Considering recent days the weather was fantastic with a light breeze and clear blue skies.
Recording began at dawn with bird table visitors and a few fly overs recorded. The usual’s included Blackbird, Collared Dove, Jackdaw, Robin, Dunnock and Starling. Greenfinch and Chaffinch soon joined the queue, followed by House Sparrow and Blue Tit.
We set off to walk down to the fen, a mosaic of small patches of land, actively managed by a community group called ‘The Little Ouse Headwaters Project’ and including:
They can be found adjacent to the villages of Hinderclay, Thelnetham, Blo Norton and Garboldisham in Suffolk. Walking across the fields we flushed a few wintering Skylark and a flock of 21 Linnet and 4 Yellowhammer. One species that is not too common on the patch is Mute Swan so I was pleased to see two birds fly over.
At the end of Hinderclay Fen is a small slurry lagoon, which has held wintering Green Sandpiper but not today, just Moorhen and Wren. Another less common species was a fly over Common Buzzard as we walked towards Blo Norton Fen and on Webbs Fen a Little Egret was working its way through waterside vegetation.
The River Little Ouse was in flood making several paths impossible to walk along even in wellies.
There were just two Mallard on Webbs Fen and a Jay calling from nearby willow scrub. On the return walk back home I had the bird of the day. A Red Kite flew low over the field occasionally twisting and catching the sunlight. It looked stunning. Sadly only two points I t was worth 22 but I don’t set the rules!
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