat bars. They are taking beakfuls of fat back to the nest, several times I have seen one come to the feeder, take a mouthful for itself then load up its beak for the return trip. In Cowcroft Wood the bluebells are coming out and there should be a magnificent display in a few days. The celandines are fully out with some dazzling displays.

Taking a walk yesterday it was striking how we seem to have gone from an extended autumn to spring without any proper winter in between. Living on a hill top the ground around here mostly dries out very quickly so a lot of my walk through Cowcroft yesterday was on hard ground. Even where the thick mud remains it has turned from liquid to the consistency of modelling clay. As I wrote those two sentences the room darkened and it started raining again! The jackdaws were making a lot of noise in the woods and I saw one trying to fish something out of a hollow tree. Clinging to the side of the trunk with the sun behind it my first reaction was that it was a woodpecker but changing the angle slightly revealed the truth. I did wonder if there were eggs in the hole. I didn't see any woodpeckers but, as so often happens, I could hear the rather mocking call of a green. While walking along the bridleway at the edge of the wood I saw a pair of muntjac among the trees. One looked at me a...

Driving home from Chenies today I had a strange encouter with a buzzard. On the lane between Flaunden Bottom and Ley Hill a buzzard was flying, in the same direction as me between the hedgerows persued by a crow. Unfortunately I couldn't take in the full effect of this as I had to negotiate oncoming traffic in the single track road. Yesterday a buzzard was circling above Cowcroft Wood and making a lot of noise. Apart from crows and kites there was not much else in the way of birds but there was a rather handsome puffball in the pasture between Broomstick Lane and the wood. I had left my phone on charge so I didn't manage a picture. Last week I visited Fishers Green and again not much to report. It was a little early for winter migrants and there was the usual selection of water fowl but far fewer gadwall than last year. In the garden I have had a few sunflower seeds in the feeder and these have been gradually taken, mostly by robins. I have added a small fat bar today, I ...

Looking back over previous posts this seems to be the normal time to hear a cuckoo in the hills around here. Walking across the field between Broomstick Lane and Cowcroft Wood I could hear one in the direction of Tylers Hill Road. In the woods the bluebells were making a magnificent show but birds could only be heard rather than seen. In the garden we seem to be getting starlings, blue, great and coal tits, blackbirds, robins and dunnocks. Magpies have started coming into the garden and a pair of wood pigeons seem to be resident rather than just visiting.

Between Sunday and Thursday the bluebells have come out. Walking in Cowcroft Wood at the weekend the bluebells were all still green but driving back from Cheinies yesterday there were lovely displays in the woods and verges. I saw several herons along the Chess but no egrets. At home the balance of species at the feeders has changed. A magpie now comes and uses the fat feeder every day while starling numbers are increasing. The blackcap hasn't returned from some time and the long tailed tits seem to have moved on as well. We are still seeing blue and great tits and a coal tit made several visits today. A wood pigeon using the starling feeder was quite amusing while various small brown birds flitting rapidly in and out of shrubs may have been house sparrows.

The snow hasn't brought anything exciting to the garden. For the last couple of days we have had starlings, blue tits, robins and blackbirds and one brief glimpse of a wren at the bottom of the garden. Out walking yesterday it was cold and foggy. Just the usual woodland birds but in Cowcroft Wood a fox trotted out into the ride in front of me. It was a handsome beast and, in the still air, hadn't caught my scent. After a couple of seconds he became aware of me and loped off without much obvious concern. There were lots of signs of activity in the snow, particularly creatures digging down to get at the earth underneath. I assumed that it was foxes after beetles. There were also footprints of deer and rabbits had occupied a badger set, the droppings standing out clearly in the snow. What was also clear was that a some of out human neighbours regard farmland as a glorified theme park as there were several toboggan tracks going out into a sloping arable field where new crops wer...

After yesterday's snow I took a rather muddy walk today. Temperatures were a little above freezing and I didn't have much opportunity to creep silently up to wildlife while squelching through deep mud. Walking along the edge of Cowcroft Wood these boisterous young chaps came to see if I happened to have a couple of sacks of cattle cake about my person. Bird life was not much different to the garden. Robins and blackbirds pretty well everywhere, a jay in the wood. It always seems odd the way such a large bird flies under the canopy. Along Bunns Lane there was a flock of long tailed tits while blue and great tits turned up all over the place and a solitary chaffinch appeared in a hedgerow. The red kites overhead pretty well go without saying these days. I did rather like this fungus that I saw on a tree in Ladies Wood.

Entering Cowcroft Wood last week there was a flock of birds high in the tree tops which made the wood sound quite spring like. The contrast this morning was quite striking with hardly anything audible. For a little while there has been a flock of birds active on the recently ploughed field in the corner between Cowcroft and Ladywood. They are very nervy and I can't get close enough for a positive id with the lightweight bins that I carry when walking. Carting the scope up there is too much like pack drill but after two sessions I am quite happy that they are redwing. The sound of a large flock of canada geese was quite unusual so far from water. They were grazing on stubble over near Great White End Park Farm. At the edge of Ladywood I could hear a flock of long tailed tits but they stayed hidden by the leaves. I had a better view before the weekend when they were working along the hedgerow. When I got down to Bottom Lane I did hear a skylark on the field.

