Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Farmland Birds - Birdless Farms

Just back from leading another bird walk around one of our local farms (did the same a couple of weeks ago). Neither was well attended by the public - the farm didn't seem to do a good enough job of spreading the word though it was entirely their idea and part of a series of summer evening events. Maybe the fact that these were summer evening events and the weather is more akin to late autumn had something to do with it.

Anyway, always good to get into some otherwise off-limits habitat though in the main all it confirmed for me was that there was precious little around in terms of traditional farmland birds. In fact, the only highlights were unusual and unexpected.

On the first walk around, when we got to a really good looking pond that the farm created a couple of years ago, swimming about in the middle of it was a female Tufted complete with brood. She was still there today with brood intact and growing well. The other highlight was today, when a small group of Swallows came over. Moments later, a falcon came into view and after a second glance it started chasing the Swallows and it became clear that it was a Hobby. Excellent.

Otherwise, a handful of Yellowhammers, Bullfinches, and Chiffchaffs were the only relatively interesting birds, though there seemed to be good numbers of singing Song Thrushes about.

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