Chiltern Birder

There seem to be a few pairs of finches nesting within range of my feeders. We seem to have at least one pair of chaffinches and two of goldfinches visiting regularly at the moment. No doubt the starlings will turn up later in the season. At the moment I only have a couple of fat bars in the house and am not sure if I should be ordering more under the present circumstances. In the woods the bluebells have come out in the last day or two. Great spotted woodpeckers are drumming and I have heard the occasional "yaffle" of a green woodpecker as well. With so little traffic noise birdsong is far clearer and the fact that we are lucky enough to have a good population of skylarks is obvious.

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 ...

I decided that I needed to get back to some moorland walking and spend yesterday in South Wales at the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Parking at the Keepers Pond car park in the Blaenavon World Heritage site I headed off onto The Blorenge. Much of the mountain is heather moorland which makes for very difficult walking but I picked up the route of an old tramway leading to a limestone quarry near the summit. The walking was usually easier than in the photo where the top layer of small pebbles has been washed away where it crosses a small stream. As far as birding is concerned it wasn't hugely rewarding, there are red grouse on the mountain but in a number of visits I have never seen one. Skylarks were abundant on this part of the mountain as were meadow pipits. The stonechats seem to prefer perching on the wires of the powerline that serves the TV transmitter mast to the south of my walk but I did get good views of two individuals. What did seem incongruous was a couple of cock b...

With the mild weather we are not seeing a lot of birds in the garden yet. The fat feeder in the front garden is seeing very little activity. In the back the starlings are busy with the fat feeder and goldfinches are regulars on the sunflower seeds. There are random visits by blue tits and this morning I was lucky enough to see a coal tit pay a very brief visit. At ground level a pair of wood pigeons stamp over the plants and a dunnock and a wren occasionally come out of hiding. Not far away in the fields there is a lot of activity. A flock of skylarks was busy among recently sprouted brassicas while yellowhammers were flitting through a hawthorn hedge. It was pure chance that one was still for long enough to be identified with the naked eye. Normally I only see them from the car when they find singing posts on roadside hedges in the spring. Away from home the River Chess is in a fairly poor way, at the moment rising from the spring by the Water Meadow car park in the town. It is sh...

The winter has been so mild that the fields near the house which were ploughed at the end of summer are now totally green. Out walking between Christmas and New Year skylarks were singing and there were a host of small brown birds on the fields that kept just too far away to identify. In the garden things are getting a little more interesting with goldfinches and long tailed tits regularly visiting the feeders. Some other birds were managing some interesting contortions including a robin taking sunflower seeds and a blackbird on the fat feeder. On the ground the wood pigeons are taking most of the dried meal worms which at least keeps them off the fat feeders (I did read somewhere that they were vegetarian!). This morning a magpie tried to chase one off the ground feeder but when the pigeon stood its ground and the magpie gave up. Yesterday we had a green woodpecker on the back lawn. This is the first time that I have seen one come into the very enclosed back garden although I do o...

Yesterday I saw a kite swooping across a field in their usual manner. A crow came across the field in flying in a straigt line and I could see that they were on a collision course. When the crow came close the kite suddenly swerved away while the crow continued on its way without any change of course. The skylarks were giving their usual chorus. Both yesterday and today I found myself walking through clouds of meadow brown butterflies along the woodland edges.

The feeder seemed to go mad yesterday with a dozen starling chicks trying to get at the fat. At one point they were even standing on top of each other. Apart from that the coal tits obviously have a brood as I keep seeing the adults taking beakfuls of food away. Also in the garden I saw a small copper butterfly. Driving home in the late evening on Tuesday I saw something large for a stoat but small for a ferret running away from me on the road from Latimer to Ley Hill. I didn't get a frontal view but judging by the colour I would guess a juvenile polecat. Across the fields it would have been less than half a mile from the other individual that I have seen here. Walking across the fields today there were three or four skylarks visible but only one singing.

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.

Taking my usual walk today it was striking how the autumn colours had come on in the last few days. When the sun came out I really regretted not having the camera with me. There wasn't much to see in the way of variety or numbers of birds. A couple of probable skylarks put up on a cultivated field but the gem was naturally a red kite. Circling over the fields behind my house at tree top height it finally came over my head as I reached the edge of the field. Living where I do I suppose that I should be blasé about them by now but when one comes overhead there is no choice. I still just stop and say "wow!"