Monday 30 November 2009

Yes Sir, I Can Frugi

NNW 2-4, 2 oktas increasing to 7 oktas by midday. Dry.
Late morning visit.

Not many folks get too excited about the humble rook (corvus frugilegus), but here at Aldcliffe we can, and there were eight feeding on and around the maize stubble fields this morning.

These stubble fields were good for other farmland birds today, the best being:

Eleven grey partidges (what a record!)

17 skylarks

19 tree sparrows and

2 stock doves.

The flooded wildfowler's pools fields were graced by 3 whooper swans (sadly later frightened off by an enthusiastic off-lead dog.)

Other wildfowl on this temporary lake included a few shoveler, wigeon and teal.

Aldcliffe marsh was dominated by a four-figure lapwing flock and c.300 greylags along with a party of four (presumed escaped) snow geese.

These have recently re-located from the Silverdale saltmarshes and were first seen in the Aldcliffe area by P. Woodruff on the 28th.
Dan.

3 comments:

Guy McClelland said...

Glad you did'nt used "rook and roll" for your headline. I am hoping to use that when I get my Aldcliffe patch tick for rook. Sounds like a great day down there. Now, where do those tree sparrows come from?

Guy.

Pete Woodruff said...

Good to see my name has reached 'Birding Aldcliffe' which is a blog I visit daily despite the original blogger now being a 'few' miles away in Canada which brings me to question....when are we going to be able to 'really know' who's posts we are reading these days.

Good Birding to all concerned with Birding Aldcliffe DH/SW/GMc.

Jon Carter said...

Howdy - the partridge count is particularly encouraging. I pretty much reckoned they'd headed off down the same road as corn bunting in the Aldcliffe area in the last year or two. I don't remember hearing or seeing a single bird north of Stodday this spring or summer.
Is there any chance they have been released? The proliferation of grain bins and released pheasants in the past 10 months just makes me wonder...