Patch week 6

5^th Feb.   No visit

6^th Feb.   Just a quick visit before breakfast on a busy day, just a chiffchaff and a sparrowhawk were worth a mention

7^th Feb.  After a wet morning, Les and I went for a walk around the greenway, a flock of 12 stock doves were flushed, a large flock of rooks kept their distance, numerous skylarks were seen and a distant finch flock on a lovely sunny afternoon

8^th Feb.  Two hours on the common which was more like a peat bog looking for woodcock turns up nothing except soggy boots and after that the day turned into one long bout of rain

9^th Feb.  This latest trip to the blue lagoon turned out to be one of my poorer moves as it was blowing a hooley and my eyes were constantly streaming, in between blinks and trying to hold up the scope I detected only three Great crested grebes of interest.

10^th Feb.  A pleasure today to go out when the wind was a mere Zephyr, Les and I walked the greenway, seeing 47 Canada geese on a new ‘lake’, a Jay flew over us, we bumped into Ken and talked about his visits to the patch, we then saw 25 redwings and a pair of fieldfares before the rain drove us home

11^th Feb.  Another foul morning gave way to a sunny afternoon and I headed off to the fields adjacent to the Flint lane allotments, from here I saw a pair of distant buzzards and a further search of the distant hills and there was a tiny moving speck that turned into a RED KITE when it came closer. There was  also a pot pourri of lots of different birds that held my interest for the next half hour. I walked on to Radwell and saw four grey herons and a pair of little egrets there and found that the meadow pipit flock at Nortonbury had grown to about 35                               Patch list 65