A trip to Fishers Green didn't reveal any exciting rarities but did yield some suprises. There seemed to be gadwall everywhere, far more than the tufties or mallard, I don't think that I have ever seen such numbers before. I am not a compulsive list maker but while walking back to the car I did think that I should have been counting. They did prove to be much more timid than the more usual waterfowl. They would fly off if they became aware of me on the path even at quite long distances. Apart from that there were the usual suspects with coot, mute swans black headed gulls, great crested grebes, canada geese and cormorants as well as the mallards and a handful of tufted duck and only one pair of pochard. There had clearly been some late broods as there were juvenile coot and great crested grebe around. The latter were still in their striped plumage. An odd sight was Holyfield Weir which was lined from end to end by canada geese. A marked change from the usual row of assorted gul...

Taking a walk today I thought about taking the bins but decided that I was unlikely to see anything interesting. Naturally, while walking along the edge of Cowcroft Wood I saw a hawk silluetted against the sky. No markings but swept back wings like a swift. I walked on wondering what it was (I have never been good on the smaller raptors). Glancing back I saw it again, this time heading down towards Bottom Lane and the River Chess. A few minutes later the red kite that swept across in front of me in all its glory was instantly identifiable. A couple of minutes with a field guide once I was home settled the identification.

As I had to go over to East London yesterday I took the opportunity to go up to Amwell which I hadn't visited for some time. Since my last visit the lakes have been taken over by the Herts and Middlesex Trust who have put access with hides and a nature trail. It makes seeing the birds a lot easier but has also made the whole area seem tamed and less exciting. Despite the improvements the first spottings of interest were while crossing the canal with a cock reed bunting perching in the bushes and a pair of common terns flying along the cut. On the margins of the lake were lapwings, one bird with a magnificent crest as well as a variety of roosting water fowl and cormorants. According to the notice board redshank were nesting and I managed to see one at the waters edge as well as an oystercatcher fly across the lake. Other birds of note were heron, shoveller and gadwall. When I first visited this site around 20 years ago there was a pair of egyptian geese in residence, either they...

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 Benso...

I was thinking recently that I hadn't seen many jays around and promptly saw two last week and two more today. That is about the most intertesting thing in the bird line locally at the moment. I still have no starlings coming into the garden and waiting for the swallows. I have heard that they have arrived in the south of England but none have climbed this hill yet. The woodland flowers are appearing with some nice displays of cowslips. In Cowcroft Wood the first few bluebells are just coming out.

According to the radio this morning the bluebells are already out in some parts of the country. A long walk in Cowcroft Wood showed that this was not the case here, in the way of flowers the celendines are just starting to bloom but not the bluebells although parts of the wood will probably be magnificent once they are out. By way of birds there were just the usual tits, blackbirds and robins plus some woodpeckers. A green was very vocal but we only had a very brief glimpse as it flew away. A great spotted posed at a little distance. Curiously we ran into a friend from London in the middle of the wood, as Pratchett says, "million to one chances happen all the time".

With the fine weather and a holiday it seemed a good idea to take advantage of the fact that I live in some very beautiful countryside. A walk in the Ley Hill area took me up Broomstick Lane, where escaped cultivated bluebells were mixing with the wild. Then into Cowcroft Wood where a substantial badger set seems to have had somebody digging. (I won't add my thoughts on that as Blogspot has rules about bad language). Although birds were audible there was nothing to be seen and the walk continued out onto Ley Hill Common and along the side of the golf course towards the community wood, now named Crabtree Plantation. One tree had several hollow sections where branches had fallen and a nuthatch was taking advantage of the previous night's rain to plaster mud around one of these. Its mate was on the next branch. A little nearer the road was a recently discarded pair of bright red knickers, I did wonder if the cloudburst had cooled somebody's ardour rather precipitately. In the ...

Faced with a beautiful afternoon and a garden in urgent need of attention I natually went for a walk instead. Cowcroft Wood nature reserve is a couple of fields away from the house and as it has been dry it was a nice alternative to my usual walk. There wasn't much in the way of bird life visible although there was a lot of song audible. The celandine is out and looking lovely with a promise of a magnificent display of bluebells later. Suddenly there was a disturbance at treetop height accompanied by a loud mewing. It took me a second to realise what it was as I have never heard a buzzard in the area although I have very occasionally seen them from the car. It flew across my line of sight and stayed in the area for quite a while as the calls were audible for quite a while. Apart from that we had a very brief glimpse of a muntjac and a brief view of a pheasant catching the sun at the edge of the wood.